Austerity Chic And Conspicuous Non-Consumption
My ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ colleague Jackie O'Brien once took me aside and explained the subtle difference between 'dressing casually' and 'walking about the streets in your gardening clothes'. That she felt compelled to do this should tell your everything about my sense of style. I have never been described as a fashion plate, more like the kind of plate you use to serve a dog's breakfast. If Trinny and Susannah were to audit my wardrobe I'm sure they would be tickled by my nostlagic fondness for C & A. The store itself may be long gone, but I reckon I can get another good year out of those Canda corduroys.
One upside of the current economic recession, however, is that people may soon come to regard me as a man who was thirty years ahead of his time. I will be sought out for my advice on unbranded denims, bowl haircuts and velcro trainers. Add to that my lifelong reputation as a connoisseur of supermarket own-brand cola and you have all the makings of a style guru.
I came to this conclusion in the early hours of the morning while reading in The Economist magazine. Coining the term "austerity chic" it reprinted that famous still of Charlie Chaplin eating his own shoes above some text about the soaring sales figures for cheap groceries. (I have seen racks of shoes in supermarkets but hadn't realised they were edible.) Then, in the kind of coincidence reminiscent of a Taggart storyline, I saw in the New Yorker magazine with the caption 'Conspicuous Non-Consumption' describing a man proudly driving a budget two-seater hatchback.
If these two events were not enough to convince me I had stepped into the Twilight Zone, then today's trip to an Inverness bookstore was like finding a portal to the 1940's. There, on a rack, were three hardback books which turned out to be wartime reprints extolling the virtues of thrift. It seems there's a revived interest in the concepts of make-do-and-mend, grow-your-own and (thanks to Swine Flu) dont-forget-your-gas-mask.
And so to the point of these musings. Yes this is the bit where I have to shoehorn in some connection to the output of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Scotland, lest you suspect I am exploiting the Beeb's blogable bandwidth as a displacement activity from actual work.
Well, I could tell you that we are about to scrap the daily Thought for the Day and replace it with regular features on saving string and bottling your own pickles. But no. Let me point you, instead, to this Sunday's edition of the Beechgrove Potting Shed where the whole concept of growing your own food is about to take on frenzied proportions.
Which, very neatly, gives me every reason to wear gardening clothes.
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