Fashion

I know we’re supposed to embrace all fashions and trends, celebrating the variety and diversity that exists in our culture, but I am afraid I am going to well and truly nail my colours to the mast and express my utter dislike for one of the latest trends to be sweeping the nation: obscenely-patterned leggings.

The picture to the left – which is purposefully small to minimise the aesthetic insult to your eyes that the pattern might induce – is a prime example of such clothing. Technically, these leggings are ‘Isabella Blue Aztec Patterned Leggings’. Aztec? I don’t remember the Aztecs wearing any leggings like this when studying Ancient History at school…

As far as I am concerned, the word ‘obscene’ is entirely appropriate for describing such offensive garments – although I should point out that doing a Google search for ‘obscene’ just caused it to crash, so maybe don’t worry about checking out the meaning of the word – since, not only do they cause great discomfort for everyone looking at them (I am speaking on behalf of Britain here, aka Simon Cowell on Britain’s Got Talent) but they simply do not go with any other item of clothing the person is wearing. Now, if I learned one thing when getting dressed, apart from ensuring everything is the right way round, it is that you should at least make some attempt at getting colours, patterns and shapes to match.

Someone out there is to blame for this. We should, quite rightly, be sceptical of anything that gathers an overwhelmingly large following – that means you, Mr Bieber – and so naturally there should be a sense of antagonism towards this latest trend. It seems quite ironic that an item of clothing that seems to embrace individualism and difference with such force that such characteristics are almost choked of air entirely is now being seen everywhere, making it in fact not a diverse item at all but rather another sign, albeit a bizarrely-colourful one, of conformity. By enough people trying to be different, they have ended up all being the same. Spooky.

Or, perhaps not. Perhaps I should don a pair myself and march confidently down the corridor of life, prompting a sudden flurry of jeans-hunting from everyone keen to look different from me? Destroying a trend by joining the trend – now that’s an ambition.

Another brick in the wall

I can now build walls. In fact, I can even repair walls that have fallen down. Even better, these statements are not actually metaphors – although I’d like to think I could lay claim to their metaphorical meanings as well – but we are in fact talking about real life bricks here (with the word ‘life’ being taken with more than a little pinch of salt…).

Or, to put it another way, I am now slightly less incapable than I was before, which is always something worth being. Tomorrow I plan to be even less incapable than today. I think it’s a worthwhile target in life.

The cause of the wall-building project was the classic car-meets-wall-car-taps-wall-car-defeats-wall story that we all know and love, as my wife’s ‘tap’ unexpectedly ruffled the feathers of the out-of-date mortar. And, while we’re enjoying mixed metaphor territory, I should also point out that the car is only nursing a minor fracture while the wall wept uncontrollably before nestling itself in various-sized chunks of disappointment on the unprepared garden lawn.

I also wasn’t aware that the word ‘tap’ was a synonym of ‘slammed’ but I guess you learn something new every day…

What I am aware of is that there have been many people before me – perhaps even hundreds – that have learned how to lay one brick upon another (we’re still talking literally here) and so this isn’t exactly Rocket Science but it was an achievement nonetheless and achievements can be hard to come by in life, so you need to take them while you can. And, on the mention of Rocket Science, I must tell you that I am determined to change the cliché to ‘It's not exactly English Literature’ to reinforce just how impressive my degree is.

Rocket Science? That’s nothing. You try reading and talking about books. Who’s with me?

Writing books is even harder and writing blogs is perhaps the hardest thing we’ve mentioned so far and so you have to conclude that writing blogs is probably the most complicated task in the world today.

It is this sort of impeccable logic that not only brings walls crashing down but gets them put right back up again. And, yes, we are moving into metaphorical territory now…