The haunting of Kate Middleton gets me thinking

I was sticking the vacuum-cleaner nozzle into a plastic storage bag full of summer garb, sucking the air out of the seasonal clothes, preserving them in airless, mothless aspic; familiar tat, dragged out each year to meet the summer, like recalcitrant teenagers who’ve had the blinds pulled up at noon.

Anyway, nozzle-happy in the late September sun, I found myself thinking about Kate Middleton (no, I’ve no idea why either) and the bump she’s sure to give the maternity fashion industry (I’m predicting seas of polka-dot), and I remembered a tabloid article I read about her, sometime back in the depths of this sultry summer.

According to the paper’s source, Princess Diana, or at least a phantasmagorical version of the once-beleaguered, now long-dead woman, appeared to her daughter-in-law in a dream and told the glossy-haired learner-queen that she was too thin. There was Kate, curled up in the four-poster in her Hello Kitty pyjamas and her tiara, when the former colonic conjuror and belle of bulimia rocks up on the duvet to tell her she needs to put on weight.

But it’s no wonder that Kate is thin, what with throwing up her breakfast and labouring over her social diary. By contrast, I looked like Tinky Winky when I was pregnant, the net result of sitting around eating jam sandwiches and playing Scrabble all day.

Still, at least I got “squeezed” with a double word score just before my waters broke, a mischievously cruel portent of things to come.

The wine and the damage done

I’d be thrilled if my deceased mother-in-law journeyed from beyond to my messy bedroom to tell me I was calorifically compromised (which I’m not). Her concerns were usually more with my profligate nature anyway. “Darling,” she once said to me, “if I were to drink wine every night I wouldn’t have any money either.”

This statement was doubly unreasonable as, firstly, I don’t drink wine every night, and secondly, even if I bathed thrice daily in bleedin’ Liebfraumilch I’d still be in the ha’penny place when it comes to the spendthrifts in our midst, crawling out from under the rocks of recession, tongues flicking in anticipation of bagging the new season’s must-haves.

It’s funny: you can almost feel the country creak under the tentative footsteps of stashed cash and acquisitiveness again. It’s in the “Sold” signs and the squeak of tasselled loafers; it’s in the flushed laughter of a Friday-evening barroom. And you certainly don’t have to listen too hard to hear the pitter-patter of Louboutins thundering down main street as the autumn-winter fashions hit the rails.

Am I alone in having to rewire my dropped jaw whenever I flick through the style magazines? Who inhabits these worlds? Who spends almost €3,000 on a designer handbag, and what would you put inside it? Your toothbrush, your weeping bank card, your unseasonal lippy, your party pack of stale fags?

I’m sure there must be sound reasons for spending €2,500 on a pair of python boots, and I apologise to diligent cobblers and devoted fashionistas for being singularly unmoved by them.

I’m terribly sorry for failing to feel the love for shearling jackets and laser-print leathers, for being left cold by electrifying ankle boots, for yawning in the face of wrist cuffs and pixie collars.

I’m heartily sorry for utterly failing to understand why anyone in their right mind would shell out hundreds of euro on a jumper.

It’s a jumper, just a jumper; it’s not going to make you witty or desirable, or tall and interesting; it’s not going to make anyone love you; it’s not going to imbue you with an air of mystery; it’s not going to intoxicate your friends or make you a bowl of carbonara when the rain is pelting off the glass. It’s just a bloody jumper.

New parka

Having said all that, I’d love a new parka, one of those big anoraks with enough pockets to

store a litter of cats, which can generally be spotted on sooty-eyed starlets on their way out of rehab.

I saw one in a pretty magazine. “That’s a nice big parka,” I thought (my capacity for language around fashion items being somewhat limited), and then stumbled over the cat as I backed away from the €4,000 price tag.

I don’t get it, I just don’t get it. I’ve never got it, and I suspect it’s too late to start looking for it now.