SOMEWHERE in this newspaper you are likely to find an article on lash ion. Weekend publications are big on fashion, figuring that you have had your dose of all the world's wars and catastrophes. It seems less absurd in the midst of all this chaos to consider, on a quiet couple of days - since the wars are probably taking a break themselves anyway - how best to find that Kagool you have coveted for so long.
The style supplements tend to take an intimidating tone. "The message this season is simple. If you are a human being you won't be able to wear this." To illustrate their point there is a photo of a model. All the females in these shots have 98 gleaming teeth, are at least 12 feet tall and weigh no more than the actual photograph. If the subject is a man you know just to look at him that his name is Otto or Max; he never burps and his square jawbone has grown right up through his posterior cortex, hence his grave manly expression.
I am amazed at the obsession with appearance so common currently among men. Gone are the days when all you had to do to achieve that James Bond look was make sure your flies were up and rip the larger pieces of dried cheese off your shirt front. Now grooming is a serious business, so take note.
Infancy: the modern busy infant favours all in one affairs to better acquaint itself with its own business. Newborn babies, this season, are aloof, worldly and in control only the nose should be visible.
Toddlers: A wardrobe for action. The hectic day of the developing child includes many goals such as falling down, throwing up and getting lost. Highly coloured fabrics identifiable from the outer solar system will aid locating the wearer and disguise the alarming hues of vomit that only children can produce. All clothes at this stage should be padded, bearing in mind the powerful attraction of tall buildings and the interior of cement mixers.
Childhood: The only acceptable, garb for the young school goer comprises the most antiquated hand medowns available. Anything else might engender self confidence and talking to members of the opposite sex in coffee shops, then where would we be? These clothes should be pre New Testament, yarn sacking, anything that causes major acne irritation. Chainmail is ideal. The youth will probably give you all kinds of nonsense about what their friends are wearing silence their cavilling with a yard of gingham.
Adolescence: The time of life when one's energies are devoted to self expression by not speaking to anyone. The most popular style the moment is grunge, whereby the garments look, feel and smell as if they have been used to transport a vicious dying animal across Mexico.
At this point, most reasonable people resign from keeping up appearances forthwith. For work you wear whatever has the least stain and at the weekend you revel in your cereal encrusted juniper, at least I do. Everyone is always telling me I look a mess.
"Why," they say, "are you wearing pyjamas?"
"Pyjamas? These are my archery trousers."
"You don't do archery."
"Perhaps, but if we were suddenly called upon to man the crossbeam . . ."
"Also, you have beans on your?
You can get a little defensive when strangers walk right up to you in the street and say "Hey mister, who cuts your hair? Zorro?"
Pressure is put upon all of us toe impress others to the detriment of our inner slob. Style betokens precisely nothing Stalin always looked natty. Jesus and Buddha opted for loose "hey don't bother me until I get some coffee" mooching robes. And, okay, Caesar did too, but he probably ironed. You can tell he really wanted to wear a suit from his letters:
Dear Ma,
Veni, vidi, vici . . . but I'm still a little chesty.
Women are the most heavily bombarded sector perhaps this is due to changes in their bodies, which continue relentlessly up to the age of 125. Boys become men and then go bald but a woman's body is a kind of opera, where masks fall to the floor as soon as you think the form is fixed. Girlhood, womanhood, broodiness, pregnancy, post pregnancy, the change ... the possibilities for exploiting insecurity about how to deal with these metamorphoses are enough to make any ad exec weep for joy. All of the "help" offered by the clothiers, cosmeticians and so on sounds like this:
Are you a Woman?
Yes?
Not easy, is it?
Being a complete freak.
Buy this cream.
And many of them do. Everybody wants to be accepted, to be thought, Fallractive. That is why young people devote so much time to finding new areas of the body to hang chains from. That is why men grow moustaches. That is why you see women going for a night out in skirts so short they are, technically, moustaches.
And some people have got the grooming instinct. V, needing to make no adjustment to her delirium inducing appearance, exercises it by ripping, bursting and disposing of all the scabs, zits and accretions that gather on myself. Often in mid conversation.
"Hold still ... what were you saying about your childhood?"
"Well after my terrapin died . . . I thought I'd join the navy. Ow!"
"That's better don't worry, it'll heal." But I don't mind. Scars are very in.