What Not To Wear

Sorry if the screen went a bit wobbly there with the X Files post, I guess I'm justifying it to myself as an unconscious attempt at a diversion from the stresses of global terror and sudden hijacking of our obsession with Primark by the national press. Hopefully back on track now with this issue, but who knows? Blogging is a dangerous game, and the power goes to one's head. As one BBC website reader says, "Did it occur to any of these bloggers that no one really cares about your thoughts and opinions? The harsh truth is that not every thought that pops into someone's head is worth sharing." In principle, I agree. But the power has already gone to my head, and I can't help resenting the fact that their comment got printed on the website when my email about blogging being an unwelcome baroque flourish on the classical frieze of the literary tradition was ignored. Obviously I wasn't talking about this page, because I refuse to accept it is a blog.

What a day. I had already started that annual trauma, bracing myself for that emotional rollercoaster ride, that day of crying and laughing, of counting your cards and counting your wrinkles. But wasn't it unusually warm for November? And where were all my cards? What do you mean I don't usually get any? It slowly dawned on me that it was, in fact, not my birthday, despite Trinny and Suzannah coming back into my life with typically disturbing hands-on advice for "What Not To Wear On Holiday".

How do we feel about T&S? I think it's fashionable to say they have something of the anorexic transvestite and carthorse about them (Jo Brand of course)...but that's selling them short. They may be bullies. They may have less of Mama Natur about them than Ageing Gay Man. They are certainly sloanie-posh. They may be trying to dress every dumpy housewife in suburbia up like crass pastiches of themselves as the first phase of their plan for total world domination. I don't care. Whenever I'm watching them I can't suppress the Bad Thoughts, can't help but think, to hell with the consequences, I'm tired of living in rags and making my money sweeping chimneys. The adoption papers are in the post: here, Your Honour, are my new mum and dad.

But love them as I do, with their funny faces and Hollyoaks hair, Trinny's extraordinary jewellery and Suzie's pastel two-pieces, there were a few things in that episode that even as a doting newly-adopted daughter I cannot excuse. In Legally Blonde, Elle Woods uses the exquisite phrase, "As sure as I am that no one looks good in paisley." Believe what you like, but an unwise word never fell from Elle Woods's lip. In many ways she is the noble savage of Harvard Law School (now there's a piece of research I'd do for free). Anyway, paisley appeared twice in this episode, on the same poor woman. The large butch "triangle shaped" lady got two permutations on the same white jacket (long and short), which felt like cheating somehow, and save me from the unholy alliance of unflatteringly clingy dayglo turquoise tops with long skirts in the same colour. Although it did mean that when they brought out the sandals made from burnished-metal disks my eyes were already watering so much that I wasn't in any direct danger of being turned to stone. I tried to enjoy their efforts to straighten her hair and put her in a skirt, but could never quite shake the sense that there was something not only rather surprising, in our century, but also profoundly ethically questionable, about attempting to "feminise" a butch lesbian (even if she's not "out" yet, even to herself).

I can't help noticing the £2000 doesn't stretch to many outfits. How about a T&S in Primark? Overdue, I feel. On the plus side, and this is hard for me to say, the kaftan/jeans combo on Claire looked excellent and was slimming. But the kaftan already had a weird and unnecessary kind of embroidered medallion mess on the front, did she really need that necklace that repeated the shape almost exactly? Look at those picture and imagine my delight when, at one point, Suzie says "what's with the hair, Crystaltips?" Another surprising success, I felt, was that bloody Colleen skirt again, slightly taken up, for Marie, almost making up for the criminal use of paisley with the swimming costume in the other picture.

Back in the real world, where Trinny and Suzannah are not my parents (and Richard and Judy are) we're still trawling the shops looking for the perfect this and that. Jigsaw have some of the prettiest things I've seen, but only one of each. I wonder if there's one withered hermaphrodite chained to a cobwebby chaise longue in a cordonned off changing cubicle, just sewing, sewing. I'm slightly suspicious of their shopfloor with all the victoriana and beadwork, the museum-case arrangements and leather pews. I'm reminded of china dolls that want to talk to me and tea sets that come to life and all the other supernatural untrustworthiness I'd expect from an upmarket version of Oasis. But pretty they are, and I'd cross dayglo turquoise seas and acres of sequinned deserts, with burnished metal-effect suns beating relentlessly down on my Hollyoaks head if someone told me there was one glimpse of prettiness at the end of it all.