T-Shit

Now we’ve had three uninterrupted days of sunshine, Summer is officially ON. No more dragging yourself out of the house with a black trenchcoat on – goths of the world, listen – it’s T-shirt weather. Being an indoorsy-typist type, I’m blessed with the sort of puny white arms that look like nobody bothered to drop anything on top of the bones, so I resist this weather as much as your typical vampire or Margaret Thatcher.

If it were up to me, and it should be, then I’d quite happily wear the same free, promotional t-shirts long after the point that the item being advertised has been consigned to the £1 bin in PC World.

Unfortunately, there’s that whole society thing, which means other people looking at me and having to interact with them on a day-to-day basis. Ultimately it means that I can’t get away with advertising the Sega Dreamcast on my chest forever.

The pain, then, of going to buy a new one.

Clothes shops, for some reason, aspire to be a daytime disco, blasting out an identical parade of dance songs. They accurately replicate that nightclub feel by dimming the lights and leaving no space for you to move, so you can’t do anything without bothering a stranger. The result is that every conversation must be held at vocal-chord destroying volume.

The very little I know about women’s clothes – apart from that frilly knickers tickle your bum – is that the sizes work in even numbers, and there’s absolutely loads of choice. Men get three. Small, medium, large. Simple. Every single man, except for the weirdly obese, fit into one of those categories – and how often do you get men wishing they could “squeeze into a size M”? None. Ever. There’s a conclusion to be drawn from that, but I’ll leave it to someone braver than me.

While there’ll be no problems with the t-shirt fitting me, it seems that the price isn’t based on anything sensible like quality or style. A random number is jotted on the price-tag, and if it doesn’t sell, doesn’t matter – wait for the sale! The executives in these companies must sit around pissing themselves at the audacity of some of the pricing.

This one is pretty nice, but it’s £65. Why? Who knows.

This one is less than a tenner. Six and a half times shitter than the other one? Not really.

What’s the difference? There isn’t, except that goons called Florin and Rupert will buy the expensive one, like the toffed up little sods they are.

And what’s with a Ralph Lauren top, that wasn’t designed by him, created by him or probably even seen by him, costing five times as much as any other, just because of a small flag on the sleeve that nobody will ever notice?

I’m going out wrapped up in a coat. All summer. Goths, I take it all back.