Drifting through the moribund backwaters that are newsdesk contributions accounts, I have time to wonder.
The chip-toothed imperfection of my fantasy dinner party languidly stretches across all possible visceral frames – especially when most unwelcome – and I tap out payments, shuffling between Dylan lyrics and publication dates. It’s all pretty average.
Isn’t it strange that concentration (especially cutting things out) comes with an exposed tip of the tongue and that things that are good for you (horrible MTBs, odd little G-Wiz cars) are so often deeply uncool?
Man bags are a grey area: saunter out of ubiquitous soho advertising hq wearing requisite structured japanese denim, locally designed t-shirt and converse with a man bag lazily crossing your chest and you might be able to fit in. Same scenario in Dalston, with tight substituted for structured. Try walking down Brixton Hill or Green Lanes wearing the same and things might not feel so hunkydorey, no matter how useful that bag is.
The thing is, my mates don’t carry cotton shopping bags with them because they don’t have anywhere to put them. They don’t wear man bags. My old 5 Deutsch Mark shoppers languish snuggled in the grubby fluff-ball grittiness of my bag corners and are always at the grimey ready. Boys clearly don’t not shop – food being key – so they use plastic bags. Could it be that women’s emancipation has been knocked back 80 odd years by the emergence of a green pay-for-your plastic-bag culture? Or was convenience the key to equality?
It’s tempting to slip into Carrie Bradshaw-esque ditherings, but I must collect myself: numbers to plug, phones to answer and huge but irrelevant questions to ponder. All in a day’s work…
notes from a newsroom 