Grayson's Rise and Fall of the Default Man - this is a no suit situation.

I have just read Grayson Perry’s The Rise and Fall of the Default Man. With the picture in my mind of Grayson’s wild dresses that look like a one of those really fancy bouquets with all the different colours of cellophane wrapped round a hot house of flowers - his discussion of ‘suits’ got me thinking.

I have always been fascinated by our personal costumes – why we don’t call our day-to-day outfits ‘costuming’ I have never known. As it all is – whether we wear the same thing every day to try and look, well, the same every day – or whether we mix it up. Here are three hugely broad ways to generalize UK costuming.

1.    An outfit which is easy to apply again and again and explains a purpose – so uniforms really, but these include suits (THE SUIT) through to a specific choice of band t-shirt, jeans and converse trainers.
2.    A particular style of dressing that allows for a range of dress but does have rules. This can be defined by class, an upper class woman thinks her twinset and pearls is original while she can happily fit in, or it can be burlesque-chic – that kinda 50s look with red lips and tattoos. K Middy is a good example of this; she in essence wears the same dress designed for a conservative voter with a slim waist over and over again. (The one style of dressing all the time is K Middy, not burlesque-chic, although, lord would it be a sweet relief if she did move out of dullsville.)
3.    Someone who literally just wears what they want when they want both regardless and in regard to current trends. They just dress. These are the kind of people when you meet them the second and third time you think you’ve met them before but aren’t sure as they are wearing something that totally counters that first meet. These are ALSO the kind of people when you first see them in jeans and then in a dress and hair pulled up to the sky – you may comment – ‘wow – you look great’ as you had already put them in the converse/skinny jean box at the first meeting.

I think I fit into number 3. YES EVERYONE IS ALWAYS SAYING ‘WOW YOU LOOK GREAT’. They’re not, but I do get surprised looks weekly when I’ve scrubbed up.

Grayson talks about suits for about a third of The Rise and Fall of the Default Man – and that’s where I’m getting. Now, luckily, at the bold wee age of 28, I feel 100% comfortable (83% of the time) in my own skin. This has heightened since I quit the ‘day job’ and chose to run my own life, I have left a system – and though in the arts – a system run very much by men in suits.

Never have I been interested in wearing a suit during my professional life. There is ONE exception to this rule, when I was tired of posing in front of paintings for the papers and considered dressing as Janelle Monae to see if they still wanted ‘girl in suit.’ I didn’t do this. I wore jeans and a parka to muse underneath a Louise Bourgeois Spider instead.

I have never worn or owned a trouser suit, a skirt suit, a grey pleaty thing – except perhaps for school uniform. I did have to wear a tight fitted skirt, shirt, tie and waistcoat when I worked in a five star hotel’s champagne bar, but that all backfired when one day the skirt was so tight I poured boiling hot coffee all over the lap of a be-suited man out for a work do.

I know that when I have strolled into meetings in a holey grey jumper over a ballet style black strappy top and a waist high, thigh high patterned orange skirt – I knew I wasn’t dressed as everyone else. My opinion may not at first have been so valuable for the Default Man and his suits – and that my lively disposition (it’s so Jane Austin no? NAUGHTY LYDIA,) may not initially have endeared me as grey and black could've sans orange and eyeliner – but I was always clean and smart and I was never going to dress that part. I had turned up to the interview for said job in bottle-green boots and a navy dress with a white trim that could only be described as circus-cum-sailor-chic. I also had badly damaged bottle blonde hair.

When I met the Queen and Prince Phillip backed into me at a visit to my work, I wore a black polkadot knee length dress from brick lane, hair spray, eyeliner and bright turquoise heels that I’d grabbed for £7 in Miss Selfridge four years previous. The Queen didn’t ask me to leave for not wearing a suit, nor did the special ops guys I was chatting to as we showed press photographers (all requested to wear suits) around.

I sometimes feel lucky to inhabit my world where I don’t need to, and refuse to dress in a ‘predictable unfussy, feminised version of the male look,’ but hopefully the more meetings and train carriages I sit in working – the less it will matter – and the more people will join me, dressing in WILD variations of some style day-to-day.

Yesterday, on the train down to London, in clashing red ALARM rimmel lipstick and a fluorescent pink jumper from H&M (teamed with skinny jeans and converse) messy hair and stationed between a battalion of men in suits traveling to London for work - ME TOO GUYS, ME TOO – the man next to me offered to get my case down. Now, as a dickhead (not a feminist, as a dickhead, refusing politeness isn’t a feminist action) normally I would say no, but he was in a good spot to grab my bag so I thanked him, and he passed it to me. ‘Woah, that’s light for a mumble mumble…’ I grinned, knowing I had heard what he said, ‘light for a what?’ I questioned. ‘Light for a female’s bag’ he replied. I won’t tell you what I said, I’m sure you can imagine, but I did smile and I did think to myself – ‘well, yes, running my own company and tottering to London for work does open me up to a whole world of really light weight costumes – and not a suit in sight.’

This Referedum is 100% Pure Pop (and songs from the shows)

Never has a place felt more electric. In a matter of hours more of Scotland will head down to the polls than ever have before to cast their vote, make their voice heard, lend a vow and make history.

Never have my dips and delves into my pop back catalogue been so illustrative of the political climate as every song spins a new story on the bloody independence referendum. Not content with making my coffee high a whirlwind of panic about what to do – pop music changes its mind as quickly as I can draw on too much eyeliner and sing along. The romance, the trauma, the tremor of change, the darkness of heartbreak, the joy of new love, the moments between, the sweaty exchange of naughtiness afterwards, our winning popstars and musical mavericks have been writing songs about the referendum for decades. Here are my pick of the Top Seven.

Let’s kick off with a 2002 classic. (No. ONE)

Chill out, what you yellin' for?
Lay back, it's all been done before

SORRY. I wasn’t yelling Avril. I was listening to the excited and invigorating conversations echoing out of Perth, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Ullapool and Edinburgh and seeing how the rest of the world responds. You know someone in AMERICA did a thing on a tele show? Uh huuuuh. Mad ey.

Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?
I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else
Gets me frustrated
Life's like this
You, you fall and you crawl and you break
And you take what you get and you turn it into honesty

Seems you’re a little confused Avs. At least things are nae ironic for you.

Something has changed within me (No. TWO)
Something is not the same
I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It's time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes and leap!

This poetry is lent to us while we are listening to the musical soundtrack from the lauded ‘oh what did happen before Oz to make that witch green?’ Wicked. I think Elphaba has some sound advise for possible ‘YES’ voters.

I'm through accepting limits
'Cause someone says they're so
Some things I cannot change but 'til I try, I'll never know!
Too long I've been afraid of losing love I guess I've lost
Well, if that's love it comes at much too high a cost!

EXCLAMATION MARK. Huh. What a drama.

There’s also a load about looking to the Western sky… so you can either look to the Western SKYE or the NORTHERN sky. Up to you really.

STAY WHERE? (No. THREE)

Alright dudes in the white coats of glory. Endlessly 90s. Endlessly relevant for Davey Camerooooon and his dudes. Also – without being glib – for those that genuinely love Scotland but want to see what this wild rebellion can do to change things without going solo – there are some lovely sentiments.

Baby if you've got to go away
Don't think I can take the pain
Won't you stay another day
Oh, don't leave me alone like this

Don't you know we've come too far now
Just to go and try to throw it all away??????????????????

Probs best to ignore the stuff about ‘I touch your face while you are sleeping’ as it’s a bit creepy and I don’t like the idea of future UK PM Boris Johnson sneaking into my house and doing just that. Though I’m sure Ed Miliband has muttered ‘Though it's all for you that, I do seem to be wrong.’

These duo-banging love-sharing coke-downing dudes have a little to say on the matter. If only to advice voters to ‘open your eyes and LOOK at the day.’ Trust me, all I bloody do is look at the day and indulge myself in a level of panic I've never politically experienced before, bearing in mind I was really freaking scared of David Cameron becoming PM.

Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone. (No. FOUR)
Why not think about times to come,
And not about the things that you've done,
If your life was bad to you,
Just think what tomorrow will do.
Don't stop, thinking about tomorrow,
Don't stop, it'll soon be here,
It'll be, better than before,
Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone.

Slightly sinister there. I never meant any harm to you but wooooops I may just have discharged that gun.

Ok ok ok ok this is just freaky. A film about sisters who discover they love each other more than the MEN IN THEIR LIVES? Tell me about it. Frozen's Let It Go storms in at No. FIVE.

It’s tricky to really realize this as there’s been a bit of a UK-wide heatwave this week, so there’s nae chance of snow even in the Cairngorms

The snow glows white on the mountain tonight, not a footprint to be seen.
A kingdom of isolation and it looks like I'm the queen.
The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside.

Let it go, let it go!
Can't hold it back any more.
Let it go, let it go!
Turn away and slam the door.
I don't care what they're going to say.
Let the storm rage on.
The cold never bothered me anyway.

It's funny how some distance, makes everything seem small.
And the fears that once controlled me, can't get to me at all
It's time to see what I can do, to test the limits and break through.
No right, no wrong, no rules for me.
I'm free!

And we continue with a little meta (and much repetition.)

Let the storm rage on! The cold never bothered me anyway...

It gets really cold in the winter. Erm. Salmond, whatcha gonna do about that? JUST ASKING.

The sun'll come out, tomorrow (NO. SIX)
So you gotta hang on 'til tomorrow
Come what may. Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya, tomorrow
You're ONLY a day away.

Lord above. No sleep ‘til Brooklyn huh? (NO. SEVEN) Night y'all.

Ten Observations on Abstinence from Alcohol.

Ten Observations on Abstinence from Alcohol.

I am nearing the end of dry January. I’m not really a fan of dry January as a term, or a thing, but now I have experienced it I do understand why it is called what it is. It’s so called as then there’s an end date. 

10. Nothing tastes like alcohol. You can have a lemonade, a really posh one from Waitrose or Sainsbury’s or the Co-op but it just tastes like lemons and sugar. 

9. On the reverse, taste-wise, a glass of wine poured reverentially into a glass, smelt, swirled and sipped, soaks every tastebud like it belongs. Apple juice does not do this, it twangs on some forcefully and then leaves a sweet taste. I like my aftertastes to burn. Or so I now know.

8. Time. Every hour is 60 minutes long and every minute 60 seconds. There is no relaxing of this rule when sober. 

7. My shoulders are up by my ears. Stress is not relived in the traditional way. How now to relieve it?

6. The Wind In The Willows effect. There is a chapter towards the end of Wind In The Willows when Ratty and Mole walk out of the Wild Wood and through a human town. It’s Christmas and families, people, humans generally are gathered indoors. The endless dark of the winter months means the glow is from within, never from without. I am on the outside looking in. I am Ratty, or Mole. 

5. I still can’t get out of bed. Everyone talks about a lightness suddenly aiding their step, the abstinence aid. I have not experienced this. 

4. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. Well, I think I did. I was really ready for a break from booze. I have learned to love drinking for the taste, the chat, the mood heightener and deepener. On New Year’s Eve I was so fed up of the stuff that I had to think practically about what I could drink so I would enjoy it, nothing too sweet, nothing too heavy. This was not much fun, and neither do I miss the days where anything went, 'yeah I'll have a glass of Perry' (translate: bottle of Lambrini.) I like that I have learned to enjoy stuff I can and cannot afford and that I could happily share my iota of knowledge about wine and beer with anyone that cares to listen. (Hence the mention of an unoaked chardonnay, not being a ponce, the stuff tends to have a smell of old socks. I quite like that.)

3. Health. I’m not sure my liver knows what’s going on. I definitely am more aware of bits and bobs, but this is frightening. In House they are always hunting the mysterious factor that has caused some mystery debilitation, or Lupus. I worry they will now search for my debilitation and realise that my body requires alcohol to function. Red wine to keep the blood stirring, beer to keep the muscles relaxed, unoaked chardonnay to keep my vision clear, gin to remind me to feel, whisky for a really good debate about nothing. Cider, well, I feel like I could give or take cider having drunk so much apple juice. 

2. I really have no idea what everyone is talking about, this being a good thing. My skin is not any clearer and not all my ailments have magically cured (I don’t really have any ailments but y’know, that’s what clearing out the alcohol is supposed to do.) 

1. We’ve all seen that image of the chicks in a nest, their whole bodies existing to stretch their beak and neck higher over their siblings to get the worm when it flies in from above. That’s my tastebuds. They know something’s missing. I can feel them, jostling and vying for the best position should something glorious tumble past my lips.