DAY 44--Supermarket Clothes

Today I'm wearing mostly black.  Black is supposed be a terribly draining colour for the mature woman to wear.  But it is also meant to be immensely slimming.  So the answer, clearly, is to wear black, but add a rose pink scarf twined about your crêpey neck to lend a rosy glow to your complexion.

Something you learn when you are wearing black is just how many shades of black there are.  Bluey black, browny black, greeny black and by far the most common shade of black--charcoal grey.  This is black cotton after you've washed it a dozen times.  You still think of them as your 'black jeans' and 'black leggings', but they aren't really, are they?  Even if you devoutly launder them in washing powder for colours.  But who cares?  They're black enough.

So I'm wearing my black-enough leggings with a large long black cowl-neck jumper-tunic thing.  The label says 'TU', which means it came originally from Sainsbury's.  I can't help feeling that's a bit over-familiar.  It should be 'VOUS'.  After all, (as iPhone Siri says when you say 'I love you, Siri') you hardly know me, big black jumper-tunic from Sainsbury's.  I have now reached the age where I am addressed as 'Madame' in France.  This surely entitles me to the same degree of respect from supermarket clothes?

On the whole, I don't buy supermarket clothes, even from charity shops.  Sheer snobbery, I admit.  I've frequently gone through this thought process: Ooh, that's nice! Oh. George and put it back on the rack.  I'm not quite sure why I have this prejudice.  It's possibly because I feel a vague hostility to supermarkets in general.  The way they bombard you with so much choice.  Their secret plan to round up all the merchandise in the universe and put it under one roof, then hold you captive until you've bought it all.  They want us to buy supermarket everything. Bread, insurance, fruit, meat, garden equipment, pharmacy, dentistry, jumpers, weddings, pots and pans, DVDs, shampoo, tractors, foreign holidays, muffins, babies, the moon.  Every  little helps!

Oh shut UP, and leave me alone, supermarkets.

This is why I shop at Lidl, mostly.  It's the closest the supermarket world gets to a charity shop.  You never quite know what you're going to find there.

DAY 4

Some people try to Dress for Success.  Here in Lichfield Cathedral Close we merely aim to avoid hypothermia.  And for me today this means the following: black treggings.  Treggings are like leggings only sturdier, a kind of hybrid trouser-legging, hence the clever hybrid name.

If you wear treggings you are doing the general public a favour.  They understand your intentions: you are wearing trousers.  Leggings can be misunderstood.  Is that young woman wearing black tights? the puzzled middle-aged adult wonders.  And has she forgotten to put on her skirt?  The problem with leggings seems to be this: the wearer has mentally categorised them as trousers, and is therefore blind to the fact that her dimply legs and knickers are entirely visible.  Sartorial hint of the day: Unless you have checked with an independent witness, always assume your leggings are see-through.  Treat them as you would treat tights.  Keep your arse covered.

My black treggings were bought new from Dorothy Perkins.  My base layer today--a black merino wool sweater--was also bought new.  From Lidl.  Lidl occasionally surprises with its range of merchandise.  Cheap food, cheap cosmetics, cheap wash powder--and then suddenly, leather welding gloves and apron kit!  This merino jumper was part of their budget ski wear range.  Over this rather shapeless garment I'm wearing a long speckly blue (the colour wrongly described in the wool catalogues I pored over in my childhood as 'kingfisher') sweater dress thing.  On reflection, I'd call it 'teal'.  Teal is terribly fashionable this season you know.  A younger woman (or a more deluded woman of my age)  might team this garment with tights and call it a dress.  It is mid-thigh length, has a big polo neck and is cable knit.  It came, of course, from a charity shop, but I don't know who made it.  As always, I've cut the label out, because it irritated the back of my neck.  Why are they always so itchy?  I also cut out those stupid loops of ribbon that always slip out of your neckline or sleeve and which you endlessly have to tuck back in.  Think how may forests of ribbon trees would still be standing if clothes manufacturers stopped putting loops in dresses and tops!

I've pulled the look together, as we fashion types like to say, with a chunky black-and-white plastic necklace of the type that swings disastrously into your soup when you are trying to impress gentlemen with your debonair wit over dinner.  And today, just to mix things up a bit, I'm not wearing black boots.  I'm wearing pale tan suede boots.  And very grubby they are too.  No wonder they were in the sale at Clark's a few years ago.  Nobody else was stupid enough to buy pale tan suede.

So there we are.  Let me know if you're bored and I'll start telling a pack of lies instead.  I am, after all, a novelist.