Today I want to talk about fashion. Oh if you could see me now, you’d know just how unqualified I am to do such a thing. “Why is a bearded unkempt white man in his thirties who’s wearing a generic jean and jumper combo talking to us about fashion?” you would all collectively say… but I’m going to anyway, as it wasn’t always like this.

This week I’ve finally got around to sorting out all the old toys and documents at my Mother’s house that have been stored there ever since my Brother and I left home. Stuffed into cupboards and the attic, Mum has been on at me for years to do this, and finally, out of the goodness of my heart (and the approach of Christmas without any paid work)  I’ve decided to eBay the lot.

Well, not the lot, obviously. Part of the problem with attempting this task (as I’ve done in the past) is the nostalgia. It’s like a barrage of memories, hitting you repeatedly in the mind. For example, I found an old picture of me from the late 90s and whether I liked it or not, memories flooded back about that time in my life, my hopes and dreams, my  loves won and lost, and my combat trousers.

Yes, combat trousers, the fashion item reserved for IT technicians and me when I was 17. I’m not sure exactly what it is that qualifies them as ‘combat’ trousers. Certainly they resemble the style of regular army trousers (not territorial army trousers, oh no, they are completely different), but by the token of not actually being worn by someone in the actual army, can they really be referred to as ‘combat’ trousers?

I mean, they’re not like guns for example, with their own latent destructive force no matter who wields them. Even in untrained hands a gun is dangerous, perhaps more dangerous. Combat trousers however are no more deadly on the legs of a trained soldier than they are on the legs of a trained Sandwich artist.

Unless that is, all it takes for something to be classified as ‘combat ready’ is the addition of multiple buttoned pockets, several unnecessary tightening straps, and being a shade of green, in which case most subscribers of Country Life must be heading to war each time they go out for a ramble.

Or maybe I’m mistaken? Maybe they do have a latent destructive force in and of themselves that I’m not aware of? For all the years I wore them, maybe I just never stumbled on the right combination to unlock the devastating forces trapped within? Yes I said it, the devastating forces trapped within my trousers.

Perhaps, who knows, the zip down, left pocket inverted, shin pockets closed from left to right and ankle straps simultaneously clicked together and BOOM!.. They’ve turned in to a bazooka. Brilliant! Or instead, zip up, top button undone, all pockets open and the inner back pocket sealed and POW!.. They become a tank. Or better still, zip down, top button undone, pulled down to ankles and KAPOW!.. Inhumane treatment of prisoners of war during an illegal invasion.

There’s another possibility though. What if the ‘combat’ label of these trousers does not relate to human affairs at all, and actually stems from some ancient trouser civil war, when a previously peaceful and pacifistic group of trousers had an argument with some denim? The introduction of seemingly extraneous pockets and straps eventually ostracising the new breed of trousers from their kin, leading them to be shunned and mistrusted by the likes of the corduroy and the tracksuit? They had no choice but to fight for their place on the mannequin of life, and having succeeded in their vengeful and bloody liberation, they forever now carry the legend of ‘combat’ with them?

I might be over speculating. But clothes can and do carry with them anxieties, otherwise we wouldn’t have a fashion industry designed to magnify those anxieties and sell us the tailored antidotes. Nowadays for instance, I sometimes wear one of those old-style German army shirts when I perform on stage with my band, but even that causes me trouble.

I stand there, singing into the microphone, playing my guitar, wearing my long green, shoulder strapped shirt with a small German flag stitched to the upper arm, and being blonde haired and blue eyed, I think to myself ‘I wonder if anyone here thinks I’m German?’. Then I dismiss that thought, as I launch into another powerful verse of socially astute lyrical rampage, I dismiss that thought thinking, ‘well I’m not talking or singing with a German accent’ and carry on. But then, as my band reaches the intricate, driving, catchy yet subversive and melodically enlightening middle eight of our latest masterpiece, I think, ‘but that makes it worse, maybe they think I’m a German with a back-story? Maybe they think I’m half German?’

As we launch into our rousing finale, I start to wonder, ‘but what if they’re also thinking that if I’m simply half German, they should have detected but the slightest hint of an accent from the influence of my German parent? So, maybe, they think, he’s the love child of an absentee German father whom he has never met, and his abandonment issues and desire to reconnect with his German background, despite the pleas of his Mother (who holds some dark secret no doubt), are reflected in his choice of attire and attitudes to life? Putting himself on stage, wearing a German jacket, without a discernible German accent, as if to say… I am searching for my German-ness! I want to reconnect with my mainland heritage! Help me! Help me!’.

So I’m thinking all this as we finish taking our audience through a half hour of musical arousal, leaving an indelible memory of a unique yet ultimately marketable blend of rock-punk, foot-tapping commentary on modern life, and I exit the stage. There, waiting for me, is a beautiful, starry eyed girl. She flicks her hair teasingly over her shoulder, strokes the tricolour flag on my shirt softly and smiles before asking me, “Are you German?”, to which I reply, “No. I bought it in a charity shop.”  And she leaves, which is fine, because I’m not single anyway or a character from a sit-com who feels they have to weave an increasingly complex web of lies in order to try and impress a series of flaky and mono-dimensional potential mates. My imagined German past remains just that and my clothes anxiety is dissipated by the brutal realism that the three people my band just played to are only there due to a contractual obligation with the establishment we just performed in.

But then, there was a time when I was single and something similar happened. It was at a festival. I was wearing a red t-shirt with a yellow star in the middle. A gorgeous girl walked over to me, randomly out of the crowd, twiddled her beaded hair in her fingers, looked up at me with big brown eyes, pointed to my t-shirt and asked, “Have you been to Vietnam?”, and I looked back at her, held her in my gaze, and with a knowing smile I said, “No. I bought it from a charity shop”. She quickly walked away back into the crowd. And you know why? Because I’m not a sit-com character with truth issues willing to propel myself into inextricable depths of deceit in order to obtain sex, employment or perpetuate an amusing situation in such an obvious and formulaic way that would interest the commissioners of BBC3 or apparently any other independent production houses.

But then, as I lost sight of the girl in the massive crowd, I found high ground, inverted my right pocket, strapped in my left ankle strap, unzipped my fly and POW!.. My combat trousers turned into a powerful set of binoculars, and I was able to locate the girl with the beads in her hair, and explain to her that although I hadn’t been to Vietnam, I was the love child of an absentee German father, but was wearing the wrong shirt. She felt sympathy for me, and we talked for hours under the moonlight, and if it hadn’t have been for the fact that I was now wearing no trousers, and my tale of German abandonment jarred with my pointless Vietnam referencing t-shirt, I may even have got somewhere. But I didn’t. Because in the end, I found, I was a character in a sit-com, and characters in sit-coms rarely get what they want, trapped forever in farcical and descending spirals of dishonesty, destined to live episodically from one half hourly predictable outcome to the next.

And then, the credits rolled, and that was my story about fashion.