Couleurs

I was just hanging out my washing, and I re-realised it is actually one of the most pleasing visual things I do. After the unpleasant unfurling of twisted legs and arms, I take the mentionables outside, place the unmentionables on a chair for inside inside. I hook the heavy pile over my forearm like some borne offspring, and present them to the line. Our line is loose, so the first piece always billows too much, so I never choose a sacred first item. My display unfolds colour truths, decisions I don't even make, my week laid out in close-toned primaries: Red, yellow, blue. Mmmmm.

The fact that these shades are so me, so honest, must mean I constantly have to block out unpleasing shades. Think of all that warm blue, all that paled yellow, reds too hollow to clock. I'm doing my day on constant hue watch, step back, step back, with your wrong choices! My versions are ridiculously particular. I love that. I might even go and look at the line now, just to check, yes I do still like things. So long as they come in a red with a tomato undertone, a yellow that knows mustard, a blue of petrol slick or fly body.

I just bought some new glasses. It's a weird experience. Like buying a haircut but one which won't grow out. It's been difficult this time. Now that glasses are so fucking trendy, we don't even have the preserve of our own quirk. Obviously untrue out of London, take those rad frames out in the provinces, and well, you may as well have punk spikes or two noses. I forget this. Anyway London, London, everything is just a nod towards the ever-fading American Apparel. Most things I put on my face said Californian whore or Shoreditch twinkle. This is unfair, we can't even make our foible our own anymore? The fuckers.

Anyway I shot round it by not going to Cutler & Gross, or vintage, but going to local optician with good value handmade frames that felt right and looked minorly wrong. I like a problem. They're not oversized, they're not 'sexy', they're not London 2010, they're not lets-see-if-those-lenses-are-real-I-can-tell-they're-not-because-the-angle-of-your-face-is-the-same-when-I-look-through-them-how-dare-you. These ones are David Hockney. They are black with a keyhole bridge and you can see my eyebrows. They make me look like my mum, which basically means they make me look like me. Like I said, I like problem.

I have spent a while Googling 'girls in glasses'. I was thinking more Miss Moneypenny than Jenny Eclair. Annie Hall..? Er, I can't even name 5? The Wikipedia entry is full of cool men in history, but the only women mentioned are Anastacia, Dame Edna Everage (who is a man) and Deidre Barlow (who isn't even real). The girl in the shop said "you either go geeky or sexy", which I found fun, as surely you can be a sexy geek (but clearly not a geeky sex). Anyway I went for classic black rather than tortoiseshell, which I will own one day once the trend has blown over, and I can afford real ones. I just hope the black successfully dilutes those beloved primaries. And I never hear the words geek chic.