Hi guys,

Thought I’d open my blogbridge account, hopefully most of you should know who I am and what I’m doing here (I’ve just recently found out). I’ve been here for about 3 weeks now and it’s been interesting to say the least, my experiences in Hounslow will ensure I don’t forget my first few weeks in a hurry!

Short and sweet for my first blog, I’m sure I’ll be adding comments on here over the next few months as I edge closer towards my wedding!

As autumn leaves scatter becoming but a distant and charming memory of our erratic British weather, and Mr Claus threatens a dawn raid on all of our chimneys, my attentions often turn to the world of tweed. At once rough and unfinished, yet charmingly homespun and familiar, there’s nothing to compete with the delicate touch of a faithful hacking jacket or forgotten cap. Much like the impending recession, plus some of the most tremendously awful television is broadcasting history (Taggart, most specifically, but I’m throwing in Monarch of the Glenn for good measure), we have a Scot to thank for this joyous bounty. The original name was ‘Tweel’ which, if you’re really cold and have a burgeoning economy built on ‘crofting’, is Scottish for ‘Twill’.

The current name came about wholly by accident. Around 1800, a London merchant received a letter from a Hawick firm about some ‘Tweels’. He misread the missive, taking it to be a trade-name taken from the name of the river Tweed which flows through the Scottish Borders textile areas, subsequently the goods were advertised as ‘Tweed’. Whilst there’s nothing so satisfying as sound etymology, you have to hand it to our bekilted neighbours for giving us the wonder of Harris tweed, god’s finest scratchy armour in the war of style. Hand-spun, hand-dyed, hand-woven and hand-some as a well-oiled and groomed moustache. Nothing quite matches up in terms of sheer quality and brilliance.

Harris Tweed has its own ‘authority’ too, which regulates and protects, ensuring absolute integrity and guaranteeing a ‘scratchiness’ second to none. Love ‘em. It needn’t be fusty or old fashioned either. Paul Smith does a whole range of natty ‘new-tweed’ three-piece numbers that are shockingly on-trend. Ralph’s Purple Label is stacked with silk-mix treasures. Not to mention edgy Euro-ponces like Dries Van Noten who cuts achingly skinny silhouettes in lusty Harris wonder. Don’t just take my word for it – get yourself kitted out in some tweed and you’ll never look back – the only kit that’ll keep you toasty warm but frightfully cool.

Does every occasion have a dress code? I’d like to think so. In the same way that a gentleman in the ‘thirties may have pondered the vagaries of kitting himself out for a three-week autumn woodcock shoot in the foothills of the Andes*, I perhaps wrongfully assumed that there is a sartorial status quo for every conceivable circumstance. Which led me to a painful and entirely unforeseen wardrobe cul-de-sac recently.

Struck down by a mere cold a few weeks ago, you could say that I felt a bit ropey all ‘round. Two days later, I seemed to have a chest infection. Then pneumonia, which I thought was a disease reserved for the likes of anyone with the surname ‘Fiennes’ or frail old ladies in those public information films that British Gas aren’t entirely partial to. Jokes about man-flu from my colleagues fell flat when I started to tell them about intraveinous antibiotics and emergency blood tests. All of a sudden, I wasn’t a poster boy for how truly rubbish blokes are when they’re tickled by the slightest of semi-colds. In fact, the only poster I could have graced convincingly would have been for zombie shocker ‘28 Weeks Later’. Which also felt like the duration I had to stay in bed to get well again. All of which left me thinking – what does one wear to an ‘illness’?

I have some good news on this front. You can literally get away with fashion genocide on this one. Typically, it’s the only time a man is allowed to wear Ugg boots, grey marl sweatpants, a ‘Christmas’ jumper, pink aviator sunglasses and a deerstalker and people will not laugh. Not even a snigger. All because you’re a ‘poorly lamb’. I took my sickness getup to new fashion heights. I wore my snowboarding clothes, combined with a pair of brogues for extra warmth. In bed. For three days.

I developed ‘ill-hair’, which involved a side parting, which a slight backcomb and a vicious root-boost. When I could finally stand again, I explored heavy fleecy hooded tops from the late ‘Eighties, which I’d kept in case of another ice age, teamed up with big tweedy trousers, Birkenstocks with socks and Russian military cap. As I started to feel a full recovery was in sight, I almost lamented the passing of this unusual style blip, as one would mourn the end of a crazed, lucid and wholly compelling dream. I’m become accustomed to the rich vulgarity of my clothed appearance in the mirror as I sipped Lemsip and chomped Nurofen. Maybe there’s a lesson for us here? When you have absolutely no interest in making sure your outfit is ‘appropriate’, it’s possible to reach a higher plane of style. The ultimate dress code? Get yourself a nasty virus and freestyle. You’ll be amazed at the results.

* Four 30oz three piece tweed suits comprising a Norfolk style jacket, plus 2’s and an asymmetrical waistcoat cut to maximise the ‘throw’ of your favourite Purdey, expertly cut by Huntsman on the row. And some nice socks.

Well! There was very little cultural running this weekend, but plenty of other things happening: I celebrated my sagacious colleague Mr Tony Andrews’ birthday on Friday night in Clerkenwell Green. It’s a really interesting location, Clerkenwell Green, and in his wonderful ‘biography’ about London, Peter Ackroyd uses it as an example of how certain parts of London appear to have some sort of resonance for a specific activity; Clerkenwell Green has always been a radical area - Wat Tyler camped there, the Karl Marx museum is there, Lenin edited a paper there, when the magazine started, the Big Issue was based there, the Mayday marches go there. Can’t say our drinks were that politically charged in comparison, I mainly talked about the following day’s football match between Arsenal and Manchester United which slightly dry-mouthed and blurry, I attended - eventually, enthusiastically. Went to Whitstable on Sunday too - enjoyed a very self indulgent lunch for a friend’s birthday. In particular, some oysters with chorizo, some very fine cheese and a glass of desert wine. Alright, two. OK… Three.

Gluttony aside, I’ve been re-reading a suitably sedimentary novel, ‘Strangers on a Train’ by Patricia Highsmith. I’m a big fan of her Tom Ripley stories, in particular, ‘Ripley’s Game’ which is especially interesting but ‘Strangers on a Train’ (which Alfred Hitchcock made a film about) is based on the premise that two random people who meet at random can plan the perfect murder as they would seem to have no motive for the crime or connection to the victim. It isn’t quite as simple as that, sadly. But while I can vaguely remember the ending, I’ve forgotten all the details so it has been rather like reading it for the first time all over again.

I found the book in a suitcase when I moved house a couple of weeks ago, alongside, pleasingly, a random CD which turned out to contain a dozen or so songs by Ian Dury and the Blockheads. Now cleverly moved to my Ipod, I’ve been really liking these again. It’s funny how American music manages to mythologise geography in a way the British landscape doesn’t quite respond to, especially if is taken seriously, like. But done with humour, it is a different story - take Dury’s ‘Trickie Dickie’ and lines like “I’d rendezvous with Janet, quite near the Isle of Thanet” and “oh gosh, come and lie on the couch, with a nice bit of posh from Burnham-on-Crouch”. Wonderful.

My friend was telling me on Saturday that the Blockheads are doing a show just before Christmas with Phill Jupitus no doubt doing his level best to fill in for Ian Dury. I stood next to him once at a bar - Jupitus, not Dury or my friend, (though that’s certainly happened too) - and he was wearing that purple suit he wears on ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ and is, I can confirm, a erm… very statuesque gentlemen.

Right, that is it for now. I saw my first Christmas ad on the TV yesterday and I’ve been invited to a Christmas Party. Tempus Fugit!