Bought a bunch of these Kirin Lemons from Japan Centre last week and can’t stop supping at their sweet, but marginally sour teats. Like most straight things, straight water is so boring (I’m worried that hating plain water is a bit I’ve over-performed on the dinner guest circuit). Something about Kirin Lemon feels like it’s hot in the city, the atmosphere close, but not in a civil unrest way. Not to split hairs, but Kirin Lemon maybe needs a touch more lemon, but that’s easy to do. The best thing Kirin Lemon has going for it it that it’s a shot of vodka away from an adult Buzzballz, the kind of thing Billie Piper and Chris Evens would get a crat of at the cash‘n’carry when they were married.

This feels like a scene from a Pillion sequel set at the Vatican.

I’m getting into murals, but not Banksys, never Banksys. Do you remember Through the Dragon’s Eye? First mural I remember. It was quite a stressful saga of a dying world where the citizens are melted alive by a large crow in a cape. Distinctly un-primary school stuff. I just came here for Magic E, y’know? It was better than Geordie Racer, but getting bogwashed by bullies was better than Geordie Racer.

I want a summer with an unreliable ice box, do you know what I mean? I think about Dickie Greenleaf saying he wants to fuck his icebox almost as much as I think about Daniel Craig in his pants for milliseconds in Girl with a Dragon Tattoo.

Anyway, I need a summer with a fuckable party fridge and Nova radio and hardly any fibre to max. A load of Smirnoff Ices in the top compartment, half a pineapple and that luminous banana boat aftersun. Going to my mate’s summer rental 10 minutes down the coast, and trading anecdotes like cigarettes in prison. Peeling on an EasyJet back to the cursed, cursed Gatwick. Manifest, people, manifest.

I can’t tell if I love this bag or I’ll look like Sheridan Smith in a Channel 4 loan shark drama. A bad accessory can have a domino effect, toppling a whole fit. Will my bespoke Drakes suit look like polyester from Eatm?

Let me tell you now that I hate the fake-news-fest that is April Fool’s day. I actually believed Schiaparelli were gonna do H&M-pricepoint diffusion brooches. Fuck—and I don’t say this lightly—my life.

Urgh, we spent three days—and several are you sure you haven’t seen it? messages to the nanny—looking for my daughter’s Patagonia puffa suit, only to discover it slumped on the pavement opposite our house looking like a Gin Alley illustration. Part of me was glad nobody had stolen it, the other part of me had to pick up this 16-ton waterlogged anvil, at which point I realised even the most daring opportunist doesn’t want to pilfer soaking street trash and put it on their kid’s body.

A hip flask measure of Maker’s Mark in Seoul.

I’ve been re-watching ER and alongside the foreboding feeling that Carter is just about to get spinal-tap-revenge stabbed in the lower spine, I’ve been appreciating Dr Romano’s Christmas ties. I feel like I’m a tie guy too, but one who doesn’t currently wear ties. Maybe it’s a novelty tie summer for me? Dr Romano maturing from the Ronald-McDonald-haired gay high-schooler from Fame into a balding surgical psychopath is the kind of far-reaching character arc only the nineties could accommodate.

Alongside some very un-woke depictions of mental illness, teenage pregnancy, and gang-banging, it’s nice to fall in love with George Clooney as Dr Ross all over again, and add rule-breaking paediatrician to my wish list. He lights up the screen but there’s really never a point where you think: this man should play Batman. Mark Green doesn’t have a brain tumour yet, which is good, while Alex Kingston is saying “hello sweetie” with her face if not her mouth in every scene.

I’m not sure this is a recommendation to revisit the most stressful show on tv. Someone is about to die in every scene—getting intubated, getting chest-cracked, getting time-of-deathed. Watching ER is like drinking three espressos an hour, every hour, until a new episode of The Apprentice drops on iPlayer.

Dream clogs at Rita’s Dining. In-flight compression socks adding to the general allure. Being a chef is much like these clogs—sturdy, stinky, somehow sexy. I think I’ve written about my chef peccadillo before so I’ll spare you the repeat.

I have been neglectmaxxing my body this week, lamenting on the sofa like a Victorian swoon, re-watching re-runs, micro-dosing my way through severe Cadbury’s withdrawal. Right now, the mortal coil is structurally sound—I do need a tan—but the joints are creaky, the muscles turgid. I want to take a flexibility course, spend days and weeks on the mat somewhere tropical, contorting myself like a squeaky party balloon, working out the knots like a diligent boy scout. I would honestly go on a yoga retreat, but I’m worried there’s too much moon-howling.

I want to be as nimble as a cat burglar in the south of France, as frolic-y as when they flashback to the dead wife on a beach in a film, the core strength of Kylie Minogue coming out as an ejected cd for her 2002 brit awards performance.

Every few weeks I go fish mad, just thinking about how cool fish are and maybe actually the whole sea? I’m not sure how deeply we should get into my love of the ocean, a place of great joy and possibility, that you also have to respect in terms of grandeur. The sea can be your friend, the sea can be a danger. So many good things happen in the sea like the little mermaid and war subs and the titanic. Tides are lunar. Sea foam is romantic. Watertightness is a flex. I know it’s mainly grunt-work, but I’d love to be a sailor, not only for the uniforms, but the thrill of piracy, the swerving of scurvy, the hoisting of the mainsails. Being a fisherman on a commercial trawler is dead masc (being one of those local river guys is not). There’s something medieval society about gutting a fish with your bare hands, a return to a simpler, gilded, analogue time like the Caliphate but also not like the Caliphate. More like Hamnet (I haven’t see it, but you don’t need to to vibe the era).

Found my next hyperfix, and it’s ordering a cheeky side of sausages, which happened when I deserted my family for a solo night at Claridge’s. At breakfast, two extra fingers of pork are very I’m on vacation in Europe and the day is going to unfurl pleasantly in front of me as I work my way through this vintage penguin paperback. At lunch you order them “for the table” but you know it’s a lie. At dinner, they go well with oysters, making you feel like a banqueting mean-spirited king just before a witch punishes him for his attitude. Of all the phallic treats—gherkins, corn dogs, mini-milks—they’re they most joyous, like chewing a Sunny D. I think of a side-sausage as a meat cigar: a superfluous addendum that brings the moment to life.

We’re house hunting, primarily because I’ve reached capacity on the number of baby toys I can tread on while bringing a lil snack from the fridge to the tv. I want a house with lot of potential and great bone structure, like me at 20. It needs to be as inexpensive as I was then, too. Mainlining Zoopla leaves you feeling like Oliver Twist watching a billionaire’s AD tour, and a 19th-century workhouse orphan should see a tap that does cold, boiling and sparkling water. The searching has led to an awareness of my own architectural bankruptcy. Where are my former-factory vaulted proportions? Where is my mirror-finished guest loo? Where’s my whimsical chair with legs like Harry Potter’s scar? I find myself in a house full of things we either spent too much on, or, guttingly, not quite enough. I am genuinely planning to nail-gun a rug to my wall but that’s not particularly billionaire.

Bit anorexic to love a Lego cake, but here we are. It’s the kind of thing I’ll have in my house for six months and then promptly get the ick and re-home.

I am cake addled this week, dissociating every six or so minutes to a land of whipped fat, delicate sponge, set custard and good old fashioned jam. I’m a classics man myself, I abhor daft, one-upmanship caking, all cardamom and popping candy and being in the shape of something else. A cake should look like a cake. Why do we have to have a Royal Academy sculpture? Why is my cake disguised as a moonlanding diorama? Let me cake like I’m and at the first ever VE day party.

Vanilla cheesecake is king, pillowy, inanimate goodness, a comforting familiar constant like Tom from MySpace. Carrot cake is good if you don’t add an annoying icing carrot on the top. Victoria sponge is a must after the week the Beckhams have had.

I like cakes to be recently-baked, in the same way I prefer recently-sandwiched sandwiches. There’s something a bit designed-on-an-iPad about processed-months-ago cake. Buying long-life supermarket cake is like buying half-baking-soda coke from a provincial town’s club doorman. That said, there’s really nothing more romantic than smuggling things into a prison inside a cake.

I have become slightly obsessed with house clothes. Outfits for indoor-only shenanigans—an m&s soup, another Cabot Cove murder, a couple of eye patches, some cat stroking. I haven’t fully pivoted to staying in, but elasticated trousers and a housecoat are a welcome respite from the taste of AmEx in your mouth after licking your credit card in a loo.

Speaking of eye patches. They’re cool. Look at Ken.

I don’t remember Ken’s long-term character arc, (maybe because I was looking at his unpatched eye?). Don is in a toxic cycle of having breakdowns which go onto inspire his greatest creative work. Pete’s hairline is its own saga, and his shrill wife deserves more credit. Peggy is women in the sixties, it’s the most obvious and satisfying watch. I still can’t tell you if January Jones is kinda wooden, or the greatest most-overlooked actress of a generation.

Ken just hangs around. Ken has no depth perception, but that’s hardly an arc. Ken’s there for the office lawnmower incident, but so is the hare krishna account manager who shaves his head. The problem with Ken is that he doesn’t have the same horny glow up as Stan. He doesn’t become a burly, bearded Manhattan lumberjack with giant hands and thick thighs. I will never, ever forget that.

I guess, if you really try, holidays can be cheap, but there’s so much saving-up to do. I know this long, cold cherry espresso tastes like sun lounger and costs less that any BA package deal. I’m drinking this until I can remortgage and get my top off with a San Pellegrino.

This is fucking cool, no notes. Well, a small note to say I need a clay vase with a Toyota stamp. Apparently, they were gifts from the company in Japan? Much better than a branded keyring.

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Robbie’s pitch-black glasses, BFG headphones and deeply-toked cigarette are allegedly the exact trio that Leonardo DiCaprio utilises in the bedroom when fucking the lasses he makes sign NDAs to say they didn’t fuck. The man in the back with the lime shirt is every boy at my sixth form foam party, but he doesn’t have Reebok classics.

On a crisp winter’s night, there’s something eerily magical about a projecting the face of a murdered and mutilated woman on the wall near where it happened, for gawping-tourists. Aesthetically the projection is great—Victorian death portraits are cool, too—but it’s morally ambiguous, like fucking everything.

Despite this being a very public place to strip to your tighty-whites, I still feel like a peeping Tom, like I have to do seven hail marys in penance for my rubbernecking and blood-let like the albino in the Da Vinci Code.

My mate once said “the smaller your knickers the greater the comfort” which tracks here. These are the briefest of briefs, the closest you get to being in a thong without being in a thong. They feel like the shrank in the tumble drier, your school uniform after a sudden growth spurt, that jacket you still love from a marginally more svelte time. His arse is a cheese plant that needs repotting.

A fish that tastes like a cake is the dish you bite into after time travelling and realise you fucked up something major in the past and accidentally created a modern nirvana.

I like to think she’s going commando here as some kind of anti-establishment regal kink at the knickers launch. Lots of people think they’re sassy, it’s a modern curse, but being a royal is a protective gauze that quadruples ones feist. Who’s that wizened showgirl from Showgirls who tells Jessie from Saved by the Bell you are a whore darlin’? Feel like she says shit like this all the time just to make you wince.

Keep thinking about these Always Ultra with Wings countertops at the Trellick tower. They’re almost translucent Uranium glass, I wonder if they glow at night? Great for chopping a veg, great for icing a cake, but unfortunately, I won’t know peace until I rest my bare buttocks on their cold refuge.

I know you’re looking at the necklace—we’re all looking at the necklace—but the magic here is the shirt and slacks in the same material with a fuck-it knit over the top. It’s quite hard to source head-to-toe in one fabric, unless you go for denim which is more outdoors-y that indoors-y. I had silk two-pieces made like this a few years ago, coming to a full day of childcare near you!

What if, after the wholesomeness of Christmas tablescaping, you made dinner look like sperm under a microscope?

I wish I was above the fashion inspiration of Marty Supreme, but the doctor’s bag is an instant classic. I don’t remember what he has in it? A fuck load of orange ping pong balls? I tried to get a company to make me one in crocodile—or even fake crocodile—but they deemed it “too Liz Taylor”.

Speaking of which, there’s something appetising about a cluster of pearls at your earlobe while it rains cats and dogs (on a hot tin roof) and you’re just in a trench coat, your burning sixties lust keeping you warm. Liz’s hair is kinda Jerry curl, which is a bold leap if you’re willing, but didn’t work out for that lass in the OJ trial.

Animal print, especially leopard, is overdone in fashion. I love Mel B but I have my limits. Ever consider the mackerel print? A mackerel tie might read a bit Tommy Cooper, but matched with a corresponding mackerel shirt it’s a flex and a half. Iridescent mackerel-scaled slacks would bang at any party, and could double as cammo for mermaid poaching. It’s strikingly odd to me that Dries has never done a mackerel trench. Imagine colleting the dole in an ankle-length Dries mackerel trench, imagine buying your pathetic little girl dinner in M&S in one. Men called Malvolio wear mackerel, men who can detect traces of delphinium in your perfume from last night, men who don’t care that Meta is harvesting their personal data as I type. Mackerel is just chic, isn’t it?

My mate saw a post I did about some art in my house and literally begged me to feature a woman somewhere on my gay-af walls. I came across this not-for-sale Cindy Sherman and though I can’t buy it, I’m about to smother myself in syrup to achieve the look.

This lowball Larry offered me £100 for the £1500-retail desk I’m trying to sell. I ignored his offer, but have fallen for his Amazon-cheap Klein blue foil hat. I can tell he’s fun in the office but not distracting fun in the office, he’s I can take five to watch a fail compilation video with you, but we’re here to do a job, guys in the office. As the wrapping on Quality Street loses all aesthetic appeal (I know it sounds downright GB News to want the 80s back), it’s right to foil your noggin in Coconut Éclair in protest. I now envision a whole line of Quallies hats. The green triangle is an obvious design lift, akin to the above. The Purple One is Napoleon style, and hello to the Caramel Swirl fez. You can just mash a Strawberry Delight straight into your hair because they are fucking rank.

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What I mean when I say three wise men. They were a crack team against the future and I’m still gutted they smelted Arnie at the end. I think about Sarah Connor most days. No actress has ever transformed herself so brilliantly for a part, that weak-ass waitress with the Thundercats hair gym-bro-ed into the lithe brutality of the mother of the resistance against the machines. Her sinewy arms when she’s trying to inject her doctor’s neck with bleach are their own Ozempic advertisement. Nicole’s nose in The Hours seems almost lacklustre in comparison.

Christmas is a creamy, noggy time, of just-set custard and gloopily coated tongues. December socialising is our collective consolation prize after a year of chin-upping and stiff-upper-lipping as the world burns. I don’t see why it can’t also taste totally tropical.

Right before Meryl’s notorious breakdown in The Hours, she pours Richard’s ex-boyfriend a glass of cold Perrier from the fridge and it’s the chicest thing I’ve experienced since William of Orange ended Feudalism. Like… a glass bottle of Perrier in her two-door fridge, in her lesbian-ass, dawn of the noughties, Manhattan pied-a-terre. Oh to be a loft-living lover of ladies, spinning the cap off the feminine curves of green glass, not having to deal with those maddening plastic bottle caps that don’t fucking detach. You just pour one out and concentrate on the existential crisis of your trivial life. Ocado don’t sell glass Perrier, but Amazon can ship some from France (chic, non?), meaning I’m essentially lining Bezos’s pockets in the pursuit of performative hydration. I seem to be unravelling.

Louis Wise put Fortnum’s honey on his Christmas list and—as gay as squeezing a bear to extract his syrupy sweetness could read—it’s a perfect self-gift for a casual breakfast of light whimsy. Nothing says we don’t take mealtimes too seriously in this house like a £12.95 teddy of nectar.

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A jacket I commissioned with Michael Darlington that is a joy to wear and has never made an appearance on Getty because walking down a red carpet with your back to the photographers is fucking psychotic. It’s the kind of blazer the guy that trains raptors at Jurassic park wears to the gala unveiling of a new hybrid dinosaur, before the electrified fences inevitably fail.

Lawrence looks like an Aesop handwash with the pump taken off (complimentary). I don’t know what we’re calling this shade? Cigar brown? Beaver brown? Brown and out in London and Paris? Anyway, I’m also not sure who I am without this labia-grazing origami pea coat.

Thinking about them again. Thinking about them jamming on the piano of an evening. Thinking about them kissing on the mouth. Thinking about her and the baby and the ear-guards watching daddy at the festival. Thinking about Shakespeare in Love because why the hell not? Should I put Yellow on like it’s sixth form again? Thinking about one cigarette a week and your boyfriend writing Fix You to literally try and fix you. Thinking about her Velcro shoes and his scruffy beard, the kale and the conscious uncoupling. Don’t is always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone?

The kind of childlike trousers a graphic designer wears to his co-working former-factory space, before revealing himself as an insane fuck merchant at Friday night pints.

Don’t be put off by the avocado bathroom suite-ness of this image, consider recreating these delicious hues in a matching suit, shirt and tie ensemble, warm pools of uncut-emerald cotton lapping at your figure. A block colour suit can read as 2007 Topman, as head of sixth form at a charity fundraiser, as distant cousin loaded on sangria at a Riviera wedding. To me it reads as debonair cad—the kind of man who attends it-girl parties that get written up in The Sun, who indecent proposals hot strangers over a roulette wheel, who performs majestically as the novelty in your couple’s special-treat threesome, the out-of-towner being shown the sights. He reeks of family money and family secrecy. He doesn’t know shyness. He drinks the juice with the pulp.

A pyjama shirt for Christmas morning, mixing a black velvet in your Gotham pied-à-terre before you flambé, brûlée and sauté your way into lunch.

I don’t want to be glib about the hurricane, but this man is a sage reminder that Jamaicans can turn out a fucking look, even under the most dire circumstances. Style is in our fucking blood. Donate to the relief effort here.

There’s something a bit expert in Medieval astrology about these ruched foreskin loafers. What if Stanford Blatch was Jacobean? He’d wear these.

Okay, so my friend’s dad was selling this frankly epic Oscar Wilde bust and obviously, as a gay literary man, I wanted it immediately (I messaged him within 14 minutes). The dad had already sold it to his daughter (my friend), because she asked him first, which feels apt but also kinda homophobic. My mate then sent a taunting finders-keepers selfie with her new historic knock-knack, which made the plastercast Oscar Wild feel like the Elgin marbles. What is the point of disposable cash if I can’t secure covetable gay trinkets?

Sartorially, with the trillions of jazzy blouses I own, I often feel like an amateur magician, and the inevitable evolution is to carry a trick-deck for when the conjuring mood strikes. When you’re sat with a bore at dinner, it’s helpfuk to know a few sleight-of-hands that run diversion before they start telling you about a dream they had that “felt so real, tho”. Practical magic is captivating—a coin from behind the ear here, a dove up the sleeve there—as long as you don’t tip into living in a glass box on the Thames territory, because that’s just nasty. Also, no disrespet to Derren Brown, but he makes me feel like I am not the king of my brain, that I’m the creepy guy standing next to the king going, “a most judicious choice, sire”.

Happy Halloween from this Frankenstein Afghan rug. I’m wondering if I would hang it on my wall or if that would make me a twat.

Somebody Sharpie-ing on your schoolbag is very cool, but I think it has to be a parent or guardian to really fucking slap.

If princess Diana was alive, she would have worn this on a hospital ward the day of Charles’ coronation.

I need to go to the beach with the soft flesh of my buttocks gently encased in white cotton like and the greaseproof spag in a bag from Ciao Bella.

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I have this weird feeling that the sweltering lackey inside the Ronald McDonald costume actually had exquisite taste (generational wealth), bidding adieu to the Hamburglar, removing his overground-line-orange wig, and retiring to his pseudo-utopian pied-à-terre somewhere that’s achingly local and largely undiscovered. I also think he was a plinth guy.

My husband is the worst photographer—we took a trip to New York in 2012 and he guillotined my feet off in every single snap, I nearly dumped him but he survived the cull. This lukewarm Egyptian float pic is a reminder that with enough nagging, people can change. Obelisks aside, I’m a sucker for scalloped booths where you nurse ice-cold Gibsons next to kind of piano Jessica Rabbit would sing on, gambling with tap water to brush my teeth, Disney adulating in light drizzle, and dense-but-walkable European cities. All of which I’m collating on AmiGo. Where does he eat? You might ask yourself. Where does he drink? Where does he be merry? Follow me on AmiGo—the invite-only app for finding and sharing travel recs—to find out. (Use the code RAVEN to jump the queue)

Life is too short to look as tired as I feel, and polka dots always inch my dial back to Fergalicious. They are arguably common, a bit 1980s wronged royal woman revenge tour, a bit bottle blonde office temp introducing herself as bubbly before magnetically catching the bouquet at a provincial wedding. They are dots that say I’m typing, but stimulating text never appears. And yet, and yet.

I want to kiss Frank Serpico like I kiss my pack of Marlboro golds before opening it. He is not a man who’ll never ghost you. He’ll never send you a dick pic or a voicenote. He’ll never ask you What team do you support? Who among us is immune from the catnip of his pounding emotional distance? It’s just me and you on a pedalo for two, Frank.

I haven’t worn baggy jeans since I discovered the Libertines in sixth form, but Justin makes a great case here. I also haven’t kissed a woman since then either, so maybe that’s back too?

Been thinking about these dodo biccies for a few weeks. Do you think they’re vanilla? Maybe a touch of cinnamon? Would you eat the head first? Dip them in tea? I would drape a napkin over my head like Tom and Greg eating that bird in Succession.

Can’t wait to sit like this in coach! I tend to feel very six four and three quarters back in steerage, and no amount of pre-downloaded iplayer can absolve the feeling of my knees concertinaed to my chest. Dressing like a 50s matinee idol would help drown out the pain of no-extra-leg-room (retailing at about £70 per leg). Dress for the part of the plane you want.

I’ve been trying to commission a shirt with this lass on, the ultimate sad girl. She seems like she’s never had a Sweetgreen or a tequila soda, but those wouldn’t make her any happier.

What an ominous maquette, I simply must cop. I’m also thinking I’ll paint my hallways mayonnaise, slathering skirting and ceilings like a part-way sandwich, right across the sockets.

I’ve been reselling a bunch of clothes online, suffocating them into sad bubble wrap envelopes for the low-bid vultures on eBay and Vinted. This newspaper and higgledy-piggledy tape format would have inspired me to make more effort with my joy-sparking bargains if I wasn’t so lazy.

London is too fucking hot and it’s impossible to remain cordial. I’ve been spending the apertures between meetings roaming the chiller aisles in Waitrose to maintain my internal temperature. I have a real problem with men showing their feet in the city, something about it is very extra in the Birdcage. Here’s Annie Hall in head-to-toe black and green jelly shoes—a frosty douche in this prickly heat.

My husband has a shirt like this, but it doesn’t have tit vents for hot air to escape. (Have I mentioned the heat in London?). Obvisoly the semi-nude rodeo connotations are sexy, too.

Do you ever feel like a sad stone cat in front of a pink curtain? (This pink is the shade cherry cola should be, by the way). I want this granite pussy above my loo to give me a sense of inherited wealth while I piss.

London’s slightly-overhyped-and-overdone institution, Le Relais de Venise, has opened a naughty little takeaway steak and frites baguette outlet. The white dough and blood probably hit your stomach like a brick… and yet, AND YET.

This question is keeping me awake at night.

Sometimes it feels like everyone is either dressed as Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy with an alice band, a girl in Euphoriashowing up to math class, or a press-tour Sugababe. Behold! This archive Olsen pic.

It’s hard to work out quite what Ashley’s wearing here—sails from the Marie Celeste? Disposable wipes from the pandemic? All the sheets from a Lenor ad?—but the machete is doing a lot of talking, cutting through the ethereal-ness with a biting edge rarely found outside a hot vampire showing their fangs in a horror film. She is a Hare Krishna with a weapon, a puritan with a vendetta. She is drinking the clarified blood of her enemies, a nectar to power her revenge. She is roving the wilderness as we watch on, powerlessly agog.

At a wedding on shrooms, I once found myself in the crawlspace between an ancient tapestry and a Unesco wall. I could barely breathe for the dust, but I’m glad I wasn’t mashing up a raw silk suit.

I’m loathed to say it, because of the Paul Mescal-ery, but boxers shorts are the only way through heatwaves this summer, with Magnum PI being the epicentre of the trend, the primal scream of his thighs groaning against the seams of his unlong trousers. These are the kind of legs that distract you during a romace swindle. Embrace the off duty millionaire playboy-ness of it all. It’s giving yacht might actually be the mantra of the summer.

Nude knickers by Tom Ford.

Butter yellow is getting as tired as an exhausted popstar at the end of a world tour, but there’s still time for butter yellow and margarine yellow in tandem.

Rubber stamps are a commitment—a refusal to amend or postscript. We are, as a society, too dependent on ephemeral tech, backspacing our mistakes, deleting our failing posts. If I learned anything from Terminator Two: Judgement Day, it’s that nothing good comes from a reliance on machines. Sometimes I just want to go back, if not to medieval times, then to simpler, less computer times. Back to drinking cosmos as a sign of genuine class. Back to seeing the Hoxton fin on our streets. Back to typing #chav into tumblr.

I can get a bit evangelical about patterns and I face a blizzard of jazzy shirts every time I open my wardrobe. I’ve evolved from pretty tessellations to real things—pictures over ambient shapes. This flame dress looks kinda mean? It started a bar fight for a bet. It met Lana del Rey in a pool hall and gave her a backie across middle America. Despite the greaser roadtrip connotations, I don’t think the dress is cheap. Theresa May shook the magic money tree and this dress fell from its branches.

We all lose our charms in the end, except for David Hockney. Hockney exudes the kind of tough love you get from people who muck out horses. He seems both fastidious and completely out of fucks (the exact balance you go to therapy for). Hockney is a living reminder that vaping is for clowns. Free yourself from the cop inside your mind and buy twenty Camels.

These avocado flesh bedsheets and avocado stone pillows are sold out and I’m jealous of the woman nestled in their folds (I blocked her to avoid further duress). But no matter how you drifted off—spine crumpled like a cashew, spinning from your fifteenth Campari and soda, your ankle monitor digging into your leg—you’d wake up jolly in these sheets.

Alongside a lot of borrowed-looking trousers, my Prada eBay search has yielded this torso carapace, a jitterbug of patchwork panels. Something about it is quite folk horror, like I’m a provicial shopkeeper about to drug you so the townspeople can lock you in a wicker man to appease our made-up god. Sometimes I want to dress like a terraforming planet, sometimes I want to dress like what your eyes see on the verge of an aneurism, sometimes I want to dress like and ice cream everyone wants to lick.

I’ve started using my Globe-trotter again and I feel like Phileas Fogg. It’s actually a bit of a pain to wheel around, but on the Eurostar I presented as a wealthy, eccentric, Englishman.

I don’t officially eat meat, but things tend to slip when I’m hungover and I deliveroo chicken and give myself a gastric snafu. The sober pescatarian in me died when I discovered the bacon hot cross bun. I want to perform a musical number while I guzzle it, red sauce stalactiting my fingers.

Madonna’s son in dick-print joggers and a billy goat stole.

I’m wondering if a Chairman Mao tee is problematic? I don’t want to have a political debate, I just want to look cute in the park while I nurse a Smirnoff Ice and a Boots meal deal.

Never been a nails guy until today. Ferrero Rocher, you will always be famous.

I know it was hailing ice yesterday, but I can’t stop the feeling spring is sprunging, or trying very hard to sprung. It’s like London has left the big light on, in a good way. Outside feels like warm breath, but not morning breath. I suddenly remember the Easter bank holiday is real.

I’m not outdoors-y per se—I prefer a beach or terrace to a hike and a tent. But spring is coming and I’m imagining the imprint of these chairs on my back. Having a super later dinner. Getting a bit paunchy. Etc etc

Literally don’t know who I am atm without a lil cortado on the go.

Found this pic of some guy in front of my favourite Hockney painting, that he owns. Something about his aura feels like a Jonathan Creek guest star, which is even more enviable. I don’t like him, and I don’t dislike him, which is how I felt about Jerry Springer platforming the KKK every other ep.

As to the painting, what is self-actualisation if not a strop with your arse out?

I like trainers and those light-sheen Nike joggers to the point that I wonder if I have a recessive PE teacher gene. I just think ponyskin pumps have the capability to alter my DNA.

Saw this pic of a homoerotic beach and I now I have to go.

I will not know peace until I own a knotted papaya papoose. What will happen the next time I buy a papaya? Will I have to hold it in my hands like a troglodyte? Balance it on my head like Isabella Blow? Put it in my pocket like a pervert who wants a handjob in the monkey enclosure? This bag is a must.

Season’s greetings from fashion month, where these impossible, almost annoyingly impractial, buttons trod the Prada catwalk. People get so caught up in wearability, because life is tough and they have lost their ability to dream. I love my 501s, but I want to bring back fiddliness, and the idea that I still have time for frivolity. Imagine trying to leave the house, running extremely late, and then having to fuck with these buttons. You’d arrive and people would see the buttons and just nod. They would understand. You have an extra 15 minutes grace on any appointment if you’re buttoned up with little clusters of Prada pearls.

I desperately need a long lunch in New York with Freddie Miles, shit-talking Tom Ripley, and eating like XL Bullies.

I heard that during Concorde’s heyday you could nip over the Atlantic for a power lunch, without the rigmarole of Heathrow terminal 5, two wines, two gins, and two Advil PM. I need this to happen for me. Today.

This sheer, a bit glittery, a lot translucent, archive Miu Miu sweater is what Mike Skinner meant when he said geezers need excitement

Stunning oyster-y door handles here. I like the idea that in the distant future my life can feel so genuinely grandiose that I have to sheepishly apologise to visitors for the seeping glamour.

House-wise, I sort of hate adornment for the sake of adornment, a house packed full of eye-catching-but-useless trinkets is just not my thing. Looking nice is nice, but I prefer some ambidexterity, rather than ultimately unfulfilling treats for the eyes.

These handles are handy. The man with these handles takes monthslong holidays and suffers from private jetlag (not commercial flight lag or steerage lag). The man with these handles look effortlessly suave in candis pics. The man with these handles is girl Sia’s singing about in Chandelier. He’s not someone trying to get a book deal with a sampler that says “His dick tasted like a tangfastic”

I am living for this crawling on the floor Babygirl-ass Prada ad from the year who-cares. I’m a sucker for a yellow on yellow shirt and tie, the lemon curd and butter Stanford Blatch-ness. I can’t really see the wallet, but it looks long enough for cigarettes?

You can’t move in London atm for forced rhubarb, every pudding menu in the land imprisoned by its red bars. I like rhubarb a normal-person amount and I’m enjoying this fuchsia toddler scribble centerpiece, a tornado of tart-ness, before I reach rhubarb saturation point in mid-March. Rhu season is both incredibly chic and incredibly British—it’s a bit war-time, and a bit Yorkshire, and also a bit Commonwealth. More importantly, it’s the first sign that winter is thawing and we’re all defrosting.

It was so good to be alive in the time of the Spice Girls, popstars that didn’t cater to a primordial horny male-gaze-ness. I don’t think there’s anything remotely sartorial I’d want to borrow from them—head-to-toe leopard, a Union Jack dress, those ghastly platform trainers, gag. But my god, what a moment.

I’ve been watching a lot of Mad Men this week, enjoying its lengthy string of secretary engagements and first-wife estrangements. I would never encourage anybody to drink more, but what’s two fingers of lunchtime bourbon between colleagues about to cheat on their spouses?

I’m inspired by the underwear because Don wears a full tshirt under his shirt, like a grandpa with an insatiable sexual prowess (and a desertion backstory). I’m drawn to the hammock of a y-front, offering great support for your meat crayon as you traverse the midtown of your own walkable city. I’ve always hated the ubiquitous utility of a boxer brief, they’re just so desperate to tell you they’re blasé, that don’t care about silly things like how they look. It’s very straight male, which is fine, but boxer briefs feel as drab as preheating your own oven on a weeknight. I want more.

There’s something vaguely odious about this Fabergé rabbit. Its ‘fur’ is glow-in-the-dark-y and the ruby eyes shriek Myxomatosis. It feels like it has an eerie backstory, bequeathed through generations, cursing each owner. Spooky, spooky shit.

I’m not completely sure what we’re looking at here? It’s pinned long johns. It’s heroin needle leggings. It’s a spanx iron maiden. This is what Edward Scissorhands’ arse feels under his leathers, which is horrible and a bit hot. I may never truly understand this, but I love the ambitious impractical-ability of wearing a bed of spikes.

I don’t think Pam’s dress is done up at the back, but we all deserve a long weekend pootling around Paris, mainlining croissant and sipping beer on rue corners, pretending our day jobs aren’t just ingesting stimulants and typing.

One of the reasons cinema took over from opera is because opera is really boring to watch—it’s 3 hours of people being overly-dramatic, directly from their diaphragms, often in Italian. Not getting bored at the opera is a gift bestowed to few—usually analogue elders, raised on rations, who remember Elizabeth’s Coronation and typewriting. These days, opera is a cerebral pursuit, and to endure it for a few hours is to verify your own refined chicness, your stance again the grotty pull of the attention-economy.

With all the family diamonds and people going ham on décolletage, opera dressing—rather than opera going—shortcuts these signals of cultural speriority. Even the most total of oiks will reek of sophistication masquerading in this butter-coloured sheath, a silky cocoon that whispers private education funded by inherited wealth. I don’t think this coat is cheap, it’s the kind of aspirational apparel that even Theresa May would have to shake the magic money tree for. But who are we if not dreamers? I want to look like I have a casual Brancusi in the corner of my European pied-à-terre. I want to look like Cate Blanchette and Tom Ripley bumping into Peter and Marge at the Tchaikovsky.

Had this image knocking about for weeks now and I can’t quite put my finger on its allure. It’s not aspirational, or flattering, but it sure looks warm.

If I call you two-faced it’s complimentary because I mean this jug made by someone called QUILLIAN. I cannot get into the specifics of the little world I’ve imagied for Quillian and his (his?) well-lit, probably coastal studio and mounds of clay. Quillian unwrapping the string on his greaseproof paper sandwiches. Quillian in those fire retardant gloves at the kiln, forehead beading sweat. The reddened bridge of Quillian’s nose after a salty sea-path walk. Save me from myself.