Why the woman in black wears bright red knickers

I used to wear black on the outside because it was how I felt on the inside, now I wear it in the vain hope that it will somehow disguise the fact that my backside is used by astronauts as a homing device when they return to Planet Earth.

When I say I’m the Woman in Black, I mean it. I am the only person I know to whom getting dressed in the dark holds no fear.

My only concession to colour is my underwear, which is brightly coloured. This was a tip from a women’s magazine I once read that advised you should always aim for an element of surprise with your outfit. My element of surprise is saved for the ambulance service in the eventuality they might need to cut off my clothes after a hideous accident or the lucky few (if Mum is reading) who have been allowed access to my inner chambers.

My pathological hatred of fashion or clothes shopping means that as soon as I find a garment I can bear, I instantly buy six identical garments and then rotate them until I find something new that I like. Due to this fact, I shunned trousers for 15 years because I was working my way through dozens of totally identical skirts.

Flagrantly ignoring the Bible’s warning – “woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man…for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God” – I bought myself a pair of trousers and experienced a sense of liberation I had not felt since I discovered the mute button on my phone at work. I instantly went back to the shop and bought five identical pairs.

God’s vengeance was of no concern to me. I have seen the gentle BBC comedy The Vicar of Dibley, I know that God allowed female clergy in Dibley to wear trousers without sending plagues of locusts or apocalyptic floods to punish their sins (more’s the pity).

For the first few days of trouser-wearing, I was irresistibly drawn towards sitting with my legs splayed like a leering uncle at a wedding and had to fight the urge to ostenatiously adjust myself whenever anyone was looking. And oh! the joy of being able to step out of my horseless carriage without showing even an inch of petticoat – I tell you ladies, I think these ‘trousers’ might catch on.

Having embraced a whole new world of sartorial possibility, it seemed time to readdress my hatred of fashion and give it a second chance. I was not far into my search for inspiration when I found this crock of shit from celebrated Danish designer Henrik Vibskov.

The police's new community support officers weren't entirely happy with their new uniform

I know I have been away for a long time, locked into a clothes hell of my own making, but is this really what the young people are wearing these days? Just look at those buffoons in the background; it’s like a New Order video for the colour blind. And then there’s this:

As Jared walked down the runway, he couldn't help wondering: how had it all gone so terribly wrong.

This is the kind of coat that the kids with fleas wore at my high school. At best, you could say the coathanger hat might come in handy if you needed to pop into the dry cleaners and didn’t have a spare hand to carry your freshly-laundered smoking jacket home, at worst, well, is absolutely everything else.

I need no further proof that black is the way forward. My calculations show that I need not shop for clothes again until 2012.

Global warming is all my fault. And here’s why

Living in Norfolk, it’s difficult to be blasé about global warming.

Had I used a few less cans of hairspray in the 1980s I might have saved our county from becoming a modern-day Atlantis, our flatlands swamped by giant waves forcing all survivors to take refuge in a two-up two-down at the top of Gas Hill (for those of you not from our Fine City, the vertiginous Gas Hill is thus named because it has a gasworks on it – we are glaringly literal here in the East. Just don’t ask about the provenance of Rampant Horse Street).

I’ve always wanted to live by the sea, but I figured it might involve moving out of Norwich, rather than opening my front door in the Golden Triangle to watch polar bears floating past on lumps of North Walsham.

Global warming is like a religious education lesson come to life; senseless greed, disaster wreaking floods, hair-rending guilt and punishment from God by thunderbolts, storms, fire and ice. All that’s missing are a few beards, a couple of miracles and some oxen.
To cut a long story short, we’re all doomed unless everyone starts using energy-efficient lightbulbs and shopping in the organic section at Waitrose.

To this end, I have started growing my own vegetables.

By “growing my own vegetables” I mean that I’ve got a polystyrene box filled with musty smelling earth which has yielded a crop of three mushrooms. Bearing in mind the price of the mushroom growing kit, each mushroom I harvested was worth around £3.33.

I have it on good authority that the environment was struggling quite badly before I embarked on my mission to be self-sufficient. Follow my lead and we’ll turn back the tides yet.