BEER AND CLOTHING

Cast your minds back if you will, dear readers, to the mid eighties. For those of you who were only tiny tots, you'll just have to use your imaginations. Britain is in the grip of Thatcherism, the Miners Strike is drawing to a close, and I have Billy Bragg's EP Between the Wars playing on a loop on my Sony Walkman. Any telephone conversations too private to conduct in the hallway at home take place in red telephone boxes, endlessly pushing 2p's into the slot as you hear the frantic beeps indicating you're running out of money. No one has heard of email, and there is one computer in the whole school, so precious it has its own room, and only A'Level maths pupils are allowed near it.

Every inch the right-on New Romantic in my winklepickers and 'vintage' great coat adorned with CND badges, open to reveal my Katherine Hamnett '58% Don't Want Pershing' t-shirt, I march up to a door on a relatively middle-class housing estate and knock on the door.

'Hello,' I say, politely, 'I'm canvassing on behalf of the Conservative Party'. This being Oxton ward and not Rock Ferry, I don't have the door slammed in my face, although the harassed mother, pushing her curious children back inside the house, does say rather quizzically 'You don't look like a Conservative' before accepting my leaflet and waving me on.

Quite true. I didn't look like a conservative. I wasn't one. I dressed my politics. Being far too young to vote, or to have a mortgage or pay tax, I had Convictions. I was deeply on the side of right not Right, and very proud of my militant connections, though these were only my cousin's husband, Lecturer in Trade Union Studies at Wolverhampton Polytechnic and the fact my other cousin had once been to Greenham Common.

You may have spotted some contradiction here. Why was I canvassing for the Conservatives whilst carrying a copy of Marx for Beginners in my pocket? The truth, dear friend, is terribly simple: Sex. Or romance, really, if you're feeling faint-hearted.

This being an unsophisticated decade, and not awfully yoof-friendly, there were very few places to go for the enthusiastic teenager to meet members of the opposite sex. Church was out, naturally - far too much chastity and singing - so that left politics. I simply couldn't bring myself to fancy anyone with from the Young Socialists, all dirty-fingernails, Real Ale, irritable vowel syndrome, and making you go Dutch on everything.

I'm afraid that then, as now, I fancied Tory Boys. I preferred them with a small 't', since I was much less interested in their politics than the fact they tended to have an allowance, access to their mother's car, decent manners and nice clothes. I probably should never have been allowed to watch Brideshead Revisited, since it seemed to have imprinted a 'type' upon me at an impressionable age but certainly it left me with the idea that the working-class hero wasn't going to work for me. Tory boys weren't deeply trendy, but then, life was ever a compromise and I have a passion for posh.

Nor did I admire the dreary sincerity of the Young Socialists: their meetings were full of earnest discussions about society and they talked a lot of politics. The Young Conservatives Association didn't bother with anything so obvious: apart from wandering about with a few leaflets come the council elections, I don't remember politics coming into it at all. Oh, except once, when in a wave of enthusiasm we had a debate: I stood against the motion, This House Wholeheartedly Supports the Nuclear Deterrent, and I won in a resounding victory, rustling up a little support for Conservatives against the Bomb in the process. On the whole, going to the Young Conservative meetings meant drinks, idle chat, illicit cigarettes and the promise of a Saturday disco.

In retrospect, I do wonder why they let me hang out with them, given that I was as volubly anti-Thatch as Ben Elton, and literally wore my opinions on my sleeve, given my predilection for slogan badges. I think they were simply too polite, and too middle-class to mention the elephant in the room, enthusiastically waving a red flag. Possibly I had novelty factor. Certainly, I enjoyed trying to shock them with my subversive opinions, and it gave me a nice warm feeling of contrariness which is always pleasing when you're 16 and full of yourself.

As a dating strategy, it was a great success. The tory boys had frightfully nice manners, and conducted themselves chivalrously, hugely in favour of making sure you had a seat and buying you a drink. They also took the trouble to properly chat you up before getting sweaty-palmed and pouncy during a slow dance to Careless Whisper. Good snoggers without exception, they'd had evidently taken an O'level in undoing bras with one hand. And these being more innocent times, seemed content with an above the waist and below the knee diktat. I still get slightly quivery when I think about the rough border terrier feel of a tweedy tory boy embrace and the hot steamy smell of damp wool rising from sports jacket during an enthusiastic tussle in the front seat of a VW Golf.

I think my appeal lay in the allure of the transgressive, of snogging outside one's postcode. A date with me looked like rebellion particularly since I made great show of reading The Guardian and Cosmopolitan in an entirely fictitious attempt to look liberated and sexually enlightened.

Nearly a quarter of a century on, the placards and badges long since consigned to the dustbin of history, I only read The Guardian online, and never open Cosmo, and my political opinions have mellowed to a point where they're not even brought out for dinner parties. As I watch Mr Trefusis leave for work, dressed in a very snappy suit and an Hermes tie, all properly polished shoes, good cuff-links and an innate knowledge of the correct use of the apostrophe, I realise that I've never quite outgrown the appeal of tory boy chic.

PS: Mr Trefusis would have you know that it's not that I like the politics, I just like the floppy hair and the well-cut clothes....

LIFE THROUGH A LENS

'When was the last time you read a book?' asks Mr Trefusis one evening, 'You used to read all the time.'

'I do read.' I say indignantly, but I know Mr Trefusis is right - I was once a book bulimic, devouring novel after novel, forever on holiday in someone else's imagination. But lately I've found it tiring to read more than a few pages at a time: it's started to take weeks rather than days to finish even a thriller. I've blamed work (too much of), twitter (distraction), Angry Birds (ditto), but really the truth of the matter is as plain as the lines that are springing up all over my forehead: I can't do without my reading glasses. If I try to, even reading Harper's Bazaar becomes too much of an effort, which seems a shame considering it's the magazine I work on.

'Presbyte' says Mr Trefusis, somewhat eliptically, 'that's what the French call you, from the Greek for Old Man.'

And so it is: as confirmed by my optician, I have the kind of long-sightedness that's inevitable after forty, and, although it's helpful of Mr T to contribute to my education by offering me the French for long-sight, presbyte makes me feel as if I ought to come over all Calvinist and start railing disapprovingly about the sin of vanity.

It's no good though: presbyte or not, I still want to look good. I want my reading specs to be fabulous face-furniture, rather than just something practical: I want glasses of distinction. What's more, I want glasses that scream an elegant protest against the presbyte diagnosis - I might be old enough to need them, but I am not so old that I want to entirely relinquish looking vaguely hip and moderately sexy.

The first glasses I bought were the insanely expensive Bulgari pair you see sitting on the laptop in the holding shot of this blog. It's to my shame that I immediately went off them - they're fine, but - you know - they're a bit dull. Realising that it's deeply inconvenient only having one pair of reading glasses, I had some lenses put in a pair of Emporio Armani frames that were discovered unclaimed at the back of the fashion cupboard, but they're also a bit ordinaire. I mean, obviously I'm too grown-up to suddenly go all Hoxton, and sport statement frames like a self-consciously trendy architect or  app developer, but there is a middle ground, surely, and one which doesn't necessitate eating baked beans for a month to afford the bill.

Reader, I think I have the answer - London Retro is a new range of vintage-inspired frames, seemingly designed with me in mind. Ok, that's a little solipsistic, especially when there's enough edge in the range to please my imaginary Hoxton dwelling architect, but really, all boxes ticked - cool and interesting frames and they come complete with single vision lenses for £99 with a second pair free, which seems astonishingly cheap in the context of the Bulgaris. I have Carnaby in red, which have a wonderfully 1980's ad agency feel to them and Camden with a tinted lens for reading outside (have previously felt very foolish wearing sunglasses on top of reading glasses).

London Retro Carnaby in red £99

London Retro Camden in tortoiseshell with a tinted lens-
there's an agreeably Wayfarer feel about them, which kind of reminds me of my yoof, and of the first time I read Money and Brideshead Revisited.

London Retro specs are only available online, but all you do is imput the details of your prescription into the right box and a couple of days later they arrive on your desk, all gleaming and fabulous - kind of like a net-a-porter for spectacles - and despite the price-tag, the quality is at least as good as my existing Bulgari and Armani pairs.


I'm slightly worried now that specs are going to replace shoes as my guilty pleasure - I love the Carnabys, and they definitely suit me, but I do also rather fancy something a bit edgier: these below are next on my acquisition list, just as soon as I've finished all 974pp of Belle du Seigneur to prove that I've really earned them.

 Shoreditch - what do you think? Too cool for school, or could I get away with it, despite my advancing years? Being a bit bookish, I really wanted Fitzrovia, but my face is entirely the wrong shape for that kind of frame.


Of course, what I'd really like now that I've discovered trendy specs is a pair of bifocals - my reading prescription in the bottom so I can see what I'm doing, and plain glass in the top half so I don't fall over when I walk around still wearing them.