I was in a second-hand shop in Southwold, Suffolk last week and found a pale green shirt that looked as if it might fit. Second-hand clothes are mostly in better condition than my normal clothes waiting for me at home. They’ve certainly been ironed more recently. I took it to the till to buy it and the young man there said , it’s the same colour as what you’re wearing already. I said, yes, I’m very predictable. Pale green is the colour I have learnt to buy. Different times of life dictate different colours. I can’t really wear red anymore like I used to, being high in colour as it is. I look like some Dickensian pie-eater if I’ve got a red shirt on. I have to have colours that compliment my high colour. By high colour I mean that as the day progresses I gradually move into the zone of spntaneous combustion. I start the day pale as an underfed vampire but as I move forward past midday the blood starts to flow. There is another batch of colours, I find. Favourite colours that I would like to wear but have learnt to eschew, whereby I am obliged to fight against my self. Brown is the big one here. I probably like brown so much as it was the colour my mum used to dress me in as opposed to the blue she gave my big brother. It must be that deep emotional pull that drags me into the magntic field of brown. Fashion, of course, is irrelevant, working on the assumption that we can all wear any colour for the benefit of their season’s profits. In recent years I have come round to the opinion that blue is about right for me, which, of course, goes massively against my deep-set identity, blue being my brother’s colour. My mind doesn’t know how to deal with this. It is just one of those things that keeps my sense of my own identity fluid, or, rather, dragged around a bit. I am not any of those things I once thought I was. Imagine that.

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