A mad weekend

Whether it's because I'm getting old, or getting boring, or both, I don't know; but like a badly-dubbed film, my wardrobe and my lifestyle are no longer in sync. Time was when no weekend required fewer than two party dresses. My long-time favourite dancing shoes - high-heeled black suede sandals with flowers at the ankle - used to need their spindly heels attended to at the cobbler's every couple of weeks. Nowadays, whole weekends can pass without my heels rising more than two inches off the ground.

This risible state of affairs came to a head recently when I realised that the point at which I had paid most attention to matters sartorial over an entire weekend was early Saturday morning, when I stood in front of my wardrobe and debated, with no sense of irony whatsoever, what to wear to the farmers' market. As if asking oneself this question (and then admitting it in print) wasn't mortifying enough, I was further shamed by the realisation that I had nothing to wear, because my clothes collection, sizeable though it is, is made up of work clothes, Going Out clothes, and a motley jumble of sweatshirts and tracksuit bottoms, which used to be hangover clothes and are now gardening clothes.

In most circumstances, nothing pleases me more than finding a new sartorial category, because it gives a cast-iron excuse to shop. But I am concerned that in order to fulfil the clothes-to-wear-to-the-farmers'-market brief, I will need to start buying clothes from those catalogues where women wearing angora clasp coffee cups prettily with both hands while gazing out of cottage windows. And that way, madness lies: even I am still sane enough to see that. So next Saturday, I'll be the one in the sequins.