A handkerchief

A reproduction Seditionaries handkerchief, bought in 1986 from Boy, in Hyper Hyper.  

Three years earlier, and I’d love to tell you I arrived at school listening to The Jam and AC/DC, like some of my contemporaries. But I didn’t. I had several hours of ELO’s back catalogue in my bag; and some Status Quo. Oh, the shame.

And then, like so many other middle-aged bores talking about teenage musical epiphanies, I heard Never Mind the Bollocks, and “from that day on, life would never be the same again...”  

*yawns* 

On the eve of a party four years later, I remember unpicking the seams of my trousers, tapering them with safety pins, adorning them with badges, the handkerchief pinned to my jacket's back. I remember the catcalled abuse; but I had heard it all already, in the wake of other jackets, on other evenings. 

It bewilders me still that the clothes we wear can provoke such fear and loathing, when we choose to stray from the herd.