A fleece jacket

A fleece jacket, bought at one of those outdoors shops in Covent Garden in the late 90s. I remember the salesman telling me it was a "technical fleece" - which is sales-speak for ‘it costs more’. 

Somewhere there’s a very cheesy photograph of me in this jacket, at Everest base camp in Tibet in 1998: arms folded, wraparound mirror shades and a week’s stubble, gurning at the camera with the mountain’s rocky triangle behind me.

Under an endless carpet of stars, I stood in a bone-dry night and listened to Yes! I am a long way from home, by Mogwai. It was so cold I had to jam my Walkman down my underpants to get the batteries warm enough to make it work. Stood there in the middle of the Milky Way, music had never sounded so good, and I had never felt so small.