Wednesday 3 December 2008

The love song of Miss Jones

I have fallen in love with far more inanimate objects than I have human beings. I don't know why this is and I don't care to dwell on it. 

But I can tell you that I do have a 'type'. Clothes.

This week, I cannot stop thinking about the most beautiful black sleeveless cashmere cardigan from Whistles which I tried on at the weekend. It is £95. 

Now we are involved in a romantic, but as yet unconsummated relationship. I realised this as I replayed the widescreen film of us in my head for the 356th time, the one where we're walking together through the park, kicking up piles of autumn leaves with my Gap biker boots (which I thought I loved once, but which meant nothing as soon as I met the cardigan), and then fat drops of rain start to fall, and we run laughing through the shower to take shelter under an enormous tree because the cardigan is dry clean only. 

The fact is, I honestly love it. I mean it this time. I've never felt like this before. It's like I'm a better person when I'm with it. I'm the person I always wanted to be. I smile all the time, and only I know why. 

I'm finding myself defending it to concerned and sceptical friends with loyal, red-faced indignation. Yes, I know it's not much to look at, but you don't know it like I do. You don't know what it can do. I know it's out of my league, but we have so much in common. It would get on so well with all my other clothes. All those Primark cardigans meant nothing to me.

Yet still I am afflicted by a paralysing lack of nerve. With its upmarket price tag, I dare not quite reach out and make the move that would bring us together. So I have resolved to wait, and hope that the seductive excitement of the sale season will see me losing my inhibitions, and then it will tumble into, and then onto, my arms. But what if I do wait, and find it's too late? Someone else may snap it up while I was waiting in the shadows, worrying about trivialities like budget. I'll have lost it forever and will be left to think of what might have been. 

If you'll excuse me, I must go and lie on my bed and stare at a picture of it while listening to some soft-rock ballads.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

With your delicate winter skin should you really be contemplating cashmere? Even as a top layer?

Anonymous said...

An early combined Christmas/birthday present to yourself, perhaps?

Anonymous said...

Oh how well I recognise the symptoms of which you speak!

Funny how those past experiences never teach us the futility of seeking to complete ourselves through the next desired item.

I find watching items on ebay a way of extending the pleasure of the flirtation without necessarily bearing the cost. Since my natural stinginess has so far prevented me bidding high enough to win any of the coveted items I have enjoyed the fantasy with out the expense and there is always a new item waiting to distract one from the pain of parting company with the first.

Sigh.

Ms Rose