High falutin

I can only apologise. I can already feel your disapproval, but I just can't help it. I LOVE these shoes. These neon-graffitied-gilded-bedazzled-nu rave-Louis Vuitton-high tops. BUT WHY?? I hear you squeal. Why do you love them so, Kerrkins? Your voice in my head is gently questioning my very sanity. And I imagine the real you, instead of the imagined you that has temporarily set up shop in my cranium, is doing the same. Vain to deny it! As Eleanor Lavish would say. You would probably be quite right. Someone who quotes A Room with a View, after all, is probably not the same someone who should be lusting after "these neon-graffitied-gilded-" etc. etc.

What reason for this fancy, then? For it is decidedly against character. So I delved a little deeper into the dark recesses of my psyche. And what should I find there? What possible explanation for this bizarre behaviour? I finally came upon this nugget, and found it quite illuminating.

Some years ago while I was living in Bow (me and Dizzee both, innit?!) I had a pair of green Nike high tops. Even when I bought them the sales assistant looked at me askance, suggesting she would not have pictured me in such a shoe. One day I was followed up the stairs to my flat by a young boy and his mum. We smiled politely at each other and when I turned to my front door the young chap turned to me shyly and said "Nice trainers!" I can not impress on you enough how chuffed I was by that moment. While I might not have convinced the "Kids" I definitely connected with that kid for a brief glorious moment. Maybe now that the DM resurgence has convinced me how out of touch I am with the yoot, I am scrabbling desperately around for some badge of taste and coolness that might get me props or respeck, or whatever else one might desire.

In reality it just makes me a bit tragic, doesn't it? Hmm, yes. Should I not have shared? No? I thought not. Ah! Sorry. As you were...