Adult life isn't always rubbish

About thirteen years ago, I needed a new winter coat.

I had bought the one I already had from Oxfam when I was about fifteen. It was an enormous man's overcoat -- my mother hated it, the teachers at school had hated it -- but I loved it.

It had only cost £9 and was in perfectly good nick even if many sizes too big, so nobody had a leg to stand on, except the 'you look like a tramp' one. Good, I said. I wore it for years.

But it did eventually start to fall apart, and the time had also come for me to get jobs and stuff, so I trooped off to look for a new one. The one I found was in Miss Selfridge. It was like a duffel coat with a zip (I've never been any good at smart) and it came in black or red.

I wanted the red one. I wanted the red one so badly. If my memory serves, I even bought the red one, but was persuaded to take it back and swap it for the black one, because everyone knows red is not a sensible winter coat colour.

The next winter coat after that was also black, for the same reasons, and that is the one I still have. It is one of those military looking long waisted coats which is *very* 1994, and these days I only seem to wear it to funerals.

In the intervening years I have also amassed a brown 70s fake fur coat (also Oxfam, slightly too small), a big-lapelled grey fake fur jacket (glam, impractical) and a black North Face waterproof coat (mens, sensible but unattractive). Oh, and the leather coat my Australian artist half-aunt left behind (cool but slightly dilapidated).

But today I bought myself a new proper winter coat. It's stylish. It's proper. And it's very, very red.

The next funeral I go to I'm going to stand out like a sore thumb.

joella