fashion scooters and PJ's

Was it just my half-awake Monday morning imagination or have I just spotted a new fashion trend? While I was still bleary-eyed in the co-op, buying my breakfast, I spotted a man wearing a kid's scooter casually flung over one shoulder, whilst perusing the papers. (Why do people have to peruse papers? and how do people have the energy to peruse papers standing up at 9am?). And he was not waiting for someone, oh no, for this was I man who had just dropped his kids off at school and was proudly sporting the lifestyle badge. This is not the first time I've spotted this phenomemon. There is a man I see at school doing it all the time.
Ok I'm being stupid and taking things a little bit too far. I just couldn't help feeling a little bit self-conscious in my beanie pulled over unwashed hair and no make-up, not a good look for me, not to mention the baggy jeans and top and that jumper-jacket I bought during the two-weeks of snow, when I was so cold I thought I might die. Especially when there are proper ladies who wear proper coats and have reasonably well turned out hair, managing to find the paper bags youre supposed to put the pastries in delicately using the tongs provided. And here's me fumbling around with the pooper-scoop bag provided by the Quorp for putting vegetables in, and contemplating using my fingers to pick up my maple and pecan plait, which I had to buy as well as musli because I was so hungry by then. If only I had had a kid's scooter over my shoulder perhaps I could have convinced myself that people weren't noticing anything else. But only a man could carry this look off, so to speak. I did, hovever then look twice when I noticed a woman marching down the street clutching a folded buggy: childminder.
And then I get home and read this article about people being banned for wearing PJ's in Tesco this about  sovenly mothers wearing PJ's to drop off kids at school. Don't these people realise that wearing PJ's is a fashion/lifestyle statement?  I can't say I read the popular magaizines about celebrities. I don't even know what they are called: Hello? But I'm sure its has been a well-known fact for years that celebrities are seen out at the school gates wearing PJ's (designer) and Ugg boots. People are just following this trend, people! get with the programme! Furthermore PJ's are comfortable and OK to wear all day at home and if you're just nipping out why not? Of course they are wearing knickers! Well, I can only speak for myself here, but even if they aren't there is no crime in not wearing underwear. The man with the scooter could have been commando for all I knew, (and he may well have been perusing Hello! magazine.)
Ok I don't actually go to school or the supermarket in my PJ's, well, not without something over the top of them, if which case I wouldn't get out of the car! I did go up to the stables in PJ bottoms only 2 days ago, but it was dark, and my daughter has a mobile. What I wore this morning are really Sunday clothes, what I would prefer not to be seen in, and no bra either, (although I don't need one that much!). They are what I find at hand to pull on quickly, especially when I know there is some serious Monday morning slobbing to be done when I get home. Ideally by 3 o'clock I am properly dressed; I may even have had a shower. I like the PJ idea because it states more clearly that these aren't my proper clothes!
OK so why the sudden obsession with fashion? Well, I did just watch "The Devil Wears Prada", followed by a channel 4 documentary on the editor of US Vogue magazine. Also I have been reading quite a lot of fashion magazines, having been ill in bed and there being a dearth of home magazines. I still get my grown-up daughter's Cosmo, and she gives me her old Elles... Then I found myself actually buying them. (O gosh it's starting to sound like a seedy addiction). But when I was at DS1's piano lesson the other day, his teacher noticed my fashion mag and without me having to say much he remarked that it was CPD: continuing proffessional development. In other words I get fashion magazines because I am, in fact, an unemployed fashion designer. (I think he must have known that- nice of him to remember).
Now this is a fact that has been gradually dawning on me over the last week or so. I have spent the last ten years exclusively bringing up children with little thought or time for career notions. In September, when they had all been at school for a year, I decided it was time I did something that was not just about them, but about me and work and personal fulfilment. I had spent the previous year doing up our new house and working towards getting a room I could work in from home. This took me form September till July. By then I could not remember what I had planned to do in that room. I had vague notions that I would do a bit of sewing, but also something a bit more creative than patching boys' trousers. In the summer I got the form to enter a local fashion show but I never got round to making anything- still doing the house. Last October I started life drawing and printmaking classes and decided that after all these years I was doing something I was good at. I am good at it. But I am still not convinced I am an artist. I spend much more time doodling ideas, sewing, playing my guitar. Art suddenly seems like college work that I have to do. I will spend hours mending a knitted blanket, working out ideas for a new dress, rather than drawing or making printing plates. I am actually a qualified fashion/textiles designer but by the time I finished college I was so turned off by the fashion industry I never wanted to do it again. But it's what I do. I thought it was all so superficial and useless, but, come to think of it, how useful is art, and who buys it? Everybody needs clothes, right? And cushions... OK, maybe I need to refine my reasoning a bit... I always cringed at the idea that I was good at sewing because I was a girl and it's what girls do. But not all girls do. And somebody's got to do it, right?
... Ok more thought on that perhaps... Needless to say I couldn't find a stock photograph of man-wearing-scooter. Maybe I'll have to take one. Maybe that man at school will oblige. Maybe then you'll see that I am not a complete numpty but a cutting edge fashionista!