Perils of not knowing your brands

I don’t like clothes shopping. On my most recent trip to Australia I found a brand of T-shirts that I really like so I did my usual thing in these situations. I bought two t-shirts and immediately wished I’d bought more. For some reason, Australian clothes appeal to me. In an attempt to procure more similar kit with the same logo, I went online to see if I could buy any direct from the manufacturer or some UK distributor. Imagine my considerable surprise when I discovered that “element” is a brand pretty much exclusively worn by skateboarders. I’d sort of come to accept that O’Neill, Billabong and Rip Curl are very Australian and somewhat associated with surfers but this doesn’t really bother me. Australians of many ages continue to surf and it’s normal to wear that stuff without actually being a surfer. But skateboarding? As if.

Even when I was 20 years younger and 20 pounds lighter, in the absolute best case I would have looked ungainly on a skateboard. Well, ungainly and fearful. Ungainly, fearful and oddly improbable. Sort of like David Cameron when he’s trying to look down with the kids. Right now, I’d look like a bad comedy sketch. So I now realise that my favourite t-shirts are an unwitting attempt to tell the world “I really like skateboarding, me.” Hopefully there won’t be any other skateboarders in the streets of Manchester to notice. Don’t tell, ok?