GROWN UP GROWN UP GROWN UP

I bought a GROWN UP outfit today!

Not a sexy outfit!

An officey outfit! I have OFFICE APPROPRIATE CLOTHING!

Or a funeral! I could totally go to a funeral in this outfit without feeling disrespectfully scruffy!

Oh shit, what if the only reason no one I love has ever died has been because there is a God after all, and it was just waiting for me to be wardrobely ready?!

When I was 20 I had a job in a pricey high street store where I was expected to dress "well". For me dressing well consisted of putting on any button down shirt, black trousers and comfy/orthopaedic shoes. Usually I looked like Darlene from Roseanne, but with terrible hair. My manager hated me. She nearly fired me when she caught me advising a male customer to buy a grey suit instead of black because it wouldn't show lint or dog hairs as much. Which is still fantastic advice, by the way, and if we all followed it then no woman would have to walk around with one of those fucking rolls of inside out cellotape-on-a-hairbrush-things in her handbag. I'd rather do a public urination than get off the train in my new black pinstripe blazer and skirt set, pull out one of those roller things and begin running it up and down my body. Everyone who ever did this has looked like a dick. That's why Victorians look furious in every photograph: before sitting down some servant spent 45 minutes brushing horse hairs off their bodices.

One day I went into work feeling particularly smart, having hemmed a pair of grey knit trousers that had belonged to my aunt and were, therefore, too long for me. I am 5'9" and almost the shortest woman in my family; we breed big. In Canada I had a lot of trouble getting clothes long enough for my spidery limbs, so my UK-based aunt used to bear this in mind at birthdays and Christmases. As a result of this for years I thought British people were "exotically tall".

Unfortunately, I hadn't hemmed the trousers well, or high enough, and they dragged on the ground and beneath my cheap brown Clarks slip-ons. Also I hadn't accounted for the effect of January roads, and my trousers were soaked up to mid-calf - above which, as any Canadian can guess, a border of crusted salt formed.

I caught my manager staring at this salt tide line throughout my shift and didn't appreciate it when she told me what she thought of my deportment. To be fair she was heavily pregnant at the time with her first baby - and by heavily pregnant I mean figure-destroyingly pregnant - and there I was:  20 years old, 7 1/2 stone and wasting it all with bad clothes and a sad moustache.

Well, soon after that I decided to focus on my education and I still sometimes hope my old manager has moments when she looks at her offspring and can't tell if it was worth devaluing her property after all. Don't look at me like that, I kinda liked my girl-stache, ok! It was all Frida Kahlo! My manager was the one who was all about appearances, as I now am, and I gave that moustache the old heave ho off my face literally months ago. I've matured into vanity.

 I gave up on jobs where I had to dress well and people said words like "deportment" (except I would have taken a job in a department store in Bristol if I'd suddenly been offered one, and presumably overalls are still acceptable dress for every job in the west country).

Wow! That was a lot of build up to this staggering news: I still don't have a job! But I am insanely proud of now being prepared to attend an interview! Especially since I shop almost exclusively in charity shops - not because I'm poor, but because I hate the greedy high street, and the four months I spent working for the mean manager bitch was emotionally scarring, and... actually, yeah, I'm poor. I found this Oasis jacket and skirt set for £8.99 in a BHF. While paying for it I had an interesting conversation with the old ladies working there about thieving in charity shops. Conversely, on a Saturday in town in Topshop I usually want to ask for a security escort out of the store. In case I get eaten by all the angry secret eaters, who scare me with their scousebrows.

I hope someone hires me soon so I can go back to spending my pocket money on alcohol, postcards and coach trips.