Happy feet

A few years ago I made a pledge to myself to never again wear plain old boring socks. My feet had spent a lifetime walking round in the distinctly limited palette of black, brown and grey. And white tube socks of course. Socks of a jazzier hue was a concept so alien that HR Geiger himself would've been more likely to start churning out pop art or twee water lillies.

Buoyed by the sudden upturn in the stylistic offerings from Primark, they definitely do the best cheapo socks, I set about amassing a vast collection of patterns, colours and motifs. Nothing's off limits. Orange zebra rubbing shoulders with purple camouflage. My feet are eternally grateful. Life in technicolour is infinitely more exciting. 

Menswear, as most of us know it, is fairly void of options, particularly on the lower half. Jeans, chinos, trousers. Trousers, chinos, jeans. I refuse to acknowledge the existence of the 'dressy jogger'. What's more, unless you're of a flamboyant ilk your bottoms are all plain coloured. A pair of jaunty socks adds a better balance and makes your feet more jolly. They'll practically skip down the street.

Unless I stick to Primark, I buy all my socks in the sale. Why pay full price when you can get them for a quid, or less? I tend to buy a pair or two a month. I'm fully committed to keeping my feet happy. The Topman sale is a particularly great source of cheap and positively random socks. 'Toucan play that game' in turquoise was a recent purchase. It doesn't get much better than that. Below are some others, including a set of three fast food themed socks. A foot long wiener. Say no more.

Maintaining happy feet also means investing in appropriate footwear. As befits the summer months, I've acquired some casual varieties over the last month or so. 

Pink and orange trainers from Nike
Grey and red trainers from Adidas
Red plimsolls from River Island

So whether it be socks or shoes, think colour, think bright, think fun, think It's My Life by Dr Alban. Happy feet makeths the man.

World leader pretend

About this time 24 years ago I picked up a copy of R.E.M.'s Out Of Time from a record store in Arvika, Sweden. I was there as part of SK Sifhälla's P77 football team playing in a tournament (which we won). I'd come across the Losing My Religion video on MTV a few months earlier and was simply blown away. Whatta tune, whatta man, whatta bonkers video. Buying the album was a no brainer, and boy did I reap the rewards. By the time Automatic For The People was released the following year I was hooked. I mopped up their entire back catalogue, bar Chronic Town, couldn't quite get my monthly parental allowance to stretch that far. I searched high and low for rarities, video recordings, bootlegs, posters, whatever I could get my hands on. No magazine rack was safe, literally. My sixth form library quite generously subscribed to NME, and most editions had a nasty habit of finding a convenient hiding place in my bag.

I saw them live for the first time during the Monster tour, at Stockholm's Maritime Museum, with The Bends-era Radiohead providing support. Possibly the best live gig double whammy ever. Thom Yorke's vocal causing time to stand still during Street Spirit, Michael Stipe going nuts in It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine). Seriously unreal. In total I went to 10 R.E.M. concerts in 7 different countries, and only the very last one, at Berlin's Waldbuhne, was a bit of a dud. Not even Stipe could get enthused by Around The Sun.

R.E.M. have provided an omnipresent soundtrack to the vast majority of my life, from compiling mix tapes for my portable cassette player at GCSE to streaming tunes through Swift-less Spotify as a responsible adult. As a result, listing an R.E.M. top 10 is a tricky proposition but I'd say these are the ones I've played the most:

Wolves, Lower
Perfect Circle
So. Central Rain
Pretty Persuasion
Feeling Gravitys Pull
Begin The Begin
Losing My Religion
Country Feedback
Drive
Bang And Blame

My tastes have fluctuated since my first introduction to music in the form of Wham's Make It Big, courtesy of my sister. Had a proper grunge phase in the early 90s, long hair, flannel shirts, the lot. A few things remain constant though - Swedish pop, Kent, Madonna and R.E.M.

And Michael Stipe is pretty much god. As a precocious teen I was proper obsessed. Couldn't get enough of the man. Even tried to dress like him. Inspired by the What's The Frequency Kenneth? video I acquired a pair of black boots and baggy black jeans in Stockholm, and ordered an original red star t shirt from the US of A. Coolness personified, world leader pretend.

I've since discarded the red star t shirt, unceremoniously dumped on the scrap heap as I briefly embraced 'club wear' no doubt. So as a way of coercing myself to pick up the screen printing gear, I decided to recreate the iconic t shirt, but in black to stay true to the Kenneth video.

I've not done any screen printing for years, which shows. At least close up. Anticipating the potential for a printing disaster, I went all out and spent £2.50 on the t shirt from Primark. Good move. Believing in your ability is one thing, preparing for eventualities is always sensible. Or what say thee Kenneth?