I suppose one end sucks in seawater, and the other end blows it out

The webpage 'Sea Cucumber Facts' states that 'all sea cucumbers have some form of chemical defence that makes them disgusting to their predators and sometimes dangerous as well'.


Well, that's us warned off then.


Morphed Tribal Shorts, Topshop, £35.  A percentage of the price is refunded to any purchaser who can render the description even faintly explicable.

Sitting atop the cistern, disguising the spare loo roll within

Crocheted shorts, £36 Topshop.

People in the sixties and seventies were unaccountably coy about having toilet rolls on display.  They got around this by buying a tiny dolly and crocheting a very long voluminous dress for it.  The legs of the dolly (usually the chubby sort which came affixed to a card from the newsagents*) were then inserted into the cardboard tube, the skirt charmingly draped around the roll, and hey presto, no-one could possibly guess you had something so vulgar (good God!) as a lavatory in the house.

Here is a garment which perfectly captures that bewildering combination of shame, half-assed pretension to refinement and home knits so reminiscent of the seventies.

I also detect a hint of ungulate tarsal in the gusset.



*No, I don't know why toys like this were on sale in the newsagents - they certainly looked unappetising to my eight-year-old self, and I don't recall anyone buying them, apart from old ladies with bathroom requisites to conceal.

Oh look, we're being stared at again

Many kinds of ugly have converged unhappily on this dress.  It's a bit like a conference for dysfunctional patterns, where the delegates get to teambuild in tight migraine formation before going home to slide themselves back into their wallpaper pattern book collection.

This partial black ladder and diamond pattern laid atop a desperately perky chintz is a particular success at this year's symposium of horror (keynote speaker:  Linda Barker). That diamond pattern at least allows the chest of the wearer to stare right back at that unpleasant sweaty bloke from Accounts.

And of couse there's a peplum.  There's always a peplum.

River Island, £45.