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“Have you seen my shirt?”

You respond with a look like you thought you were going to be first in line at the hairdressers, only I’ve beaten you to it. Not that you’d understand how that feels. Your hairdresser has appointments. £75 appointments, which is ten times what I pay whether I’m first in line or not.

“Which shirt?”

You know perfectly well which shirt. Which must mean you also know where it is; must in fact be responsible for where it is. Something else you know: how much that shirt means to me. It used to mean something to you too.

1995. Like a million other sixteen year-olds before me, suddenly I’ve got this hard-on for individuality. I don’t want to listen to the same music as everybody else, or read the same books; I certainly don’t want to wear the same clothes. There was this odd little second hand shop in the back of the Corn Exchange; I was in there every Saturday, spending the peanuts I made stacking shelves Friday nights in Asda. Most of the time, I was the only customer.

Antique cuckoo clocks. Dusty old Serge Gainsbourg records. Coffee mugs with women on the side who lost their clothes when you filled them with hot liquid. (There’s a joke there somewhere, but I’m not in the mood.) Authentic Japanese Godzilla posters. In the window, a vintage 48 key concertina, a working Hornby 00 Gauge train set, and a French policeman’s hat like the one Claude Rains wore in Casablanca. A tag claimed it was the exact same hat. I never believed it.

Read the complete story here.