I’m going to have a chat about crimes against fashion and assaults on ones visual senses in this post. Firstly though we’ve had a big week this week. We were in Cornwall last week and I’ve driven 1300 miles in 5 days. The week started with me in Oldham which is north. I spent a very pleasant evening in an unsatisfactory hotel in the Peak District.

Hathersage

I stayed up there rather than going up and coming back because its 4 hours each way and that’s just too far there and back in one day. Call me a lightweight. So I came home on Wednesday and we had prior engagement that night with some evening races at Sandown racecourse followed by a gig  by Tom Jones. Yes Tom Jones in concert!

We expected a 45 minute set as it was just tipping a nod to the new fashion for after race gigs now trending at British race courses. What we got was one and a half hours of awesome Tom Jonesness. It was absolutely fantastic. The old greats, ‘It’s not unusual’, ‘Green green grass of home’, an epic version of Delilah which was just amazing.

Excuse poor sound quality but you’ll get the vibe. He also did greats like ‘sex bomb’, ‘kiss’, ‘leave your hat on’ and a number of tracks from his remarkable new album. It was a tremendous show. Bucket list very much ticked.

On Friday we had some great friends with us at Glorious Goodwood. Glorious is a week-long racing festival at the beautiful Goodwood racecourse. Its one of the events of ‘the season’. The season also includes things like Cowes week, The Henley Regatta, The Veuve Clicquot Gold Cup, The Proms, Glyndebourne, The Edinburgh Festival, Wimbledon, Royal Ascot and the Chelsea Flower Show to name a few. It’s a very important part of the British social calendar and makes for a number of great events to attend and watch people watching each other as well as the events. It seems to be sponsored by Veuve Clicquot,  if they don’t actually sponsor it then it is very clever product placement as Veuve is ubiquitous to the season.

We were in the members enclosure at Goodwood as Jen is a member and the dress code is jacket and tie for men and ladies must dress smartly. I have posted an email conversation on here between myself and the management of Goodwood in the past.

Goodwood email conversation

Thats just about regular racedays. Glorious though is exactly that. The people watching is just incredible. Ladies get dressed up in their amazing race day finery and you look at them and ask yourself “Do you own a mirror? Do you have any friends?” What some of these women put on and go out in defies description. Do they have a television? Have they ever consulted a magazine? What were you thinking when you put that on? We started a little game of posing near the shockers that stood out from the shockers and have our photo taken with them in shot. I am still waiting for young Charlie who did the photography to furnish me with the pictures though.

There was the bright orange skinned blonde girl with the bright yellow dress and bright purple shoes. There was the wizened old hag with a leather face and burgundy hair in a leopard skin romper suit. There was the little fat woman in the bright red skin-tight dress that accentuated and exaggerated every lump and roll of fat. There was the young girl with the tree trunk thighs and bad cellulite in a micro skirt that made sure we didn’t miss a single bit of orange peel skin. Fake tan was lathered on with trowels left right and centre.

Then there were the chaps. Shiny silver and shark skin suits with wide ties and dark coloured shirts. Spiky gelled hair and wrap around mirror sunglasses for miles. It’s like a uniform for a certain sector of society. Now remember this is in the smart bit of the racecourse. You should see the cheap bit. They come in buses for the festival from miles around. They are pissed before they walk in the gate. Grown men wearing shorts that come down to somewhere between calf and knee.  Short sleeved shirts opened to the waist with a large bit of gold or silver bling round the neck. And tattoos, lots of tattoos.

Back to the members bit though. The Richmond enclosure. These people, these escapees from a fashion disaster comedy film. What do they do for a living? Who employs them? Remember these people have gone to a great effort to look very stylish and have failed so spectacularly you do wonder what they look like when they don’t try to dress up. If they go to a job interview, what employer is sitting there looking at the orange skin and horrendous dress sense and thinking “yes this is the stuff I want my staff to be made of”. “I want my valuable customers to be dealt with by a person who has no comprehension of what the difference is between smart and shocking”.  How on earth do people, who cannot dress themselves, afford £70 to get into the Richmond Enclosure during Glorious. They got up, put on an outfit that is a crime against humanity. Looked in a mirror and thought “I look amazing”.

They must do surely but how does that happen? What parallel society do these people exist in? You only see them at the races and never in the street. Where do they come from? What society does one mix with, when what you wear screams that you are a completely tasteless halfwit to everyone with any fashion sense at all, but you think you look great. Not just great, you think you look incredible. But every single person who sees you wants to take a picture to post on Facebook and show their friends the unbelievably ridiculous attire they saw.

You may think oh yes Sandy you are over egging it. But seriously the place is alive with fashion car crashes at every turn of the head.

We had a wonderful day though and we all had a few wins and no one went home empty-handed. Shame about all the folks I have referred to above though who came and went and go on being empty-headed.