The cutting edge

When I was young the word "trendy" was an insult. People laughed at the "mindless trendies" who were slaves to every passing fashion and couldn't bear to feel they were behind the times.

Now that's all changed and there's a total obsession with being trendy at all costs, being at the cutting edge of clothing, cookery, movie-watching, house décor, musical taste, holiday location, climate awareness, and even vocabulary - woe betide us if we use an obsolete term about other people (diabetics, transsexuals, dykes, nutters, natives etc).

The joke is that most trends are so nebulous and often simply assertions by some (fashionable) journalist, beauty editor or pundit. One person's boldly expressed trend will flatly contradict someone else's. In one place we hear that short skirts are back, in another that long dresses are now all the rage. Staying at the cutting edge is an arduous task when everyone disagrees about what the cutting edge consists of.

For years now I've never been remotely trendy and I just do and wear what I feel like doing and wearing. If my decisions happen to coincide with some fashionable dictat, it's mere coincidence. And few people actually care if I'm up-to-the-minute or not, except in the political sphere where being "off-message" can lead to instant ostracism rather than a healthy debate.

I remember trying to keep up with my fellow pupils at boarding school (when I was still young and impressionable) and failing miserably. I would attempt an Elvis-style hairdo, or adopt the required footwear of winkle pickers or chisel toes, or buy some Buddy Holly-style thick-rimmed glasses, but they all knew I was insincere and simply trying to fit in, and I'm sure they laughed at me behind my back.

It was only a year ago I bought my first backpack, after everyone else had had them since the year dot. I still haven't succumbed to a smartphone, Netflix, WhatsApp, airbnb or Uber. But I do take a very trendy set of hessian bags to the supermarket. Do I get any brownie points for that?

Crisis, what crisis?

The media and popular culture would have us believe that men go through four major crises in their lives, which they may or may not weather smoothly. We can't escape them, they're a simple fact of life. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint all the pundits, but there's been no sign of these dramatic crises in my own life. I've mysteriously avoided them.

First there's the teenage crisis. Supposedly an uncontrollable surge in testosterone turns teenage boys into acne-ridden sex maniacs, trying to take advantage of every girl in sight, and so distracted from their studies they're liable to fail all their exams. Well, I have to confess I never went through any such phase. My schooldays were entirely humdrum and sex-free.

Sometime in middle-age (the exact age is always rather nebulous) men are prone to a mid-life crisis - concluding that life is passing them by, they've wasted their energies on all the wrong things, and they're generally missing out. They ditch their wives for younger women, buy flashy sports cars, go for a brand-new career, and take up some odd hobby like paragliding. Er, no, not me either.

Then there's the later years crisis, when men want to deny their age and re-enact their youth, chatting up young women in supermarkets, starting strenuous domestic projects involving rickety ladders, driving like lunatics as if their reflexes are still razor-sharp, and slurping down litres of alcohol as if hangovers were obsolete. No, that one has passed me by too.

The retirement crisis also looms large. Men who retire after working non-stop for decades are supposed to feel bereft, having identified so strongly with their job that without it they have no idea what to do with themselves and feel empty and depressed. Not me, guv, I love being retired, doing what I want and no longer at someone else's beck and call.

So much for the pundits.