So I have escaped London for the countryside of Virginia to get some writing done. It is absolutely beautiful here; deciduous trees are beginning to blossom, deer roam around freely, everywhere I turn lush vegetation spills out around me. And there is not a brand in sight. In London I often feel suffocated by the level of intrusive advertising forced upon us (see the last post by Matthew De Abaituar), my eyeballs having literally nowhere to turn from the relentless sell. Here in Glasgow, Virginia the closest I've come to ambient media has so far been a hand-painted sign for freshly picked Blueberries at junction 29 of Route 11. The landscape is free from billboards. The people I've met wear non-branded clothes. The local stores (hypermarkets by British standards) are all chains but even their branding seems to be engulfed by the scale of the trees and the mountains. Yes there are big Honda 4X4's here and yes everybody shops at Wall Mart and yes they all drink Coca-Cola Light, but branded consumerism here feels like a bi-product of life, not the primary objective, as in the UK, where even the countryside is plastered with adverts for Homebase DIY, T-Mobile and FCUK. After five days of zero media interaction, I turned on a television for the first time yesterday, and was immediately sucked back into the maelstrom of rapid-fire infomercials, product placements and 'brought to you by…' messages that intersperses any sort of non-commercial content. I switched off after five minutes.

I'm having a hard time justifying the premise of this book to the good folk of Virginia. One farmer joked to me the other day 'You city folk, I hear you pay, like, forty bucks for a pair of jeans!'. And the rest. If they knew how much I've forked out for all this gear that I'm about to burn, they'd have a collective stroke. And these people are by no means poor. Sitting at the dinner table last night with a dozen locals, I tried my damndest to prove the universal validity of my book, but they were having none of it.

"You might not buy fancy branded clothes, but I bet there's something else you regularly buy into because of the status it brings. What about your SUV, that's a Toyota, right?"

"It's the only one on the market that can take snow chains. I have no opinion about Toyota."

"What about your computer? You've got a Mac G4 Powerbook. Come on, I bet you'd never go near a PC."

"Actually, I have both, and I use them for the tasks that suits them best."

"Er, what about food, I bet you avoid or gravitate to certain brands at the supermarket."

"I buy whatever is the best quality at the cheapest price".

I persevered for another five minutes, and then gave up. To be honest, I feel rather silly and inconsequential talking about the project here. The most branded thing in Virgina right now is me; poodling around aimlessly in directional sportswear, while all around get on with bailing hay and feeding the cows.

I started to get the itch today. Leaping deer and towering oaks are all well and good, but I was beginning to sense a familiar urge building inside me. Rather like the craving for a cigarette, there was something missing, something that would make me feel more happy and content than I was now, if only I could find it. The anxiety grew throughout the day, and I was starting to feel uncomfortable, a little irritable even. Next thing I knew, I was on the Internet, the Ralph Lauren store directory site if you must know, trying to locate the nearest outlet. Hechts Department store in nearby Roanoke had a concession. That was it, I had to go.



I persuaded Barry, whom I was staying with, to drive me there, on the flimsy excuse that I needed to do some research on brands in the US, take some pictures for this blog, that sort of thing. As we drove to the mall, the anxiety was raging, but knowing I was about to get my fix, it felt like the fevered anticipation before a big night out; the expectation of things to come. Walking into the mall, I felt a wave of relief wash over me. I dropped the pretence of field research almost immediately and headed straight for the store, leaving Barry for dust. I could just about see it in the distance, … the gold Times font and pony logo against a shiny royal blue background… racks of pristinely folded polo shirts in expertly co-ordinated colours…. and an assistant that could spot a rabid label-starved shopper at twenty feet.

I started grabbing at stuff. Casually at first, but I soon lost control, and in my desperate search for things to buy that I definitely did not need, I piled a load of fresh kill into the changing room, only then stopping to catch my breath. The smell of unspoiled new clothes, the kind you get in a new car. The crisp feel of the fabric, folded neatly against thin sheets of tissue paper. The glare of factory-fresh colours bouncing off the oversized mirror. And most importantly of all, the beautifully embroidered logo on the breast of the shirts, on the leg of the shorts, on the side of the socks. I had peaked.



From there on in I began to feel increasingly sheepish. Paying for seven items at the till, I felt a little stupid in front of the assistant. I didn't need any of this stuff. Besides, it was going to be burnt in what, four months? The assistant gave me a look of curiosity as she rang the stuff through. I was sweating. What must she think of me? What will the folks back at the house think of me? Coming out of my consumer tunnel, what did I think of me?

In the car going back home, I could feel the high depleting rapidly. I was still chuffed with my purchases, and was desperate to pull them from the bag and try them on, but I felt stupid having even bought the stuff in front of Barry.

"What did you buy? Anything nice?'

"Oh just a cheap T-shirt, nothing much"

From the bulge of the shopping bag it was clear I had bought much more, but nothing was said. The bill came to over $200. This has got to stop.

The only solution is to leave, Matthew.


Letter From London

" If you replaced every logo, advert and brand image you see on the high street with a quote from the Bible, you would feel that you were living in an intolerably strict religious state ," I said to the cab driver, as we rode the small hump of a bridge. He didn't brake over the crest, my stomach went giddy. "I mean, if you took all the billboards and put Jesus on them, there'd be a revolution. If you replaced the icons of one ideology with the icons of another, you realize the absurdity you've been living with, everyday, your whole life."

It was an interesting thought, but an idiotic thing to say, when I really should have been giving directions. To his credit, the cabbie was blasé about this riff. He'd just confessed to me how he lost his job during the last recession, and I'd taken it as a cue to sound off on my increasing obsession with consumerism. In turn, he stayed schtumm during my rant while he waited for an equally tenuous cue to bring his ex-wife into the conversation. Unfazed—as ever—by the indifference of my audience, I launched into a description of an artwork I'd devised in the pub: You paste up photographs taken from the darker slumps in 20th century history—say Stalin's gulags—then over them you paste an actual advert. Then, you strategically tear that advert to reveal the real terrors of history that lie beneath the fabrications of the eternal present. "My ex-wife used to be the woman in the shower from the Shield soap advert," he said, tapping his index fingers against the wheel while we idled at the light. "She doesn't look like that anymore, that's for sure."

Adverts are appearing at the bottom of golf holes, above urinals, on the side of eggs, the back of receipts, bus tickets, and on the billboards that are colonising the city. London has become a city of brands. But no-one seems bothered. Except me. You have to fight tooth and nail for planning permission to adjust the roof of your house, but no-one bats an eyelid when a 30-foot billboard is slapped onto a wall. The fly posters go up, no-one takes them down, the corpses of long-dead promotions hang about for years. The demands on your attention are close to unbearable. When, that is, you notice them, when the background flips to foreground, and the procession of provocative adverts rattle around in your consciousness rather than slipping smoothly into the unconscious. "Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket," said Orwell, an attributed quote I have never quite understood. Unless he means the mind is the swill bucket, my mind.

"Ambient advertising"—the business of putting adverts in public spaces—is a booming industry. It has outgrown all other advertsing sectors in the last three years. In 1995, it hauled in profits of £10 million. In 1998, these have grown to about £58m. It has taken the metaphorical advertising phrase of "selling space" literally, snatching up the places where your eye falls, and—in that pervasive new corporate ethos—making them work harder. Why should the side of that house waste its time just holding up the roof when it could also be promoting 'Smints? Adverts are making the bricks shout, the railings wail, and the windows threaten one another with bitter asides—incessant eye noise, and I'm the only one listening to it.

Ridley Road market is off the Kingsland Waste, next to Dalston Junction, in Hackney in East London. But it could easily be in Marrakesh. The market is a cultural pile-up: The sounds of Cypriot, Bangladeshi, Turkish, Nigerian, and cockney compete for your attention as you turn the corner of Dalston Lane. The faded red canvas roofs of the stalls are crammed before you, romanticised by the noon steam of a Saturday. If you walk through the market, you notice how swiftly one culture merges into the next: Gospel music from one stall will be replaced by pig cheeks two paces later, four paces and you can admire the braids of hair for sale, six paces and there'll be someone flogging you cheap lemons, knock-off Teletubbies, a bag of salmon bones. Hands stuffing apples into a paper bag, twisting it shut, presenting it, reaching out to the tomatoes. Hands weighing fish, flinging them onto ice, gutting them. Everything is quite at once and around you and wanting you to buy it.

Walk beyond Ridley Road market, into Dalston Junction, and pick up the 38 bus. It will take you down Balls Pond Road, and soon the murals of Hackney's community art will give way to billboards and fly posters as you speed into the more affluent area of Islington. But the clamour of Ridley Road doesn't ease away. Rather it becomes a visual barrage. The lamposts will be spattered with stickers for singles that have long since left the charts; bus shelters will blare out the latest butter substitute (in Britain, we already have the seminal I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! and the tasty newcomer Utterly Butterly); black cabs will cluster, each one bearing an advert for a fitness centre, the Financial Times, the Yellow Pages. The traditional press of the street market shifts into the brand pulse of modern consumer market. On High Street, cardboard squares will be inserted inbetween the railings running down the centre of the road, advertising a West End Show, or a newspaper exclusive. You might head down to Old Street, where the roundabout is topped by huge billboards advertising financial services, quality products for the affluent citizens driving up from the nearby City, home to London's stock market. Or you might push onto Clerkenwell, the pace of the posters accelerating, each one demanding your attention, giving your experience of the city a stroboscopic feel.

It's all about grabbing your attention, making it pay. Think of attention as a commodity. Others have. In a typically grandiose article in Wired last year, Michael Goldhaber hypothesised an entire attention economy, in which the behaviour he had observed on the Internet (where the attention a site receives creates its value) applies to the real world of jobs and goods. His vision of a society exchanging attention as payment sounds like the fantasy of a commune of narcissists, I know, but his first premise is sound. It is incorrect to speak of an "information economy," because information is an infinite resource, and you can't have economic forces without scarcity. So it is more accurate to place attention at the centre of the information age. After all it is scarce, and its value is easy to measure, determined by the status of owner of the attention.

The attention of a broker controlling investment funds can be worth millions, if you are the company (or country) lucky enough to attract it. The entire Internet is funded on the promise that some day the attention that sites receive will transform itself into money. All of which is by way of saying that you have only so much attention at your disposal each day, and—the same way you can grow to resent the emotional imposition of beggars—I resent having to pay mine out to ambient adverts.

Speaking of which, when I started thinking about all this I couldn't figure out whether the limbs hacked off a child beggar in Delhi were the origins of the attention economy, or its end. Being hacked apart by your parents or your pimp for one second of a rich man's gaze could be a cynical extrapolation of where ambient advertising is leading us, or a telling glimpse into its past. What has changed is the time over which the attention economy functions. Modern advertising can afford to be less immediate than a stump, it can wait until you wander into a shop, maybe months later. Brands are in it for the long haul, beggars—and street markets—are not. They need you to pay up there and then, and that calls for the shock tactics of pity or intimidation.

A ride back from work on the 38 bus, back up from Islington and toward Ridley Road Market. In five second intervals, a billboard ripples from one advert to the next: a battery bearing its muscles, a blue beachscape, something else, I don't know, now I'm looking at a Turkish man strolling down the street with his beaten leather jacket over one shoulder, then a woman with a pushchair out in front of her and a toddler trailing behind. "It's the city, the city, the city," I'm repeating in my mind. Then I'm trying to spend my attention on scraps of the pastoral—to see the sky again, or a scurf of grass washed up on the side of the road. I mean this is only the trip home from work, there is no reason for me to get so worked up. But I'm playing with myself, simulating fast-cut editing by focusing in on the ads and the images, then the people and the planes in the sky. Not so much the eye imitating the camera, as the mind imitating the editing suite.

It's the adverts that start to crank up my sense of claustrophobia. Now that I have begun to notice them, I cannot ignore them, and spot brands everywhere I look. I count out a five-brands-a-second frequency on my walk down my street, picking them off the back of parked cars or toys glimpsed over fences. There is a storm of attention at major junctions. A hurricane of attention on Oxford Street, where most tourists trudge for their Saturday shopping. This attention weather passes over London, and leaves behind heaps of brands that gather in the lee of the streets. Empty wrappers, spent desires.

I confuse this pile of branded junk with the parts of my identity I have slewed off as I have moved through successive consumer cycles. It's a confusion of the junk inside and the junk outside. It could be considered to be a new branch of psychogeography—where instead of studying the effect of architecture, religious symbolism, and history on the character of the citizens, we investigate the intersection of the city, its marketing architecture, and the mind.

London is no longer aloof. Its sheer stone indifference has been covered with promises and imprecations. The clamour for your attention that characterises the traditional market place—like Ridley Road Market—has spread, and each promise is aimed at You, and You alone. A ride around the streets makes you think the whole city is about You, things that You might want, people You might become. London is a narrowing state of consciousness. It's all I can think about. Ask my cabbie.

This document was emailed to me from some people at another clothing brand. After this post, the Puma bashing stops. In the grand scheme of things, this one brand is an irrelevance, but it just goes to show how wrong cultural sponsorship can go when brands try to buy up culture with a few pairs of free sneakers. And how strongly people can come to feel, positive or negative about a manufacturer of sports shoes.

Puma's culturally imperialist marketing debacle is kind of old news, but in case you missed it all, click here.

OK, panic over. On my last blog, I was feeling pretty despondent about this project, after visiting the offices of one of my favourite brands, wishing I could take the old lifestyle back and feeling stupid, inconsequential, alienated and generally pissed off with the whole thing. But my ten-hour journey to America yesterday got me right back 'on message'. I have left the UK for rural Virginia to get some writing done, and I lost count of the number of branded consumer opportunities I was presented with along the way.



Take a look at this picture. Is this a department store? No, it is the Heathrow Departure Lounge in all its branded glory. Between security checks and the departure gates, there lies a full-blown shopping centre through which all must pass. First high-end cosmetics, then booze and fags, then on to Gucci, Dior, Burberry, Smythson, Cartier, and er, Boots The Chemist. The few seats provided for waiting passengers are wedged in between hundreds of furiously lit stores, whose marketing pitch is bullied into passengers with the force of a pneumatic drill. Where are the departure/ arrival screens? Obscured by a neon hoarding for Rolex. Where is the information desk? Located in the portacabin dwarfed by a giant Harrods. And where are the toilets? Tucked away in a gloomy corner behind Prêt A Manger.



In contrast, the toilets, being the only non-brandable opportunity in the place, were something out of the dark ages, with dim flickering lights, dirty floors, trash piled up against walls, no conscious effort to make the area hospitable whatsoever. I have a nagging suspicion that the people who run this place are not only in the business getting people on and off planes.



Retailers know we are susceptible to high-pressure sales when we are on holiday. Though the average airline experience is generally cramped, unhygienic and exhausting, we still cling to old-fashioned ideals of the glamour of travel to this day. On holiday, away from the drudgery of real life, we can be whoever we wish to be. And with a wad of spending money burning holes in our pockets, an unscheduled stop at Hermes for a £450 silk scarf en route to gate 23 seems only natural. International travel is the preserve of the rich and successful. How do the rich and successful demonstrate their wealth and success? By making casual impulse purchases at luxury stores of course. And now you can too, by blowing the family spending money at the Gucci key ring concession: duty free bargains from only £199.99 inc VAT.



Our wills flattened by the airport's marketing steamroller, we collectively roamed the circular shopping mall, cooing over useless branded tat like lobotomised retail zombies (see George A Romero's 'Dawn Of The Dead'). The LV handbags, San Tropez tans and Juicy Couture tracksuits were out in force, and I wondered what it must be like to be a genuinely rich and successful person here, watching their traditional symbols of status being unceremoniously bastardised by the great unwashed. What would weary travellers really want from a departure lounge? Comfy seats perhaps, or a play area for kids, free internet consoles, some news programmes on a few TV screens... nice as they are, these ideas would not provide efficient revenue streams and might distract customers from the primary objective of the place, which is of course, parting everyone with their hard earned cash.

Eventually finding the departure gate, I travelled a two-mile corridor lined with HSBC and Vodafone ads. Both campaigns were at pains illustrate the companies' world wide vision combined with a sympathetic understanding of indigenous cultures, appealing to the international statesman within us all.



On to the plane (United Airlines) and the brand assault continued. Before takeoff, we were asked to turn off our Blackberries and Ipods. Lunch was a Kraft cheese sandwich accompanied by Walkers Crisps and a Twix, washed down with a can of 7UP and a cup of tea that was 'proudly brewed by Starbucks'. The HBO comedy channel, among others, provided entertainment and I was offered the chance to purchase Yves Saint Laurent Touché Éclat three times in as many hours. By the journey's end I felt exhausted. Trapped in controlled conditions for ten hours, I had been sold to on so many occasions, I never wanted to fly or indeed shop ever again.

What a contrast to the environment I am in now. Here in the countryside, the lifestyle is relatively simple, rendering my brand crutches virtually useless. All one needs wear day-to-day is a plain pair of shorts, a T-shirt and any old pair of shoes. I'd be laughed at if I wore any fancy branded gear, especially if I told the locals how much it all cost to buy. Saying that, I brought a few bits and bobs, just in case.

18/04/06
Having read my blog, the press office of a brand, which I cannot mention, summoned me to their offices today. Actually, summoned is a strong word; I was invited over to explain exactly what I was up to with this book, was it for real, and had I completely lost my mind. I say summoned because the brand is pretty huge in size and influence, and I was too scared to say no. I felt uneasy walking into their press office, as if I were stepping into no man's land of this private war I have started; having publicly 'dropped out' from the 'system' (if such a system did exist, it would be me diligently flogging products in magazines via my news reports, a middle man between the producer and the consumer) with the announcement of this blog. The paranoia quickly subsided however at the sight of their new product lines, surrounded by promotional posters and brand memorabilia that had been lovingly collected over the years. Press offices are primarily places whereby journalists and store buyers browse upcoming product releases, but they also serve as free dispensaries for those of cultural importance to the brand (in this case rappers, style journalists and footballers), who frequently pass by to dash and grab as much gear as they can possibly carry home. I myself had often 'passed by' this office, on some flimsy excuse to procure free gear, and I felt myself reverting to former type, eyeing up the goods, visualising me owning them, and imagining how much happier I'd be for having them.

I was woken from the daydream (an impossibly beautiful and fashionable woman stopping me in the street to ask where I got my directional outfit from) by the brand managers I was meeting, who sat down and dived straight into conversation about the book in a cheerfully bemused 'what's all this about then' type of way. I gingerly gave them the schpiel… branded from birth…no sense of self…burning the lot… wholesome new life…. I felt like Catholic standing up in the middle of church to declare I was a becoming a Jew. It was clear they'd invited me in to size the impending situation up, but to my surprise, they were nodding in all the right places and laughing at some of the jokes. They made the usual critiques (burning everything is a waste, you'll never see it through, it's impossible anyhow and what's so wrong with brands in the first place)….all fairly mundane stuff. It wasn't until I recounted the 'Girl In Pumas On A Bus' story, and the subsequent fury that Puma UK registered on the blog, that the meeting livened up.

"You were absolutely right about that woman…" said one manager, "she wears Pumas because she thinks they're cool, and she's cool. You know, like most people, that Puma isn't cool and from looking at her shoes, you can tell she's not cool either. Those shoes saved you the effort of getting to know her and finding out, much later, that you weren't compatible. Think of all the time you would have wasted. That’s why you need brands."

I found it hard to disagree. The brand choices that we make simply reflect the people we are. What's the problem? I feel good surrounded by my brands, even better when they trump those of people around me. Perhaps this book idea is just a stupid waste of time.

The brand men were delighted with the negative publicity Puma were getting, and I wondered how they'd react if the boot had been on the other foot. Still, that's to be expected. Changing the subject, one of the managers asked if I wanted some free gear to take home with me. Clinging on to my new principles for dear life, I refused. Well, I had to if I wanted to walk out of there with any self-respect. Did they ask me as a test of metal? We all knew I was on the waver, it was written on my face.

Having discussed the book, our meeting quickly trailed off to an end. Not being a style journalist any longer, my use to them was now minimal, and this meeting felt like a friendly send off into obscurity. As I stumbled out onto the busy street lined with shops, happy people streaming in and out with bags of fresh consumer kill, I felt very, very low. My professional bridges are being burnt to the point of no return now. I look around me and everyone it seems is getting on quite happily with their branded lives; working hard to make money to spend on the things that make them happy. Clothes, cars, phones, food, everywhere I see brands, and people enjoying them as if there was nothing wrong at all. I don't want to be marginalised from the whole of society, disengaged from reality like some paranoid schizophrenic on the run from The Man. Perhaps this is all a big mistake.

I fly to the States tomorrow, to do some writing in the country. Quite what I'm going to write about now, I'm not so sure.

Shopping bags. You're given one at the checkout. You carry stuff home in them. Then throw them away, or keep them under the sink to use as rubbish bags another time. Not me…. the stakes are much higher. Plastic carrier bags are perhaps the most efficient way of conveying your brand status to another person, after all, it's not just the things you buy that matter, but where you bought them from. The same item bought from Selfridges or Liberties or John Lewis or, gulp, Debenhams certainly says a lot about your lifestyle and your aspirations, so one has to get it right.

Having the correct carrier bag in the playground was extremely important when I was at school. Carrying your books in a brown paper Next bag (Next being reasonably cool for teenagers in my area back then) was a standard entry point to the popular set. Keeping the bag uncrumpled and out of the rain was an art form in itself, and once the things did eventually give way, my friends and I would venture down the local shopping centre (late night Thursday at the shopping centre was our Saturday night down the pub) and persuade the sniffy assistants in Next to give us some more. Turning up to school with a plain plastic bag was something you just did not do. Like being seen with your parents or admitting you might be gay, the repercussions among peers was so severe that you simply had to play by the rules, though who set these cast iron rules, I never did quite find out.



I've calmed down a little since then, throwing my carrier bag collection away during my mid-twenties, but I still keep a few choice specimens tucked away for emergencies (what constitutes as shopping bag emergency I'm not quite sure). As a teenagers, the bag is used to shock and awe with the flashiest, most aspirational brand possible (these days the humble Next has been succeeded by Gucci or Burberry) because we want to prove that we are not poor. Moving into adulthood, it becomes important to not only have money, but to spend it with taste (Gucci is too flashy, Selfridges is better). Into middle age, the tastes and aspirations become more refined, and we like to assert our cultural sophistication, perhaps adding a Tate Gallery bag to the Selfridges. And when the race to earn cash, pair off and propagate is over, and the end looms into sight, priorities shift to worldly issues and thus the Tesco re-useable Bag For Life. There you have it, a life in carrier bags.

Ok, that’s a bit of a joke, but I believe will all adhere to these codes in some shape or form. I know my friends would disapprove if I turned up to meet them holding certain bags, I have caught strangers admiring me with them, and you certainly receive different treatment from shop staff according to the grandeur of your bag. Try browsing around your favourite clothes store with a placcy bag from Costcutter and you'll see what I mean.



The only problem with said shopping bags is that they inevitably stretch, tear and disintegrate. Which is why we now have the Shopper; all the showy branded goodness of a carrier bag with the durability of a handbag. And they're free!

Carrying a store bag around with you after it's initial lifespan (from the shop back to the home) not only advertises that you once bought something from a certain shop, but that you are proud of that purchase, you are happy to be judged by that purchase and that you'll most likely be repeating the process again sometime soon. It sounds like a joke, I know, but faced with a choice of five branded shopping bags, I bet most people would opt for the one that best defines/ least embarrasses them every time.

Mike Skinner is a unique individual

Mike Skinner wears Reebok to express his individuality

You want to be like Mike Skinner

You can be like Mike Skinner if you wear Reebok

You can be a unique individual if you wear Reebok



Actually, in another time and space, I'd be straight down the shops to buy these. Alas, my limited edition celebrity-endorsed sportswear buying days are drawing to a close. You, on the other hand may wish to visit 679 Recordings to win a pair.

10.04.06
Yesterday was a grim day. Rain drizzled relentlessly, and the sky was slate grey as I trudged around the backstreets of town, looking for somewhere suitable to make my first sacrificial burning, away from any CCTV or nosey passers by. Eventually I found an old Edwardian stairwell leading to a bridge, a frequent stopgap for those of no fixed abode, judging from the acrid smelling piss-stained floor. Perfect then, for this initial act of brand cleansing. Just like the tramps, I was about to piss on my own doorstep. After much hand wringing, I had chosen my most cherished piece of branded clothing to be destroyed; a pair of 'Adistar Runners'. They're not particularly rare or expensive; in fact they were free, given to me by the brand managers at Adidas UK. That's why they are so emotionally valuable.

The day I was called in to speak to Adidas for the first time was, as you can imagine, a jubilant one for me. I was editing Sleazenation at the time, writing endlessly on the trends of young consumer culture, working closely with brands whose product releases I regarded as important news. I remember climbing the stairs to their office, diligently attired head to toe in three-striped gear. My hands were sweating, my pulse racing, as if I were about to take tea with the Queen. The office was an Aladdin cave of merchandise; product posters signed by stars, limited edition trainers in glass boxes, rails upon rails of un-released clothing samples, and there, sitting in front of a giant logo on the wall, the brand managers of Adidas UK.

Exactly what went on at that meeting, I'll save for the book, but as I left, they offered me some free gear from the store cupboard. This cupboard was more like a full size room, with rows of iron shelves jam-packed with blue and white striped boxes of shoes. I could take my pick from the lot, and after several minutes of controlled hysteria, I finally chose the orange 'runners', which later became a proud memento of The First Time I Met The People At Adidas.



Stooping in the stairwell-come urinal, I took the shoes from their original box and wrapping, and began to douse them with lighter fuel (good brand, Ronson, I think they also do lighters). I had worn them throughout the day before, as a final send-off, diligently cleaning and Scotch Guarding them afterwards, as was my ritual with the things. They still looked pretty crisp, considering they were four years old. With one final loving stare, I took a match to the laces and the flames engulfed the shoes and box with a soft 'whoosh'.



Flames are the most hypnotic of things. I spent a good part of my youth sitting around fires on brownfield sites with my mates, tucking into two litre bottles of high strength Strongbow cider and ten Silk Cut. I would sit and stare at the flames for hours, their heat gently toasting my face, the soft crackling noises drowning out the drunken banter of my friends.

Standing over the burning trainers, I felt awful watching them curl inwards into black charred mush. What on earth was I doing this for? How did I get myself into this stupid book deal? And the telly? And the blog? Perhaps it wasn't too late to pull out? The flames were getting out of control, so I doused them with water (Evian since you ask), and a nasty chemical-smelling steam rose from the disintegrating plastic.



As the smoke cleared, my sense of alarm subsided and I breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps this was a good thing. My first step to a new life. The things you own end up owning you, and these stupid trainers had owned me for far too long. One day soon, I'm going to be free of all this. It's surely just a case of re-programming my mind. I can love myself and be loveable to others without these brands. I can work towards goals that stretch beyond material gain. I can learn to look at another person and make judgements aside from their badges of self. Or better still make no judgements at all.

The Crackberry is next.

Brands displayed/ consumed: Tsubi, Reebok, American Apparel, Bernhard Whilem, Ralph Lauren, Evian, Ronson, Ship Matches, The Observer, The Mirror, Citroen, Cannon.

06.04.06
As someone pointed out on a post yesterday, I do in fact own a pair of Pumas, a brand that only days ago I suggested was the all-time worst sportswear brand ever. And yes, I had my Mother customise them with some Burberry cloth. This, I must say, was at the height of my brand madness in 2001. Sufficed to say, I will not be losing sleep when these go on the fire.

The banter that has since ensued around the Puma comment just goes to prove how subjective and utterly meaningless the tribal values we place on brands are. Some of my best friends, it transpires own Pumas. But for a bit of fun, I thought I'd list a selection of current branded pet hates. I'd be grateful if you'd post some of your own.

Virgin:
The youthful, entrepreneurial vigour, the 'funky' ad campaigns, the trustful cosiness of bearded Branson. It's all too try-hard, and the products never live up to the promise… the cola, the vodka, the trains, the mobile, the credit card… need I say more?

Odeon Cinemas:
Monopolised the British cinema market, killed off 'pikey Mondays' (cheap tickets all-day Monday), overcharge on food (£2.50 for a bottle of water), toe the Hollywood line, and still market themselves as the cinemas for 'those that love film'.

Boxfresh:
Entry-level street wear for office execs, too frightened of middle age to let go of their youth. With the unfortunate strap line 'We Are You'.

Stella Artois:
The cut-price aggressive lager of choice for hooligans the country over, yet the company's still peddling the old 'Reassuringly Expensive' line. What fun it would be to replace the fancy cinematic ads with CCTV footage of Bromley High Street on a Saturday night.

Tesco:
Every Little Helps. As a traditional Sainsbury's man, the dominance of Tesco in the UK is constant kick in the teeth. Their sub-brands (Value, Finest, FreeFrom) are meaningless. It's all mass-produced rubbish.

The list is long, personal and invariably pointless so I will stop there.

Saturday is the day I destroy my Blackberry, in a token test run before the real event in August. Tom Hodgekinson (editor of The Idler) recently commented in the Guardian on the way technology companies use the beauty of nature to peddle their instruments of torture and pain. Ignoring the warning, I bought into Blackberry thinking I would be transformed into a progressive, go-getting social and industrial player. In reality however it actually turned me into an object of sympathetic amusement. On an idyllic deserted beach in India, my holiday mates looked on in wonder as I staggered about in the blazing sun, attempting to get some signal on the damn thing. Standing on a hilltop in Goa, I ignored the magnificent sunset, to answer yet another pointless email:

Message: We need to talk. When are you back from holiday?

Reply: Can't talk now, I'm on holiday.

Pathetic. I'll be pleased to rid myself of the thing once and for all.

03.04.06
Are the wants and needs of the average consumer manufactured by industry, or are we simply being supplied demands that are inherent in us all? I only ask, because I have begun to notice the miraculous efficiently of certain companies who seem to anticipate my changing demands as I move into my thirties. On Saturday just gone, I caught myself behaving exactly as a person in my demographic (male, thirties, professional, urban dweller) should, though I was unconscious of the desire to do so. Go to an Art Gallery and buy a critical theory book (that I'll never read) plus the Guardian newspaper (the magazine of which I'll flick through and discard the rest). Go to an expensive supermarket (Waitrose) and buy organic food. Go to an interiors shop (Habitat) and buy unnecessary designer knick-knacks for the home. This day hadn't been planned as such; the wife and I seemed to drift, quite effortlessly towards our natural consumer types and soon we were laden with shopping bags, the brands of which succinctly encapsulated our crushingly predictable middle class lives. It felt pleasingly comfortable, browsing for ergonomic fish steamers, until at the bus stop heading for home, we were confronted with our doppelgangers. Waiting there for the bus were another thirty something, centre-left white professional couple who, wielding the same carrier bags, had obviously been out shopping for entry-level designer home furnishings and reassuringly overpriced consumables of token ethical value. Of course, we trumped them clothes-wise (us: Marc Jacobs, Bernhard Wilhelm, vintage Dior… them: K-Swiss, Lacoste, Evisu) but as we stood there studiously ignoring each other, I realized that for all the limited edition this, vintage designer that, our off-the-shelf individuality is really an expensive nonsense. I am a walking cliché with average aspirations and limited understanding of my lot in life. After a week of diligent hard work, I like nothing better than to my spend time buying things that make me feel good about myself, just like everybody else. Atop the bus, other people like me had the day's purchases out, touching and feeling the branded trophies from a successful day's hunt.

I met up with a close friend later that day, who embarrassed my by saying he would have worn his new Puma trainers to meet me, had he not read my blog labeling the brand as 'the most all-time rubbish money can buy'. I spluttered some halfhearted hole-escaping defense about there being certain types of Pumas that were acceptable and anyway it was just a joke, but I gave up halfway through, the damage already being done. The more shallow thoughts I reveal on this blog, the more un-appealing, I'm sure I become. I just hope I can retain some friends by the time the book is done.