How to be Cool

I am often asked, "Ged, how can I be cool, like you?"
It is a sad fact that many people out there still wear Farah slacks, drive ecological cars  and listen to Radio Two. Some try to be with it, by feigning interest in popular culture. Some try to get into music that is made up of "samples". (Point 1: Carpet salesmen use "samples". Anybody else, is a dick, including Massive Attack, especially if they come from Bristol.) Lemon Jelly is maybe OK, but that is because they sample cool people. Some people buy phones with applications they are never going to use, such as the one which enables you to find a gay cruising partner near you. This is just not cool - it does not expose your gay friendly credentials, it merely exposes your dearth of real friends.

Lesson one about being cool is that cool dates. Things that were cool once are not cool now. Hamburgers in a Wimpy bar were once cool. In 1954, the year of my birth, Wimpy Bars enjoyed a moment of Cool value. 2cvs were cool at the time when Jean Paul Belmondo still had black hair. Now they are largely driven by vegetarians, and as you know, anything used or eaten by a vegetarian is de facto, uncool.

In fact, small cars, with the possible exception of a Daihatsu Copen, are not only not cool, they are ultimately depressing. Ladies know a lot about cool. They know, for example, that it is uncool to wear leather trousers if you are over thirty. They know that it is uncool to drink Pinot Grigio in public and have a membership card for the local gym. Nobody cool ever goes near a gym. Nobody. Believe it or not, flared trousers were once cool, and in some ways they still are, but here is a warning, and point number two, Cool is age sensitive; if you can remember wearing flared trousers in the Seventies, wearing them now is certainly not cool. Artists were once, by definition, cool. Not any more. Damien Hirst is a wanker and Tracy Emin is a silly bitch. It is cooler to be an ice-cream salesman (as long as you leave a copy of Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley" by the box of Cadbury's flakes.) It is cool to grow things. Very cool. It demonstrates many cool attributes, the main one being that you no longer fall for the idea of buying microscopic vegetables, wrapped in cling film, in a polystyrene tray,  that have been transported 2000 miles from a repressive African State in an airplane. It is cool to keep chickens.

So, I have said enough for now. I invite questions. I am happy to pronounce on what is and what is not cool, in order for those who struggle, to be a bit cooler. And by the way, struggling to be cool...is not cool.