I DON'T WANT TO GO TO CHELSEA

For reasons I wont go into, I had cause to visit a bar/restaurant in Chelsea on Sunday. Iv'e never been much of a fan of this area, even back in the seventies and eighties it had lost much of its swinging sixties sheen and had started to become a tourist trap. The influx of new money and cliche had further eroded the area. 

What I saw on Sunday pretty much cemented the reasons I have not been down that way for a very long time. It felt like another planet; a planet of the preening narcissist.

They were all there, the tight trousered sock-less loafers brigade, resplendent in snug t-shirts emblazoned with huge Dolce & Gabbana logos, their bodies doused to the point of consumption in Eau Sauvage by Dior (a fragrance that when applied subtly is rather nice).

The ripped (tight of course) jeans and baseball caps on backwards entourage were there too, faces moisturised to infant like smoothness. Silver foxes? yes they were strutting their stuff; shirts open to the naval, deck shoes and linen shorts draped over tanned skin.

As for the women, fake nails, fake eye lashes, fake breasts, precision eyebrows, pouts, designer clutches, and tantastic tannage; yes the stereotype was in full effect.

Naturally one shouldn't judge on appearance only but its very easy to judge when you add the content of conversation, being as how they were all talking so loudly.

Clearly, being seen in what are considered to be the right places is nothing new but this felt like a competitive arena, a gladiatorial setting where money talks and conspicuous consumption walks. "I've got loads of money" that's the mantra.

Chelsea was once known as a place of young rebellion, a place where the individual would strut their stuff, it's now a platform for conformity, a conformity of very thin cultural merit,  

What I gleaned from my Sunday excursion is that Chelsea feels a bit like a time warp, a vortex that takes you back to the era of Spend, Spend , Spend but with different clobber.