Charity shopper is a weekly blog post. The rules are that I have to visit a charity shop every week and purchase something from it. I cannot leave the shop without making a purchase and I must use the purchase at least once. I will report every week on what I buy.

It’s more fun if you play at home: if you would like to be next week’s Charity Shopper all you have to do is contact me on twitter @TmhoLudek or email: themagichappinessof@gmail.com with details of what you’ve purchased and be able to answer some simple questions about why you bought it (otherwise I’ll just do it again!).

Date: Sunday 31.01.2016

Shop: British Heart Foundation, 11 Goodramgate, York YO1 7LW

Purchase: 1 plain black T – Shirt

Cost: £1.50

Why did you purchase it?

A plain black T -shirt is the timeless uniform of the existential rebel. Think Marlon Brando in The Wild One.

Wasn’t he wearing a white T – shirt in that film?

Well if you’re splitting hairs then: Gregory Fitoussi

Who?

Tsk! French actor described as the ‘heart throb du – jour’ by The Times.

Ooh la la!

Indeed… on the cover of last week’s Times Magazine he looks effortlessly cool in black T – shirt, black jeans and brown boots. See also: David Beckham stepping out in his recent acting bow playing ‘The Stranger’ in the Belstaff promotional film Outlaws.

You mean the ‘surreal film within a film’ where Becks plays a ‘motorcycle stuntman, haunted by memories of a beautiful trapeze artist’?

Umm, I think that’s the one.

Bit highbrow for our Becks isn’t it?

He’s reinvented himself of late: no longer a footballer – now a cultural icon, a brooding biker in black leather, stubbly with goodness, as Phillip Larkin might have put it.

I imagine a universe where Phillip Larkin might take any kind of interest in David Beckham’s stubble but it is difficult to sustain the fantasy.

Perhaps…

A bit of a boring purchase to kick things off though isn’t?

Not at all. It’s achingly stylish. Haven’t you heard of normcore?

Normcore?

Psssh! Have you been living under a rock? It’s a term coined by ‘New York trend agency K – Hole,’ to quote Vogue, (which I do always) that means absent of labels or adornment, basic and functional. Think unbranded Fruit of the Loom sweatshirts, black plimsolls, Primark jeans and you’re somewhere close.

You’re so normcore.

Thank – you. But seriously – in a busy world where stressed out twenty – somethings are consumed by work and Twitter and sharing picture of cats licking their balls on Instagram normcore is a look that makes sense.

How so?

Let me draw your attention to Daniel Levitin’s Sunday Times bestseller ‘The Organized Mind’. Levitin argues that in a digital age we have too much information and too many decisions to make which leads to a lack of attention and feelings of being overwhelmed.

Sorry, what? I was just checking my Facebook… someone tagged me in a picture of a cat licking it’s… Hang on, what does this have to do with your black t – shirt?

Well making decisions about what clothes to wear can take time and mental reserves which detracts from time spent on more important decisions. Think Marc Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs: both sport a normcore uniform which takes little thought or time to assemble.

Blimey, I wasn’t counting on all this…

Well, you asked.

Charity Shopper continues next week.