Ad of the day.

Noticed this whilst thumbing through the pages of last month's FHM mag, a mag I don't tend to buy out of habit these days, but will pick up ahead of a boring train journey or something like that. Anyway, it struck a chord with me, it's clever, simple and appealing just like the product it's promoting. If this doesn't make you want to go out and buy a new polo, then nothing will.

This takes me back to the days of being a young casual visiting Kendal's in town, wanting one for that first away trip of the season, actually excited by the Lacoste polo's on show, all folded up dead neatly, piled up like a Pantone colour chart. Buying one for up to and around fifty quid then was quite a big deal, and admittedly still is now with an approximate tenner increase and under the current climate, so picking which colour you wanted was always tougher than you'd think.

Times change, as do styles, but the classics seldom come and go, I guess that lasting appeal from the perennial faves each and every season is a winning formula. Lacoste and Ralph are key examples in that, and Mr Perry too, that's what makes them what they are, they don't tinker with them, and never have. Okay, the pedant in me might argue they don't handle as well as they once might have, and are mass produced in different nations now so it's easier to get stung with a shit one, especially if you look for a cheap alternative via the Grey Market.

But how many of us will be buying and wearing at least one this summer?

I must admit I'm a bigger fan of the colder months clothes wise, not necessarily when it's toe- curlingly freezing out, where you need ten layers on during the day, and that's before you've even got out of bed! I find the weather at the moment alright, it's sunny but shady.

Don't know about anyone else, but it's actually colder indoors than it is out at the minute, there's still an excuse to wear a coat without being pointed at by strangers on the street.

Summer is a bummer, that was always my stance, just as hippy Neil from The Young Ones once muttered. I guess that's the amateur mountaineer in me, I miss big coats and crew neck jumpers already.

I'm not proud enough of my tits to want to show them off, so I'd wear a jacket even if I was stranded out in the Sahara. I don't like getting a sweat on through the smallest of tasks, i.e. pacing about three yards, or brushing my teeth, I don't like squinting myself into an eye headache, standing under a hand dryer to quickly disguise that wet bit on the back of my shirt, and I also don't like being smacked in the tooth by a dead cold ice lolly, and I fucking hate fighting for my pint against a very determined wasp.

The best things about summer are the longer evenings, being near the sea, scantily clad ladyshapes - girls in short sports shorts, beer gardens, and of course a summer wardrobe can look quite cool. There will be people well into debates about dressing like sailors and asking about 'cargo shorts' on the various message boards out there, asking why Ralph Lauren's are so long at the back, and those who just last summer said pumps were queer, but are now asking how Spring Courts and Sperry's size up.

But the one thing people will all agree on is that up there, the safest summer option, is the classic polo shirt. CD