I spent much of the morning doing that thing that men hate – wandering around clothes shops looking at lots of stuff but not actually buying anything. Men, it seems, view shopping rather like a hunting trip. The objective is to bring down the prey, any prey, as quickly as possible, and then get back to the cave with it. They don’t seem to appreciate the idea of shopping as an end in itself.

Of course there is purpose to all of this wandering around. There are advantages to being of, er, advancing years. It means that you don’t have to stock up on the new season’s fashions. You just get a sense of what the look is, and then delve into the vast collection of clothes you have acquired over the years until you find something that suits. Fashion designers are not limitlessly inventive. They recycle ideas ruthlessly.

Browsing in expensive London shops has another purpose too. Very seldom do I find something so good that I want to spend a lot of money on it (the velvet jacket being an obvious exception). However, having got some idea of what’s going to look good and what isn’t, I can then shop much more purposefully in the cheaper shops back in Somerset.

Of course I’m not going to follow all the new looks slavishly. Some of them don’t suit me phsyically, and others don’t suit temperamentally. There’s a definite rustic air around this autumn. Not me at all. Besides, the idea of poster showing a fresh-faced blonde model in tweed skirt and chuky knit cardigan, beaming happily as she clutches a cute little piglet, doesn’t seem entirely authentic to me. There are good reasons not to be down on the farm, and having to deal with pigs is one of them.

I also have to remember that I’m going to be spending much of the winter in California, where all that chunky knitwear would do me no good whatsoever. Unless I wanted to sell it to Thai and Malaysian students in Berkeley who are freezing to death from the cold.