Sarah Ogden's Undergarments :: A Modern Love Story

I was just cleaning out my phone camera when I came across this charming graffito I found somewhere in the North a couple of months ago.



I find it distinctly haunting in its suggestiveness. I can’t help trying to imagine who might have scrawled it there so carelessly, near the bottom of a small flight of stone steps, next to a fairly rank row of bus stops leading out of the city centre. Of course, there are endless possibilities, but I think the most obvious interpretation is as follows…

The graffitist is a former lover of Sarah Ogden, recently spurned. Since the spurning, Sarah Ogden has entered into a new relationship with another man. In my head I have a spectacularly telling two-set Venn diagram representing men who buy underwear for their lovers, and men who carelessly scrawl lovelorn and slightly bitter graffiti in public places, and everyone in the overlap is aged 19 or 20, and works in either Argos, Primark or Subway. Sarah herself – I suspect – works in H&M, and has a slight lisp, like Liz Jones, who is execrable.

The graffitist was severely intoxicated when he wrote the question – probably on a heady cocktail of cider and temazepam – hence the false starts, poor punctuation, shocking calligraphy and general downward trajectory of his work. He was probably weeping at the time too.

Of course, I could be way off. The questioner could in fact be a left-handed lady midget, racked with dementia.

If you have any thoughts about Sarah Ogden, her underwear, or any of the other participants in this torrid love triangle, please get drunk and type them carelessly into the comments box below.

I thank you.