The Bitter Press

Let us begin with the basics, because apparently we must. A serious deliberative body demands seriousness of presentation. It demands structure, intention, and the humility to understand that one is not the centrepiece. It does not demand that you arrive looking like a bruise that has developed opinions about itself.

Plum — one of the so-called workers over at the rival rag, a publication that treats juice as a credential — attended the council session in nothing but her own skin and an expression of what I can only describe as ambient self-satisfaction. The skin, I will note, was unpressed. The stem, vestigial. The overall silhouette communicated: I have decided I am already dressed. She has not decided this. Nobody voted on it. The council certainly did not endorse it.

There is an etiquette to these chambers, and I have taken the trouble to codify it, since no one else will. One arrives covered, or one does not arrive. One's pigmentation is not a garment. One's natural waxy bloom does not substitute for a considered surface. Durian, who I will not compliment, at least arrives armoured. Plum arrives ripe, as though ripeness were a formal credential and not simply the last stage before rot.

The indigo is fine. I have no quarrel with the indigo. My quarrel is with the assumption that the indigo is enough — that colour alone performs the work of decorum. It does not. Lime tried this. I wrote fifteen hundred words about Lime. We do not need a sequel, and yet here we are, watching Plum audition for the role.

The correction is simple. The correction is always simple. They simply refuse to make it. This is, I have come to understand, the founding editorial principle of factjuice.com: arrive as you are, and dare someone to say something. Consider this column that someone.