As you know, when the Wu-Tang Killer Bees are on the swarm you better protect ya neck.

The Wu-Tang Killa Bees are rarely on the swarm these days. What with them being a little known group of Wu-Tang affiliates who released a couple of bee themed albums between 98-02 – before buzzing off into obscurity. I wonder what the Killa Bees artists, including such luminaries as Meko The Pharoah, Timbo King, The Ruthless Bastards and Suga Bang Bang, are doing now? Perhaps they’re reading this? Checking out a middle class, white idiot from the Midlands, wafting away crudely drawn bees, in a jacket covered in bees. God I hope so.

I’ve worn this Albam Ridsdale Surf Cagoule in public precisely three times. Once when I first acquired it, I wore it for three minutes in the street, to watch how many people stared at me. Quite a few as it turned out. I then wore it out for a drink, hidden under a navy overcoat, so really only the hood was visible. Not sure that counts. And the most recent wear, you see above, swatting imaginary bees.

It’s ideal for sitting around a beach campfire telling  tales of imagined surfing prowess. You know, dropping in ‘gnarliness’ about ‘foamies’, ‘hanging ten’ and ‘mullering’ (all of which I’ve just Googled) and saying ‘duuuuuuude’ (which I didn’t) a lot. Thing is, I never do that. I don’t know what surfing is. I know what standing in a bar drinking a cocktail as people snigger at my bee jacket is. And I’m not sure I like it.

I do love the print though. You can’t buy it any more, it’s from last summer. But it illustrates that the usually reserved, navy, green and grey Albam camp, do occasionally bang-out some mad-power. Problem is, I’m just not mad, nor powerful enough to wear it.