Jonny Wilkinson shines a different light on the price of coffee

Jonny Wilkinson, Northern Advocate columnist.

I kind of stumbled into it when I bought a washed denim blazer online. I love online shopping. It lines up with my theory on gender based shopping traits.

My theory is based on our forefathers - hunters and gatherers. Men like to find their quarry, kill it and make a beeline for the cave fire, to stare at it moronically, like we do with our TVs.

Hence my penchant for online shopping, whereas women, stemming from their ancestral gatherers, like to make shopping a long drawn out process (often making their male counterparts, if they happen to be with them, miserable and morose, dragging their knuckles along retail sidewalks looking for a way out).

Anyway, when I was told I was "on trend" and "on point" by George, who knows her fashion trends, I was smug as hell! I wasn't only wearing double denim, I was wearing triple denim; stovepipe skinny jeans, denim shirt and denim blazer.

"Damn, Jonny, you're hip," I told myself (no fool like an old fool).

Yes, double denim is back. The old Canadian tuxedo has put the cheese back into the cheeseburger. Double denim first raised its head in the 70s, had a comeback in the 80s then disappeared for a while with the 2000s, and now it's back.

I find it interesting to see fashion reinventing itself, coming around faster. Our mortal coil is becoming a fashion spiral.

Food traits are the same, although personally I think there is a tendency to revert to the food of our younger years, as it strikes a nerve of comfort. I bought a packet of chicken coating powder the other day - delicious. I have been contemplating hunting down a fondue set, remembering that creamy gruyere sauce.

Yes, old habits and values die hard.

On the AM Breakfast Show this week, they had a piece on a Nelson cafe doing its part to promote gender pay equality by charging male customers more. The tax on men is being levied as part of the Equal Pay Week of Action.

Men had been gladly paying the extra 50 cents, which equates to 12 per cent more for their coffee or tea. This sum reflects the 12 per cent difference between pay for men and women.

"Okay, so what about the pay difference between disabled people and non-disabled people?" I thought.

Answer: It is not even measured. However, according to the 2013 census, the unemployment rate of disabled people is 45 per cent. Based on the café's calculations of equality this would make a cup of coffee cost $ ... yeah nah, I am not going to even try to extrapolate that, but it would be a hard gulp to swallow.

Just like my family is finding my triple denim a little hard to swallow? Never mind, they'll catch up to the fashion spiral one day.

Some trends deserve resurrecting and others deserve to be buried.

■ Jonny Wilkinson is the CEO of Tiaho Trust - Disability, A Matter of Perception, a Whangarei based disability advocacy organisation.