Where did you get that gorgeous screwdriver?

I was once sitting in El Vino's, on Fleet Street, in the company of a woman about whom I can now recall nothing except that she had four things strung round her neck.

I have no vision of her face, her name, her clothes, though I think she also had sunglasses stuck in her hair. I just remember being transfixed by the sight of so many fashion accessories dangling under her chin.

One was a pair of extremely elegant glasses.

One was some sort of tiny fringed bag, maybe containing a cigarette-lighter.

One was a yellow pen – it was fashionable then to have a ballpoint pen stuck into a top that hung from a thin leather strap.

And one was a watch.

They were all making a statement, which was: "My handbag is full, and in any case, if all these things were in my handbag, where they should be, I wouldn't be able to show them off, would I? Or find them, come to that."

As far as fashion accessories go, I think having four of them round your neck is going too far. But I am no expert, as all the fashion accessories I have ever acquired have been by accident. For instance, when I first went to work near Fleet Street, an older journalist said to me: "There is one thing that a journalist should always have on his person and that is a corkscrew."

And I took him seriously, and bought a Waiter's Friend, one of those penknives with corkscrew attached, and by gum he was right, because there have been times when several writers were gathered together with a bottle of wine, and someone said, "Oh God, if only someone had a corkscrew", and you should have seen how popular old Kington was then, even if only fleetingly.

Then there was the time when I saw a Western film in which some sexy handsome character always had a toothpick in his mouth, and I thought I would try this so I bought a box of 1,000 wooden Canadian toothpicks, and for years afterwards, whenever I had some food stuck in my teeth I would try to get it out with a sliver of Canadian timber, and it would always break off, and then I would have some food and a splinter in my teeth. Then I saw Some Like It Hot, in which Toothpick Charlie was a rat-like villain, and toothpicks looked less glamorous.

More recently, I have discovered that quill toothpicks are a good thing, but meanwhile, my fading eyesight brought me another fashion accessory, because when my wife grew tired of suggesting that I should get reading specs, she bought me a tangible hint in the shape of a round magnifying glass on a chain, the size of a monocle. I wore it round my neck, hidden under my shirt, and whenever small print hove into view, I would whip this antique lens out and do a Sherlock Holmes.

It was also very good for setting fire to small leaves in bright sunshine, which makes me wonder whether, if I sunbathed with it on, it would set fire to the hair on my chest...

Well, I now finally have reading glasses. I still wear the monocle-on-a-chain, but only bring it out if my glasses fall to pieces, which they always do when a screw falls out.

Do screws fall out of your glasses? I'm surprised if they don't. That's how opticians make their living, putting them back in at enormous expense. The last time I lost a screw, the optician who replaced it for me betrayed the whole profession by saying, "You know, this wouldn't happen if you tightened your screws regularly. You ought to have an optical screwdriver. I can sell you one..."

And he did, and it's now on a chain on my car key-ring. It's tiny. Hardly an inch long. Sweet. And when I am bored, or need to do something with my hands, or am sitting between two people at dinner who find other people around the table more interesting, I get it out and tighten my screws. You'd be surprised how that gets people's attention. You'd also be surprised how it stops screws falling out of specs, because most times I do it, one of the screws at least is a bit loose, and I have probably saved at least one humiliating trip to the eye shop.

Maybe saved other people, too. I now find myself picking up other people's glasses and tightening them, without thinking. Complete strangers' glasses, sometimes. Embarrassing, really. Still, when you have found a fashion accessory that's right for you at last, you've got to flaunt it.