A Winters Tale.

When are the young people of today going to realise that vanity and machismo offer no protection from the vagaries of winter weather.


There's a long line of young men, and women, who have perished in the cold through wearing inadequate clothing.


I regularly hike miles through the cold of night for a drink in my "local" pub but by wearing vest, shirt, jumper, two pairs of socks, long-johns, trousers, jacket, Parka, wooly hat and gloves I am prepared for whatever winter throws at me.


Dressed like this and leaning into an icy wind I have come across many a young blood attired in less than I go to bed in. I've watched them bravely trying to shrug off the cold as if the wearing of even a jumper would sap their street cred and turn them into laughing stock.


For instance, it's late in the evening on the coldest night of the new year.
A brisk snowflecked northeaster complete with little bullets of driven sleet is hammering into my face and whistling through the toggles of my thick winter cagoule.


With mittened hands I pull down the bonnet of my fleece in a vain attempting to make it fit more tightly around my ears. I stamp my double socked feet inside my fur lined boots endeavouring to get my circulation going to warm my frozen toes. Sheltering from the elements in the lee of the bus station I battle hypothermia and do the best I can to keep from freezing as I wait for the bus to take me home.


Thoughts of the many books I have read recounting adventurers in the foreboding Antarctic. Shackleton, Scott, Fuchs and the unfortunate Oates. Their day-to-day accounts of battling with the driving blizzards and the sub-zero conditions that posed a perpetual threat to their lives whilst testing their unstinting endurance haunt my mind.


Thoughts of Hillary and Tensing on Everest and of brave sailors striving against overwhelming odds to discover the elusive and perhaps mythical Northwest Passage through the frozen wastes and seas of the Arctic ocean.


All hold my admiration for braving the severe cold and deprivations but I can't help but think that they couldn't have been any colder than me as I shiver and stomp trying to get my old blood pumping around my cold, cold bones.


And then I see them. About half a young adults, teenagers even, walking across the bus park towards the taxi rank. They are NAKED!!! Or at least they appear to be NAKED!!! to me. No hats. No scarves, no coats at all. The lads in shirtsleeves or T-shirts, jeans and trainers, the girls in trouble if their parents' ever catch sight of 'em.


Low tops cut down to their navels and the hems of their skirts or hot-pants almost up to the same level.


Five minutes later they are still queueing there, seemingly oblivious to the increasingly inclement weather as my bus pulls in.


They are still there as my bus pulls out some five minutes or so later.


How can they do it? Why do they do it? Can't they afford warm clothing? Have they not the sense that they were born with?


If anyone out there can supply me with sensible answers I will be very surprised indeed. My advice is wrap up and get a LIFE before DEATH gets you.