Swanky Gloves and Silly Stories.

When the outside temperature drops as low as -5° Celsius, I take it as adequate cue to don my seriously good gloves when I go out for the night walk. Tonight being forecast to drop rather lower than minus five, on went the gloves.

All my life I’d wanted a pair of seriously good gloves, and last winter I finally laid out the money and bought the most expensive pair the shop had in stock. They’re heavy and thick, like boxing gloves with fingers. They have a fleece lining as well as the body insulation, and they have lots of fancy buckles and straps, the exact purpose of which eludes me but they look good. Best of all, they’re black, with the maker’s logo – White Rock – embossed in red. In short, they’re a pretty swanky pair of gloves. I assume they’re pukka skiers’ gloves, and skiers are a swanky bunch, aren’t they? They drive Volvos.

I did think of dropping into the pub, just to swank with my swanky gloves, but thought better of it. The good burghers would have looked at my dirty wellies, my raggedy work jeans, my winter coat that’s falling apart at the seams (it really is literally falling apart at the seams) and my tatty old woolly hat, and then declared:

‘There is incongruity afoot here. The gloves do not match this ill-attired peasant. He must have stolen them from a rich person’s Volvo. Seize him!’

People have been accused, tried and convicted on flimsier evidence than that.

I might have been summarily suspended by the neck from the nearest tree. At very least I would have been taken before the magistrate and condemned to having my autumn years spent in ignominious incarceration.

I gave the pub a wide berth.

*  *  *

If you think that’s implausible, you should read Frankenstein. It gets sillier and sillier by the page. It reminds me of a story I wrote when I was nine, the denouement of which revolved upon the unlikely incidence of a match falling from somebody’s pocket and striking, thus setting a fire which razed the witches’ house to the ground. Frankenstein is becoming that bad. It lends itself to the gnawing suspicion that it was written by an immature nine-year-old with no clue as to how things work, but with a skill for writing impeccable but stodgy and turgid English. I’m reading it now for two reasons:

1) I like to finish what I start.

2) The sheer implausibility of it all is becoming an amusement in itself.