Man Against the Elements

It is, apparently, the coldest winter in Britain for 13 years. As I type, the wind is booming and scattering rain against the window with what I can only describe as vulgar enthusiasm. Winter has decided not to leave us quite yet. And winter in Britain is all too often a time of heavy, cold rain, which brings with it a range of sartorial challenges.

I am a habitual wearer, even in this age of Global Warming, of overcoats. Not the milksop things of modern construction, thrown together in some sweatshop from soft tweed or worsted of little more than 14oz to the yard...fabric that, in my youth, would still have been used to make up a summer jacket (or some exotic underwear) in Blighty. No... I speak of overcoats of blankety texture, enormous strength and robustness, and luxurious warmth. I possess two fine vintage specimens of the type, no doubt constructed by former airship builders at Cardington in 1937. A third of positively Siberian specification, impressively collared and cuffed in faux Astrakhan, sits in my wardrobe awaiting any Ice Age that may happen along. These are fine coats. Heroic coats. Coats redolent of a better age. But they are also cripplingly heavy and smell like a dead badger once saturated.

So with heavy heart, one returns them to the hanger and ponders the options.

The fashionably short mackintosh (something I will forever associate with the french bourgeoisie, thanks to Monsieur Hurlot) is all well and good, I suppose, but who wants to spend the morning waiting for one's 12oz worsted trousers to dry off? I trust I need not enter into the particular unpleasantness of saturated trousering? Quite.

So in Blighty, only the young and the foolish (so often synonyms) would risk the short mac. So what are the alternatives? One sees lawyers and investment bankers wandering about with Barbour jackets over their suits. This implies they have motored up from their country place and just chucked on the shooting jacket. The Barbour is a splendid coat, but it is no better than the cropped mackintosh in heavy rain (it is, after all, meant to be worn with leggings or stout britches, not a worsted or flannel suit). Once more, the gesture loses all panache when the wearer's thighs are soaked and chafing.

I do apologise. I trust any Ladies reading will forgive my blunt reference to Gentlemen's thighs - I assume that gentleman readers will either be indifferent, unoffended, or faintly aroused...

Are we agreed, then, that the neither the overcoat nor the Covert Coat (nor the Ulster, the Inverness Cape, the Ascot, the British Warm, the Raglan, the Chesterfield or the Duffel Coat) are ideal for a rain-lashed British March? That the short mackintosh and its associated cousins, for the reasons outlined, simply will not do? Hmm. Then only one alternative remains. We must turn to the full-length Mackintosh.

This is an area frought with peril. Terrible schisms divide the faithful on this matter. I, for example, take as my creed the dictum that Trench Coats are for trenches. Beautiful as they are, I cannot in all conscience wear one other than to lead a Battalion very slowly towards large numbers of Boche Maxim Guns. Any other use would fly in the face of a glorious British tradition.

And so we find ourselves, my dear Watson, at the end of a lengthy process of elimination. You will recall the adage that "when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." And so it is, and must be, that the slipover, single breasted mackintosh is the only possible solution to this particular "three pipe problem". I would counsel a fly front. Others would no doubt demur. Being of a determindly pedestrian inclination, I am out and about in all weathers and therefore prefer mine to reach the knee or even below, but this is too long for most.

And the colour? Ah, Sir...I would not dare to impose. That is a matter between a gentleman and his God.

So, the problem is solved. It remains only to pick up one's umbrella, reach for one's hat and... ah, yes. The hat...

Another time, I think. It's been a long day.