Winter male legs are being unwisely displayed

It’s Bad January in Ayrshire, cold and brutal blasts of Arctic near-gale are gusting through my triple-fleeced Swedish Goretex jacket, Shetland wool gansie, insulated gloves, jeans and Patagonia long johns. In front of me on the prom is a middle aged man wearing shorts.

The only notable thing about his bare legs apart from their exposure (they’re thin, spindly, heading for the increasing hairlessness of age) is the approximately Celtic (hard ‘C’)  tattoo on one calf. If I were to draw closer, it could turn out to be a random pattern of hypothermic goosebumps. But I do not care to.

These are not a skateboarder’s long shorts. This man is, I’d guess, a stranger to airwalks and anchor grinds. He is walking – waddling – a pair of pugs and has the physique of a Greggs steak slice Teletubby. 

Interestingly, his upper section is not clad in summer apparel. He is wearing one of those small-cell puffer jackets, the ones that absorb rain like Weetabix. And a bobble hat with the word ‘Biffy’ knitted loosely in. 

In the course of my perambulation I will see several other winter wanderers with uncoated legs. One man is wearing diminutive shorts of the Bobby-Moore-in-1966 variety. One can only assume he is off somewhere to play tennis. On ice.

Is it possible these individuals are suffering from some intimate ailment which requires genital aeration or refrigeration? I knew someone who, following surgery for an inguinal hernia, insisted on wearing a kilt commando style “for the ventilation and hygiene.” Obviously he ventured out of doors only in dry weather, to avoid infectious splashing of puddle residue onto his painful bits.

I admit to hating shorts. They were compulsory, for unknown reasons, for boys at my primary school, and optional at secondary. I say optional. Merciless bullying, teasing, and bodily chucking into the gorse bushes surrounding Marr College befel anyone sent schoolwards clad in anything but ankle length grey serge. There was gym, for which you had to bring white shorts and gutties. I was forever forgetting. No-one was made to climb those evil, ceiling-suspended ropes in their underpants. But you heard of it happening.

Postmen in shorts are rife. Perhaps it’s compulsory: I sympathise with their strike anyway, but even more so if questions of uniform are involved. The freedom not to wear shorts is an important human right. Joggers and runners seem mostly to favour tracksuits or lycra, though this does make them rustle and squeak: a useful warning of their imminent advent in the darkness. 

Is it possible that the winter shortists enjoy the cold, or see health benefits, like the wild swimmers last Sunday who seemed to be swarming on and off Barassie Beach? I remember the pal I met in the supermarket one afternoon, blue with cold and shivering. “In swimming this morning,” she said. “In the sea. Had to go to bed afterwards. Only just got up.” This was in August.

I will stay out of the water and with my legs fully insulated against meteorological attacks. Knee chilblains I can do without, and I do not believe that January oceanic immersion  inculcates health. Besides, it’s well known that orcas get peckish in January. Edible seals are running short.