Always ending up summer evenings outside freezing to death for lack of warm clothes

Forgot how cold it can get after dark even in high summer, eh? If ever there was an avoidable quot this is it , though – to be fair – a sudden plummet to arctic temperatures did seem such a remote possibility when you started out in a t-shirt in the scorching afternoon. You’re thinking of those last two shivering, huddled and goose-pimpled  hours of the barbecue party and that’s even after the host has gone upstairs to rustle up every woolly he can find in the bedroom drawer to distribute among the guests. No barbi is complete without it ending up with otherwise underdressed ladies flopping about in huge men’s jumpers. And no self-respecting outdoor rock concert will end without it having the entire audience holding their ignited cigarette lighters aloft to ward off the icy fingers of falling dew . If you’re at a classical music concert , open-air theatre or a summer arts festival event the very fact that you remembered to bring the picnic, the six-packs and fold up table and chairs but forgot the warm clothes is  in itself part of the cultural experience . It is in the genes never to pass up the opportunity to display your hardiness and that British bulldog spirit which holds that it is necessary to suffer to enjoy. But for the pitch darkness you will see the expressions of steely grit on the faces of culture-vultures as they join that mass exodus from an open-air event and ‘ yomp ‘ the last few miles across muddy fields with their hampers and cool-boxes tripping over tree stumps and falling into ditches to start looking for their cars in the dark . They are telling themselves they’ll remember next time, but they won’t.

(Gilbert Sparks, Hastings) - QQQQ*