Wintry thoughts

Winter is upon us. The onset of winter usually means a lot of things to different people. For some, it is a time to stay indoors and eat lots of foods that are rich in substances that supposedly fight the chills. Winter is synonymous with beans, warm clothing, indoors, defaulting on gym subscriptions and fatter people.

Let me make a disclaimer here that fatter people refers to men and in the case of women let us just say they get big-boned or fuller-figured. I am not about to alienate a large part of my readership. So, when we reach the other side of winter, there’s going to be a huge effort – and money – to try to reverse the gains. Diet becomes the buzzword after winter and you will see lots of people drinking water with all the vegetables you can think of from fashionable plastic bottles in the name of on-ramping onto the health highway and shed kilos. But losing weight is a slow and painful process with miniscule results that are as deflating as being told the system is down at your local bank when your creditor is waiting outside.

For people selling jackets on the side of the streets from bales from the UK, winter is a boon. Let’s just admit it, much as you want to buy your winter fashion from the franchised stores, your budget will struggle mightily to get the stuff you want and if you don’t find alternatives, people will quickly forget your name and call you ‘the man/ woman with the red jacket’ because you will rock that for at least 5 days in a week. So for us smart and savvy shoppers, our knight in shining armour is the lady selling jackets from bales. When this business started they hadn’t discovered the power of using floral language to woo customers and simply called them ‘clothes from bales’. With time they got wiser and improved that to ‘preloved clothes’. How’s that for ensnaring gullible customers.

For the fashion conscious, it is going to be a huge struggle. I mean how do you look fashionable while wrapped up in a coat the size of a mattress? There’s also going to be the small matter of keeping one’s hair up to date.

When winter melts away, some will have hair that looks like a failed attempt to grow lettuce. But it doesn’t matter because all it takes is a few visits to the hair doctor and a few hundreds of pulas to get the right hair look. Admittedly, it is not as easy as it sounds since that has to be balanced with the gym subscription and a tough partner who still believes afro is actually a hairstyle.

Every cloud has a silver coating and winter provides the opportunity to grow

So for us smart and savvy shoppers, our knight in shining armour is the lady selling jackets from bales

the population. So since our winter ends officially in July, that means the maternity wards and midwives are at their busiest in April/May. For me, winter is one of those seasons I just want gone. Every day my belly seems to be swelling up and at this rate when winter ends, I will have a nice swelled up belly and will only be a ‘ho ho ho’ short of being Santa Claus. I am currently searching for the winter delete button on my laptop.

(For comments, feedback and insults email inkspills1969@gmail.com) *Thulaganyo Jankey is a Rapporteur and training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA- accredited courses. His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email ultimaxtraining@ gmail.com