HOOD HAVE THOUGHT IT? IT’S RAINING AGAIN

When you’ve a barnet like mine, and you’re averse to toggles, looking at the Inner Hebrides weather forecast this time of year is certainly a hair-raising experience

In the particular part of the Inner Hebrides where I live, it rains daily. Seriously. You look at the forecast seven days ahead, and there’s the big raindrop symbol every single day. And the following week. And the one after that. It’s that time of year, I guess. Back in spring, we’d so many successive days of

sunshine that I was panting for a drop of rain. Swings

and roondaboots, I suppose. But, when autumn began, we were all checking the forecast seven days ahead in the hope of just one day when we could get the last grass-cutting of the year done.

Never happened. In the end, by November, you just had to give up and do it when the grass was just a bit less soaked than usual – you really need two days for it to be dry enough ideally. Even if (very rarely) it doesn’t rain during the day, it’ll have rained overnight. Every morning, the paving stones are wet.

Oddly enough, I’ve lived in places that were meant to be wetter, but I don’t

recall it being as bad as this. Fortunately, though, we haven’t had flooding – touch wood – as other parts of the country, including Courier Country (that otherwise happy place), have had, sometimes with tragic consequences.

In normal circumstances, we’d be grateful for the rain. It would be terrible not to have enough of it. That would be life-threatening. Living in a permanently rainy place is just morale-threatening.

I like a good storm, me, but deplore steady drizzle. I force

myself out in it from time to time, when I absolutely need to breathe and stretch my legs, but it presents me with one particular problem: the hood.

As regular readers know, I have strong views on toggles, never having mastered the technology, and averring that my favourite anoraks are those on which the hood just fits the average bawheid like mine without any need for adjustment.

But the other problem with hoods is that they mess up my hair.

If I have to put my hood up, then it means going straight home afterwards. Were I to stop off in the village shop, and peel back my hood, the lassies would laugh at me. Even more than usual.

It’s the type of hair I have: lumpy and pliable. Though I empty a tub of gel on it every day, the wind blows it one way and then, just to make sure I look ridiculous, blows it the other. But, when I put up a hood, it tends to flatten my barnet and send it in a peculiar direction. If I added a wee moustache, sometimes I’d look like yon Alan Hitler, if that was the name.

If I leave the hood down in the rain, affecting a manly

insouciance, soon I look like the proverbial drooned rat and will probably catch a cold into the bargain.

As I write, there’s the rain on again, so I’m not going oot.

I’ve got a couple of fences, and one side of a hut, that badly need a lick of paint. But they’ll just have to remain on my to-do list till next May, when I’m confident there will at last be a break in

the clouds.

IF I HAVE TO PUT MY HOOD UP IT MEANS GOING STRAIGHT HOME AFTERWORDS... IT’S THE TYPE OF HAIR I HAVE

WET, WET, WET: There’s rain galore in the forecast and it’s not just cutting the grass that’s a problem.