There’s still time to perfect your penguin walk

“Step 1: legs out, Step 2: soft knee bend, Step 3: arms out…” This is the advice released by NHS officials earlier this week, instructing people to “waddle like a penguin” to avoid slipping on the ice.

Presumably Step 4, if you heed the solemn warning to “adopt the penguin stance”, is to celebrate making it home accident-free with a bucket of herring.

Absurd as such advice is, it did make me consider how differently we all walk in various weathers. In sub-zero temperatures there is certainly something penguin-like about the way we huddle together at bus stops and shuffle uncertainly along the streets in faltering columns.

As the big freeze is swept away this weekend by rain and gales, we will all unconsciously change our gait in accordance with the weather once more – from waddling to scurrying like ants.

In spring, we straighten our backs like the fresh branches of crooked trees, looking up from the rain-sodden pavements to admire the sprouting trees and cacophony of birdsong. In summer, our step slows to a languorous lollop.

Climate change is also changing our walking routines. Increasingly in these summer days of 40C heat I find myself darting like a lizard between shady spots as I walk along the street.

This weekend you may end up doing the same to dodge the rain, particularly in western parts. In total there are more than a dozen flood warnings in place across the country. No need for NHS advice on how to cope with this – this sodden winter we have all become accustomed to navigating the rain. But hopefully this is a mere blip before proper winter weather returns again. Towards the end of the month, a spell of high pressure is forecast, with temperatures again dipping to freezing.

Plenty of time to perfect the penguin walk. Winter is not done with us yet.

Sunrise at Sunderland’s Roker lighthouse