Walking In Flip-Flops

Living, as I do, on the cusp of East London and Essex, the weather is fairly unremarkable. While other parts of the country may get blanketed in snow, even as close as twenty odd miles away over the Thames in Kent, we will probably get away with a light dusting. Yes, we get our fair share of rain and in the summer months it gets hot and in the winter it gets cold(ish); a couple of nights ago the temperature dropped to a degree or two below zero. Like I say, nothing remarkable. But it is quite cold at present, so why are so many people dressing as though it is summer? By the by, and I'm not sure whether this is because I'm getting older or because of the tablets I take for my high blood pressure, but I seem to be noticing the cold a lot more this winter. Seeing people so underdressed makes me feel even colder!

I first noticed the phenomena a week or so before Christmas. I walked up to the shops one Saturday morning to buy a newspaper and there was a man wearing shorts, flip-flops and a short sleeve t-shirt. Now it wasn't freezing that particular day, but it didn't strike me as the weather for clothing more appropriate for a heat wave. Shortly afterwards I noticed a significant number of men in Tesco and other shops and generally ambling about, wearing shorts. This culminated last weekend in seeing a man clamber out of his car at the petrol station wearing a thick padded jacket, surfer shorts and flip-flops. Apart from the inadvisability of wearing flip-flops while driving, his outfit struck me as outlandish; above the waist he must have been comfortably warm, while his legs must have been freezing - bizarre. I have noticed a couple of reports on Facebook from people in other parts of the country spotting men in shorts, even commuting by train, and given the age of the men so dressed, I don't think the phenomenon can be put down to teenage rebellion.

Jacket...

 

...flip-flops. The internet apparently does not have a picture of both of them together.

This trend reminds me of my school days in a way. Back then, when Crombie or sheepskins were the overcoats of choice for the more "laddish" element at my school, those who favoured them had a tendency to wear them during Autumn and discard them during the depths of Winter, when they would, if possible also cast off their blazers. Presumably this showed how hard they were. The more bookish of us would, had our mothers had their way, have been dressed in overcoats, scarves, gloves and balaclavas. I managed to draw the line at the balaclava, having successfully convinced my mother that wearing one was the quickest way to get beaten up by someone who wasn't even wearing a blazer.

Last year postmen were banned from wearing shorts in bad weather. No one told this man.

Thinking about my school days  I recall that hardly anyone came to school by car in those days. For those for whom it was too far to walk there was the bus, for everyone else it was Shanks pony. I just looked up my route on Google Maps; it was one mile, although it seemed a lot further then. A mile is about 2,000 steps according to the nhs website and the nhs are recommending that everyone walks 10,000 steps per day, because apparently this will have a significant, beneficial effect on your health. The average person walks between 3,000 and 4,000 steps per day, which means that there are some people walking a lot less than 3,000 steps  and while there are obviously some groups of people, the elderly, the infirm and the disabled who would fall into that category, there are presumably a lot of able bodied people who could easily walk a lot more who simply are not.

This made me wonder how many steps do I take each day, so I dug out a pedometer and started keeping a record. Last Sunday for instance I didn't really walk anywhere, just around the supermarket getting some things for dinner; otherwise it was simply walking around the house. I accumulated 8,419 steps. On Monday, merely walking about the house (including a lot of up and down the stairs while doing the laundry), I managed 8,828 steps and on Tuesday when I actually ventured outside and walked into Romford (a distance of about 1¾ miles) I completed 11,631 steps...and I wasn't really trying. It is true that a gentle amble round the house, amassing a few thousand steps over the period of a whole day is not quite what the experts envisaged, but it strikes me as being yet another indicator of the way society has changed for the poorer that anyone needs this sort of thing pointing out. Sadly it still has to be pointed out to people that an excess of salt and sugar laden junk food combined with a lack of exercise can lead to obesity and poor health.  I look back to my childhood when convenience food was a rarity, when eating out or getting a takeaway was a singular treat, the majority of our diets consisted of home cooked meat, potatoes and vegetable and there was little obesity. I dug out a school photograph circa 1969 in which there are only two children who could even marginally be described as overweight (one of whom, if memory serves me correctly was the son of a local butcher). We ate healthily because there was little choice and we exercised more, again because to some extent there was little choice.

Now, since my pedometer indicates that I have fallen way below my daily step quota while I have been writing this, I must go for a walk.