Trade-offs

I have been informed that summer is now over. I include a picture to remind everyone how green the world was once upon a time. This has generated a trade-off with the spectacular colours the leaves have turned to and supposedly compensates for the lack of heat. The jury is still out with this blogger, but it so happens that this neatly segues into an observation that an incident today should have caused me to get hot under the collar, but didn't. (Wonders will never cease, some close friends cry.)

The other day I rashly/impulsively purchased a massively discounted jacket to use whilst cycling in the wet and cold. The nineteen-pounds, ninety-nine pence I parted with on that day contributed to a new-found ability to keep my trapped perspiration warm. In other words, the thing was a useful as a plastic bin-liner – yes, it reduced the wind-chill factor, but it kept my personal rain close to my body which didn't appear to be doing either of us any good. Today, while trying out a new thirty-five mile route, it fell out of the rear pocket of my lycra jacket. Having a fair idea of whereabouts I lost it, I duly went back out on my motorbike to see if I could retrieve it. No luck, but at the point in my journey where I was hoping to find it, I found a discarded blazer in a hedge of the sort captains seem to wear after a day's sailing. Pausing at the roadside while wondering whether to take home this prize for the potential amusement factor, I had an image of some old duffer now strutting his stuff in a JD Sports dustbin liner. It worries me that I find this sort of thing funny. Trade-offs, you see. Trade-offs.

Don't do stupid – it's just not clever.