Brass Monkeys

I have often wondered where the phrase 'Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey' came from. Now I know. A new book called Soldier Talk, a collection of military slang through the ages compliled by Simon Cullen, contains the answer. A Brass Monkey was a metal triangle used to hold cannon balls in place. Very cold conditions contracted the brass thus pushing the balls off the monkey.

It always seemed strange that cold and Brass Monkeys should go together as one would expect any rendering of a monkey in brass to be made in a warm climate.

However, Brass Monkeys, it has been, in the last few days and suckered by the warm weather that prevailed almost to the end of November, the UK has been caught with its pants down yet again.

Observing peoples' reactions to a severe downward shift in temperature has been fascinating. Some just ignore it and carry on wearing just a T shirt over the beer belly as if it was still high summer. Others dig every shred of Winter clothing out of the cupboard and wear it all at once emulating the famous bag lady of New Oxford Street.

These days I'm a multi-layer man, having been a chunky knit chappie in my younger years. Chunky knits were all the rage amongst the rugger buggers of the sixties, sort of fitted the figure I suppose and suited the pre underarm deoderant and after shave era. A pal of mine cuddling his pint of Old and Filthy to his extensive chest at the 'morning after the night before' session noticed a serious pull on the front of his chunky sweater. 'Good Heavens,' he exclaimed. 'Look at that. I must have been dancing with a woman with hooked nipples last night.' Whether physically or not, he certainly got hooked as he later married her.

The shops had already begun to offer Winter overcoats at reduced prices to get ready for selling us Summer clothing in the Spring when the only moment that anyone would wish to buy an overcoat arrived.

Such are the pressures of the retail world, always having to think at least eighteen months ahead and rely on the weather to perform on the norm to bring in the punters.

There is pressure on the authorities to keep transport moving and look after the elderly and homeless. This they appear to be doing with all the skill you would expect from those driven by the lure of a Knighthood rather than a Lamborghini. Stultified by multi layered jobsworths, every modern method is dismissed as untested, untraditional and unlikely to succeed.

So the gritters don't grit. The train drivers can't get to their trains and the lines freeze. We even had the 'wrong kind of thaw' when the de-icing train went out and melted the ice on the tracks, followed by rain which washed the de-icer liquid off the tracks, followed by a freeze which put the ice back on the tracks.

Some continue to drive too fast and furiously. The modern car siren calls unwary drivers into ignoring the road conditions and all they worry about is getting there and overtaking the bugger in the fast lane. Some seventy vehicles had a coming together on the M1 in freezing fog on Sunday. Fortunately very people few were hurt.

Others don't drive at all as ancient batteries which limped into life in summer give up the ghost. Even Erica's jury-rigged climate control system bust and she was beached during the really cold spell.

One group that is under pressure is those bookmakers who during the long hot summer laid long odds against a white Christmas in the UK. If the cold continues and with it the new strain of flu, now rated an epidemic, the ruling conservative party can expect further deaths amongst its' elderly back bench Knights. The betting on an early election and a change of Government will intensify.

The Thames was completely fog bound on Sunday which left many of, its usual inhabitants, Brassed Off.

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