ON ICE

Ranulph Fiennes is sawing off the end of his own fingers with a fretsaw. 

It was all going so well. Well about as well as pulling a half-ton sledge across Antarctica at -40º can go. Nothing too much to worry about, just the usual chronic crotch rot, ultraviolet facial burns, gangrenous toes, frozen eyeballs and, of course, gradual and inevitable bodily deterioration, dehydration and starvation. All in a day’s work for Britain’s greatest living explorer.

NEW COAT

A couple of weeks ago, while holidaying on the luxury island resort of Arran on the Costa del Clyde, me and the woman I call my wife dared to think the unthinkable.

I don’t even think we’d taken alcohol.  There was no excuse, except perhaps an uncharacteristic fit of joie de vivre brought on by some unseasonably clement weather.  We decided we were going to buy coats with North Face written on them.  Coats with three-figure price tags, boasting as much technology as the International Space Station, but far more desirable to get into to.  Because it suddenly occurred to us that it’s what people like us do; save thirty quid a week by shopping at Aldi then blow two month’s savings on a coat that keeps us warm at -30ºC.