Towards the end of March, or rather exactly on the 21st, first day of spring, the Locals put the winter uniform in the closet in favour of the summer one.
Normally at that time the days are still quite cold.
But it does not matter, because it is spring, They are now undressed and will remain so until October.
So school children will have the sweatshirt removed from their uniforms and will remain in short sleeves, this is a classic of the anomaly in question.
I want to make it clear: they will not go out with short sleeves under a coat or jacket, but they will go out just in short sleeves. Often with the hair still wet, another British classic.
We cannot blame them. If they were waiting for summer to arrive, they would have to wait until July, and then stay in short sleeves for just a couple of days, get undressed, get dressed again, always carry a shirt or jacket. Objectively, it's tiring. So they master the summer, they manage it, making it start on the first day of spring.
The average MED (Mediterranean person) isn’t able to understand how is possible to endure such a cold in favour of a common project. I get goosebumps when I see my neighbour in short sleeves leaving the house, with a nice winter mist.
And the inevitable flip flops. The British use flip flops as many days of the year as the Hawaiians.
We MEDs have feelings of apprehension for them, for their children and especially for their elders.
80-year-old women happily walking into puddles with their bare feet in sandals… And you think: "God damn it, put on a pair of closed shoes, grandma, you will get pneumonia!" But they don't get anything at all.
Children who go home from school in shorts and t-shirts, and we MEDs - especially newbies - are convinced that they will not be alive at the end of April and instead they amaze us, because not only we see them safe and sound day after day, but we realize that they never miss a day of school while our children are constantly sick.
And then we understand that there are different ways of living in this world and we are not always right. Especially we Italians, obsessed with the cold. We who believe that wearing or not wearing a hat would make the difference between life and death for a child… well, we have to change our minds: it doesn't.
British people certainly have a very different thermoregulation system from ours; on the one hand this is typically Northern European - people accustomed to low temperatures - on the other, as often happens, this is just anomalous. Yes, because in the UK it's not really cold. For example, in Piedmont, my region, winter it is often much colder.
The truth is that they wear what they want that day and it does not matter if it is not in accordance with the external climate.
The most striking example are the girls who go out on Saturday night.
Do they want to show off a nice sleeveless sheath dress because they want to be beautiful? Is it December? It doesn't matter; they will wear the sleeveless sheath dress, without socks, with sandals.
And they are right, they are beautiful, unique.
God knows how do they manage to be practically naked in the street with 5 degree, but who are we to judge? [for further information see The anomaly of the clothing choice].
The problem is that we, the Others, with a weaker and poorer immune system -not selected over the centuries with these drastic strategies - are unable to keep up with the very strong Albionics.
An example that plagues my family: children's pool parties in the middle of winter.
Children's birthday parties always last two hours (and not one minute more, God bless this Country) and often take place in neutral places, such as horrible indoor playgrounds, or in sports centres or - alas - swimming pools.
The order of events is always the same: about an hour of activity, junk food in the structure that hosts the party or in the nearest Pizza Hut (whatever time it is) and then bye finish au revoir, you have to go and take them back and they will have a crumpled bag with 5 or 6 useless plastic things inside, some gummy candies expired in 1998 and a slice of the birthday cake.
Which, in hindsight, would in itself represents a sub-anomaly, given that the beauty of going to birthdays is that you eat the cake all together... but let's not digress.
In the case of the swimming pool, children splash around for an hour in the water and then WITHOUT DRYING THEIR HAIR, they go outside and go to Pizza Hut in the rain.
Well, THEIR children do not blink, my son the next day has tonsillitis and 40 degrees fever.
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