The course of new gloves never runs smooth...

I need to buy some new gloves since it's getting cold. Maybe not Arctic cold, but cold enough for me to think "Oh boy. It's cold today". Because I think in the style of Sam from Quantum Leap.
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Quick aside: Do you ever wonder if every morning you have actually leapt, QL style, into a different person? Or is that just me?
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Anyway, so I need to buy some gloves. I wanted to buy some at lunchtime but ended up too busy to make it beyond the sandwich shop. This is also not boding well for my Christmas shopping. Still four days to go though so not time to panic yet.

I do have some gloves at the moment, of the hand-knitted variety. I didn't wear them for a while since they were knitted by my ex-girlfriend's grandmother and for a while they brought back painful memories.

But more recently, I haven't been wearing them because they don't actually fit me very well. The fingers are too long and they're tight around the finger bases. There is no sensible reason for me to put up with that sort of thing any more - I won't be risking offending anybody by refusing to wear them, so I may as well switch to some that fit.

But I'll have to buy some new ones first. This, as usual, poses a whole raft of new questions: What type of glove? What colour? Well, ok, just two new questions. Let's tackle them one by one.

I'm a firm believer that there are only two colours grown boys can get away with in a glove: Black and grey. And choosing between them, well, who really cares? So that's an easy one.

Type of glove though, is harder. Woolly? Leather? Padded ski? Gardening? Driving? Rubber?

Rubber is just daft. I shouldn't have put it as an option. Although they are cheap, they clearly fail on the black/grey front. And as for gardening or driving, I don't have a garden and I also don't have a car. So strike those two.

I have no current plans to go skiing, so ski-gloves are not necessary. And they'd also be completely impractical for operating my iPod. Or indeed, my front door, coat pockets, coat buttons and anything and everything else - apart from ski poles. Which I don't have any of, since I'm not going skiing.

And leather? No. Don't like 'em.

So that leaves woolen gloves. But woolen gloves have one big, huge drawback: They are rubbish, awful for Snowball Fights! They just get wet, cold and you die of hand-pneumonia. And maybe frostbite too. I don't want that. I like having ten fingers. Having less than ten fingers would make the task of buying gloves even harder! Unless there are some highly specialist shops around, I'd have to resort to hand-knitted ones.

That, then, would rule out woolen gloves and leave me with no option but keeping my hands in my pockets (and that's a bad idea, as when it's slippy, which is oft when it's cold, I need my hands out of my pockets so that I can wave my arms around to keep my balance and not fall over).

Except: Wait, hang on, I'm 28 years old. I don't have snowball fights any more. I work in an office and then go home. If I do throw a snowball it's almost certainly after I've imbibed alcohol, when I probably don't care if I'm cold or wet. I'm old and dull and chucking lumps of ice around is sadly not part of my normal life any more. Where did the fun go? When did we stop enjoying the simple joys of life?

Fine. I may never be able to regain my lost youth, but at least it means I can comfortably settle on buying some brand new, warm, woolly gloves.

And in the meantime I'll wear my old ones and remember that once, a long time ago, a near-stranger made me a pair of gloves, and expected nothing in return.