Balaclava time...

Forget hoodies. As the year prepares to close, getting colder and darker, I find myself thinking about balaclavas.

Ah, the good old balaclava. Knitted by hand on clickety-click needles by nans up-and-down the country with variants including built-in scarves, cap peaks, ear holes, ear flaps, bobbles, cape-like collars, and of course the full face which left only holes for your eyes, nose and mouth.

Yes, forget hoodies. If you really want to appear threatening on the streets the balaclava could be the fashion item for you.

Of course back in my boyhood everyone wore balaclavas as the weather got colder and colder. Each year my nan would knit me yet another, and I remember looking forward to the first really cold day so that I could drag on my new balaclava. Up and over, then down around the neck, I felt like a knight in chain-mail walking along in a fierce force-something gale. It kept my face snug, if a little itchy, as I pretended to be a North Pole explorer, trudging my way through the fallen leaves to school.

Of course Polar explorers were still all the rage back then. Well, we still had a reasonable Empire, Edward Hillary had just recently climbed Everest and Roald Amundson had only disappeared without trace a mere thirty years earlier. At school our world map was still half pink, homes burnt coal, and wool was wool and not synthetics.

I favoured the half-face, a headpiece both practical and stylish with a band of wool which fully covered the mouth to just below the nose, leaving both it and your eyes exposed. Balaclavas were warm, even on the coldest days a thin film of sweat would cover your face underneath the scratchy wool - perhaps that’s why I was so prone to cold sores.

Interestingly, despite my mini-terrorist look, not once did a little old lady cross the road to avoid me. Nor was I watched suspiciously in shops and even when there was a group of balaclava clad boys - larking about under the street lamps as the light faded - the police never came to move us on. Perhaps it was the short trousers and knee socks.

Of course, since then the balaclava has become a favourite headgear of terrorists, bank robbers and sexual deviants. It’s no longer the cold weather garb of small boys and arctic explorers,

I wonder what would happen today if a group of teenage boys wandered into a modern day equivalent of Woolworths with their faces covered by woollen face masks?

Different times.