11.19.08
freehands
A quick glance at the weather forecast suggests that it’s about to get cold – really cold. Saturday’s maximum temperature in London is pegged at 2 degrees C. Apologies to any Canadians, Scandinavians and the likes, but here in London, where it’s habitually a few degrees warmer than the fairly balmy south of England (thanks, urban micro-climate) that’s really cold.
It’s fine, though. Like most people in the British Isles, I’m almost ridiculously well-prepared for the kind of arctic conditions that we haven’t really seen on these islands in a couple of decades. Seduced by images of white Christmases and parental recollections of frozen winters, we stock up on gloves, scarves, hats and heavy coats – oblivious to the combined effects of global warming and the Atlantic Gulf Stream current, which conspire to make our winters increasingly mild and our summers increasingly wet.
Somewhere, I have a ridiculously heavy coat which I was given to wear while watching a re-enactment of a WW2 tank battle on a snowfield in Finland in late November a few years ago. I’m holding on to it “just in case”. Just in case what? The Day After Tomorrow was entertaining, granted, but it seems poor justification for wardrobe choices.
I digress. My point was – by our somewhat odd British standards, it’s getting cold, as winter habitually does. Normally, a nice pair of fleece-lined leather gloves form part of my arsenal against the chill – but they’ve got a bit of a downside, in that they make using phones, iPods and even wallets into a right pain in the backside.
This has reached a peak due to a couple of factors. Firstly, I have a nice new wallet with a flap that holds my Oyster card (London’s transport touch-card) on one side, and my SOAS touch-card on the other (yes, I’m a student these days, for those who haven’t heard – first year of a four year Japanese BA at the School of Oriental and African Studies). This is a handy arrangement, but requires a bit more fiddling than just pulling my wallet out and slapping it on the card reader. Secondly, I have an iPhone. Pressing buttons through gloves on an old phone was a pain; using a touchscreen is simply impossible.
Hence, Freehands. These clever little things are designed exactly for this – they’re a nice pair of leather gloves which have fold-back tips on the index fingers and thumbs. Not entirely a new idea, but it’s novel to see the feature on a genuinely nice pair of gloves, and the addition of a pair of magnets on each finger to hold back the flap while you work is very clever indeed. Plus, they’re inexpensive even with the present dismal Sterling / Dollar exchange rate.
I thought the legions of touchscreen-device users on my friends lists might be interested – I’ve ordered up a pair anyway, so I’ll drop a quick post later on to let you know how I get on.
