It's autumn time, don't you know, season of mists and all that poetic romanticism. Most of us, I bet, don't even notice the kaleidoscope of colours all around. Breathtaking.
Instead, the usual reaction is to hit the central heating switch and turn the thermostat way up, too far up in most cases. I suppose I'm just as guilty.
But when the raw wind starts howling and the ice-cold rain stings the face, I don't just turn up the heating. I also remember. And for a brief moment or two I'm back in time, almost four decades, a Black Watch soldier once more.
The regiment was marching through the darkness and heading into the Scottish mountains on a military exercise. A full-blown gale drove sleet and snow horizontally into faces hour after hour, mile after mile. No one talked as the wind grew in strength with every passing step. No one had the strength to talk as we marched ever higher into the hills.
That night was the first time I ever saw grown men cry with the cold. By the early morning light, more than 20 had succumbed to hypothermia and had to be taken down from the hills.
But the rest of us had made it through sheer grit and determination. Now ahead of us lay three days of standing up to our knees in mud-filled trenches on snow-covered moorland.
Looking back on the experience so many times over the years has made me appreciate the toughness of the highland clansmen of old.
Edward Burt, author of Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland, noted nearly three centuries ago how the highlander would sleep in the open air even in the severest winter.
“The highlanders were so accustomed to sleep in the open air, that the want of shelter was of little consequence to them. It was usual before they lay down to dip their plaids in water, by which the cloth was less pervious to the wind, and the heat of their bodies produced a warmth, which the woollen, if dry, could not afford."
Tough or what? What a bunch of softies we are today!
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