As a presenter for Tyne Tees TV and a columnist for a Newcastle newspaper, I’m proud to consider myself a fostered Geordie. Newcastle is my home, my other half is a Geordie and I love it there.
But try as I might, there’s one aspect of local life I just can’t get to grips with — and which I fear means I’ll never truly belong. And that’s the ability to shed clothing whatever the weather.
For while the rest of Britain is shivering in sub-arctic conditions and wrapping up in so many layers that they make the Michelin Man look underdressed, up here in Geordie-land the women are heading out in their traditional winter plumage: mini-skirts, tight-fitting tops and itsy-bitsy dresses that would look more at home on the beach in Acapulco.
The lower the thermometer plunges, the less Geordie women seem to wear — a ‘survival of the fittest’ contest designed to weed out weaklings (or Southerners, as they are more commonly known).
I make valiant efforts to fit in. Last Friday, my partner Al suggested we head out to a nearby restaurant.
The snow was coming down thick and fast, I had been pelted with snowballs by some little toerags on the way home from work and I was desperate to slip into something warm and comforting.
Instead, I found myself changing into a skirt so short it can only be described as a pelmet. My partner loved it because he is a bloke and a dyed-in-the-wool Geordie. And Geordie women don’t dress for the weather. Ever.
The car temperature recorded minus 2C. ‘Toughen up, Pip, you’re in Geordie-land now,’ I thought. ‘A short denim skirt is part of the uniform.’
Alas, when I got out of the car I couldn’t face the Big Freeze and had to totter into the restaurant wearing snow boots, my thickest tights and a trusty Barbour jacket over my micro-skirt.
Night on the toon: It takes more than a blizzard to stop these lasses partying in Newcastle last Saturday night
A few miles up the road, the scene was very different. The weekend in Newcastle is pelmet paradise. The local lasses don’t let something as trifling as sub-zero temperatures spoil the fun.
I often find myself wondering how on earth they cope. Several amusing explanations have been put forward.
Some claim it’s because fake tan stands out better against the snow; others that frost is like free hairspray; or that Geordie men don’t make passes at people who wear clothes.
Last year, researchers at Newcastle’s International Centre even put forward the theory Geordie women banish their coats because they have thicker skins than women elsewhere in Britain.
Others have reasoned that stilettos are a bit like crampons — they make tottering along the ice safer (and besides, there’s enough Geordie men in Newcastle with burly arms who can pick you up if you start to topple).
Even dafter is the theory that Geordie lasses don’t wear coats because the more they shiver the more calories they will lose.
Yet the more I’ve talked to local people, the more I’ve come to a far simpler explanation: Geordie women are just utterly bonkers.
Nicely bonkers, but bonkers nonetheless. Appearance is all, ‘if yee knaa what ah mean’ — especially when Cheryl Cole is the local heroine. My colleague’s housemate claims she refuses to wear a coat because she doesn’t want to pay the cloakroom fee.
Another says it’s part of the culture and when you’re drunk you can’t feel the cold anyway.
She’s stopped doing it now, she admits, because she’s got a boyfriend. In other words, she’s no longer on the pull.
You see, Geordie women are nothing but direct. They’ve hit the town desperate to look sexy, so what is the point in hiding their assets under a winter woolly?
It’s important to remember, though, that geography also plays its part. Yes, Newcastle is near the North Sea, so in a biting easterly wind — like now — we really do suffer.
But the city is also compact and full of easy-to-reach bars. In the Bigg Market, you can stagger from one bar to the another even if you are wearing high heels.
The transport system is also excellent. Partygoers don’t need to jump in a cab — they can jump on the Metro.
Survival of the fittest: Some girls claim Geordie men don’t make passes at people who wear clothes
Forecasts say this cold spell is going to hang around and the wind chill factor will make it feel even more bitter.
However, I bet you a bottle of Lambrini that it won’t make a difference to my Geordie friends.
This is why I don’t just warn of snow and ice in my daily TV weather forecasts; I warn of ‘being careful in those high heels if you’re out on the razz’.
Not that they would mind. After all, there might be a hunky doctor in the A&E department waiting to treat them.
Of course, there are some sensible people in the North-East (though I did meet a woman recently who’d jumped into the North Sea for charity and said it wasn’t so bad; she’d had colder showers).
Yet perhaps the rest of us can learn something from those lasses who launch headlong into a blizzard with only a Topshop micro-dress to protect them.
I know I can. Next year I’m doing a charity trek to Kilimanjaro, where temperatures can plummet to minus 25C.
The experts recommend months of intensive training and a shopping list that wouldn’t disgrace Captain Scott.
If I was a true Geordie, I’d just be packing a boob tube, hotpants and slingbacks.
Source:Dailymail