Ghillie Waterproof Fleece

I have a favourite shirt; I have had it for years. My wife hates it. I bring out this shirt most weeks and sometimes display it when I am feeling particularly rebellious. It makes me giggle inwardly to see her look of abject horror that says ‘’how can you even contemplate wearing that grotty thing and going out with me!’’ It quite literally goes everywhere with me and I have managed to keep it hidden in rucksacks and travel bags where she cannot get her hands on it to turn it into charcoal. Just recently it has been out in the Arabian Gulf, Croatia, and the South Pacific and it will be out with me in Iceland next month. I will wear it until it drops off my back or is removed off my cold dead body. I love stuff like this. Certain items that become part of you, that embrace you and makes you feel like the person you want to be and just recently I have been having that feeling again because a few weeks ago I was sent a new fibre pile jacket called the Ghillie Waterproof Fleece made by Fife Country www.fifecountry.co.uk 

I knew as soon as I put my arms through the sleeves and wrapped round the length of the jacket that I had been sent something that is really going to annoy my wife in a few years time. Every day now this jacket has found its way onto my body and already it has been soaked with the April May showers and warmed me from the cold snaps and chilly winds that the country has had over the last few weeks and spent time next to a roaring camp fire. I have not really done anything special to test this jacket out, there are some things that are just intuitive and the fact that I wear it every day, even in the house, bears testament to its practicality and from that viewpoint it is the perfect winter jacket. But this is fast becoming so much more than that. It’s becoming emotional. In some ways there is a feeling of being naked when I forget it or change jackets, and I have tried a few times to break the habit by putting it to one side and wearing say my waterproof hunter jacket instead, but in the end I keep coming back to it. 

This morning the weather was bright and windy and I had to go out in to the woods to view a new bushcraft training area, so naturally I wore the jacket because of the cold windy weather, after a short while the heavens opened and both rain and hail bounced down as though coming direct from Valhalla. I was soaked. My hair was dripping, my cotton German army trousers were soaked through, but the water pretty much dribbled off the jacket and even though the wind had replaced the wet, I was warm dry and protected. That fact that this jacket is so practical and does what it promises to do is one aspect, the other is the emotional bond which I am sure some wearers will develop as I seem to be, and the other wonderful feature is the price, it is simply too cheap compared to other branded fleeces. Many outdoor people who read this will know exactly what I mean when I say quite simply, I am in love.