Okay, before you think I’ve lost my damn mind let me tell you a story. Yesterday, as I journeyed to the hospital to visit a doctor with a single photograph of his cat sitting proudly his desk, I saw about fifteen schools girls walking in the rain with no coats on. As I watched one girl take shelter in a bus stop as she attempted to pull her blazer over her head, I remembered all the times I’d had to make the same difficult decision I assume she had made that very morning:
A Take a coat or jacket with a hood to school then be forced to carry it around all day like a useless, hefty fabric sloth when it inevitably becomes too warm.
B Don’t take a coat and face a thirty minute walk in the relentless drizzle followed by a day of sneaking off to brush my hair in the toilets.
C Take an umbrella. Oh shit I don’t have an umbrella. Why don’t I have an umbrella? Oh yeah, I used it during spring when the wind was as angry as all Hell and it got turned inside out. Why don’t I own a spare umbrella? Well, I’m not a 32-year-old receptionist and I don’t play golf. I need to go to Primark.
It was at that very moment that a fourth option flew into my head like a flip-flop in a storm: why not wear a cagoule? An anorak? A pac-a-mac? They’re light-weight, they dry fast and they fold up without creasing.
Now, there’s a good chance that you have already come to this conclusion, but those of you who haven’t probably aren’t convinced yet. After all, just the word cagoule evokes imagines of old ladies on scooters that can inexplicably travel at both 0.5mph and 90mph or creepy men who sit in parks. Well apparently the fashion industry had a similar thought and now many sites have renamed them parkas. Still, a cagoule by any other name will still protect you from the rain without becoming a burden.
So here are thirteen modern, stylish cagoule/anorak/pac-a-mac/parkas that will keep you dry, whilst also ensuring that your new practical jacket (pracket? practijacket? jacktical?) won’t cause your peers to call you a fisherman or ask if it formerly belonged to your nan: