Suzanne Harrington: All butch on Brighton beach — but when I come home to Ireland, I'll be wearing a dry robe

I'm an unofficial member of the dry robe set, and will be glad of mine when I swim off the Cork coast this Christmas

Suzanne Harrington: "This Christmas Day I will be getting in the sea off the coast of Cork, 592 kilometres north west of my usual waters. I know my limits — I’d rather be a Dry Robe Wanker than dead."

I have a confession — I have become One of Them.

The owner of a dry robe. Not even a real one — they cost more than my car is worth — but a €50 job off the internet. 

Ankle-length and lined with thick orange fleece, windproof and wraparound. I am now, unofficially at least, a Dry Robe Wanker. An off-brand member. 

Part of that collective noun I’d always resisted — a smuggery of Dry Robes.

My aversion has been both cultural and aesthetic. 

The connotation of Dry Robe ownership is far more weighted than merely owning a hefty outdoor garment; for a start, DRWs are the kind of people who call swimming ‘wild swimming’ if it happens anywhere beyond an indoor chlorinated rectangle.

What began as a practical solution to avoid hypothermia on windswept winter beaches during lockdown, when we were all throwing ourselves into icy seas to remind ourselves that we were still alive, has since morphed into a kind of aspirational fashion statement that has migrated inland.

There’s even a Facebook group called Dry Robe Wankers, denoted by a W and the anchor emoji. These are not my people, and yet here I am.

Hovering on the periphery of a group whose members, on the school-run 50 miles from the nearest body of water, are kitted out like they are about to swim to Antarctica. 

Huddled at the school gates with other DRWs, before climbing into heated 4x4s to drive 500metres for a flat white. 

Walking the dachshund around city streets, popping in for a pint of something micro-brewed, greeting another DRW at the bar with self-congratulatory calls of ‘hey buddy’ and man-bantz. No, no, no.

There’s also the stark fact that the anorak in all its forms is, and always has been, a fashion crime worthy of the death penalty. Anoraks — even items described as ‘puffa’ — are to aesthetics what Trump is to feminism. 

They are the coat version of wearing grey joggers in the street... a signal to the world that you have given up, that beauty no longer matters to you, that you no longer care. 

The sartorial equivalent of daytime telly in your pants eating three-day-old frozen pizza; life has defeated you, and you have given up.

So why in the name of ‘wild’ swimming would I wish to transition from shuffling inelegantly out of a wet swimsuit on a cold beach, accidentally flashing passersby, tripping over my trouser legs as I wrestle myself dressed again, to someone who is the wearer of a giant ugly anorak with deeply embedded wanker connotations?

I’ll tell you why. This Christmas Day I will be getting in the sea off the coast of Cork, 592 kilometres north west of my usual waters. 

I might be all butch on Brighton beach, briskly drying off with a balled-up bra, but I’m actually not that tough or foolish. 

I don’t want to die in the Atlantic Ocean, or on the beach next to it. I know my limits — I’d rather be a Dry Robe Wanker than dead.