Cold comfort

I’ve never been fond of the cold. As a child, my winters were spent trying to prevent the creep of coolness from entering the bed and penetrating my skin. My pyjama bottoms were tucked firmly into socks, a hot-water bottle lodged between my knees and the weight of woollen blankets rendered me immobile as I slept. When I returned to my parents’ for holidays in my twenties, nights out were followed by a drunken slumber in my childhood bedroom. The flannelette pyjamas and socks remained, but the hot-water bottle was replaced by the wiry warmth of the family’s jack russell terrier and woollen blankets gave way to the feathery lightness of a duvet. The dog and I would sleep until the whirring Saharan breeze of a forgotten fan heater woke us, dry tongues lolling from parched mouths in a state of heat-induced bliss.

Always cold, I can often be found straddling a heater to capture the rising warmth before it escapes into cool air. It’s a method that works well in the moment but has compromised clothing along the way – the medial sole of a shoe acrid and bubbling, the inner seam of trackpants shrunken and singed. My cold hands once