Please, just go and put another jumper on

Our house is not designed for the feeble constitutions of city folk – but nor is the planet

How people who live in the countryside greet winter

I have to say, I’m not surprised that the planet is disintegrating around us - not surprised at all, given the perpetual state of warmth that everyone needs to exist in. Does no one realise that heating rooms involves using energy, which mostly still means oil, coal and gas? Why do so few people see that using more of one means using more of the other - and that much of it is unnecessary?

It is a running joke in my wider family that my house is cold - a running joke that I don’t find very funny at all, but I suppose it is fair enough. I could have sworn that room temperature for controlled experiments in Chemistry when I was at school was 16 degrees Celsius (i.e. the average room temperature in the 1970s).

People gasp in horror when I say that, because they don’t believe that humans can survive in temperatures of less than 20C, and for a while I thought perhaps they were right and that Chemistry lessons must have been deleted from my memory along with all the other traumatic boarding school years that sucked part of my youth into a black hole that I am only just beginning to be able to access.

So confused was I that I spent a while doing some research, and discovered this article in the Guardian, which indicates that actually my suspicions are ENTIRELY correct - and that the average room temperature in the 1970s was in fact less than my 16C and more like 14C. The graph within that article is possibly one of the most beautiful I have seen (I like to be correct) - but it is also one of the saddest, because although it proves I am right, it also proves that the entire UK has collective amnesia and a frighteningly weak constitution. Worse, that article is more than ten years old, so one can assume that the average temperature of a home is even greater now.

Well not around here it’s not. And it never will be.

In fact, for the last 20 years - corresponding to moving from London to the Westcountry - I have not lived in a house whose temperature rises above 18C, whether we’re in the midst of a heatwave or just an average 20C drizzly British summer. This has less to do with radiators, and more to do with the fact that the houses I have been living in were either built of cob (yes, really, home insurance people, people still live in houses made of mud in the UK) or stone.

Anyway, I am proud that we live in a cold house.

It is partly through necessity - we simply cannot afford to heat these old stones - but it is also the case that I am aware that the planet is struggling and that I need to cut my energy consumption. This has manifested itself in various ways, from not turning up the heating to a ridiculous temperature, to a new regime of only showering every other day so that I use less hot water. Did you know that centuries ago, PEOPLE NEVER WASHED. Not for whole years! Admittedly they also got lots of vile diseases, but there must be a happy medium. (There is: I discovered last year that I am able to go for ten days without showering when the pipes freeze in the winter. And the neighbours still talk to me!)

Are people in the countryside more attuned to the energy crisis? Is it because we are on the front line? Every snowdrift and flood that strands us down our tracks reminds us that the planet is stuffed. Every power cut that leaves us without any heating or water (the pump won’t work) makes us appreciate what energy we DO have.

Besides, as I’ve mentioned, many of us out here in the sticks cannot afford to heat our homes. Rural houses tend to be very old and isolated, and quite a few people still live in caravans. We would be deluding ourselves if we tried to heat them above 16C. You cannot insulate stone walls. You cannot put underfloor heating under concrete floors. It is impossible to block every draught through wonky windows and missing tiles. Entire new wind farms would have to be built just to heat our bathroom.

I think that people who live in the countryside are also more in tune with the seasons. We know it GETS COLD in winter. I have an entire drawer devoted to warm winter jumpers. I do not drift around in flowery dresses or a crop top and crotch-hugging shorts when the thermometer reads 10C (actually, I never wear either of the last two). Not only would I be laughed out of the Hills, it would also be entirely impractical.

We are also hardier than the average urbanite. Many of us work outside. We are used to discovering cuts on our hands that we don’t remember getting because our fingers were numb at the time. No amount of lip salve can save our cracked lips in the depths of winter. Animals and crops still need tending to when the snow is falling and your wellies are sliding around on the ice. Perhaps it is just that all this hard work keeps us warm.

I sleep with the window open all year round - that’s how hardy I am. Admittedly, I only have it open a smidgen when the temperature drops into minus figures, but if I don’t - if I sleep in a room with the windows sealed shut - then I feel as if I am sealed in a coffin. I cannot stand it. And I do not want to miss out on the sounds of the night: the soft whisper of the river, the lonely hoot of the owl, the rustle of the leaves in the oak tree. Given that I am often lying awake feeling anxious in the early hours, these are wonderful distractions, and should definitely be part of the NHS’s new green prescriptions.

But enough of me. What about everyone else? My children bore me to death with their constant complaining about the cold. They should know by now that it falls on deaf ears. They have electric blankets and they have jumpers. They have hot water bottles and they have woolly socks. They have strong immune systems and they are hardcore. They should be thanking me.

Friends and family drive me mad with it. They need the house to be hot ALL THE TIME because that’s how it is in their tropical city homes. And they cannot wait for the wood burner to be lit; they are too impatient for that (besides, they’re still trying to ban wood burners and probably don’t know that a toaster produces PM2.5s as well). No, our house was not designed with their feeble constitutions in mind. It was designed for people who worked hard but were also hard as nails.

The imaginary power station that I have built in my garden so that I can keep my guests warm enough

A hundred years ago when people were wrestling cattle and digging vegetables and stomping for miles to visit neighbours, I bet those visitors did not complain about the cold - and that was a time before insulated jackets and electric gilets and hand warmers and neoprene wellies.

At least I can argue about it with my friends. There’s nothing more warming than a good debate about how weak they are around the dinner table.

But it is the holiday guests in our annexe that really drive me mad. For I must hold my tongue and smile sweetly while they ask (if I’m lucky - they usually just do it anyway) to turn up the heating. Just this summer alone, I am sure our holidaymakers are responsible for the melting of at least one entire glacier.

They shiver in their little strappy vests. They struggle in their skimpy shorts. They have no idea how to light a fire. Or, when it’s lit, how to keep it going. One person pulled green leaves from the trees and wondered why they couldn’t start it.

Instead they burn through electricity as if they have just discovered it. They do not care that entire nations are drowning beneath rising sea levels because they have never heard of slippers. They welcome global warming, because it means they might be another degree warmer. And they certainly don’t care about our electricity bill. They search up on the internet how to unlock and reset the radiators and then they turn them up to 30C - yes, this actually just happened.

It is the reason I am in such a state of rage and despair for the future.

In this particular case, I had knocked on the door to check that the young man (yes, I’m afraid it is generally people who are younger than me - but not always) was warm enough and to offer to adjust the heating should he need me to. I was aware that the temperature had dropped about three degrees that week (although I would like to point out that we still had not (and have not) switched on the heating in our own side of the house).

The manboy answered wearing only a pair of tracksuit bottoms. I tried to focus on his face rather than his bare belly, which I could not help but notice as it was quite obvious and also quite hirsute (which should surely have kept him warm enough?). Oh no, he said, we’re nice and warm, thank you. It wasn’t until I had reeled back over into my own temperate side of the house that it struck me how just how warm and relaxed he was, so much so that he was able to answer the door to a complete stranger while he was half-naked.

Now I know why. It was because he had discovered how to unlock the radiators and override their settings, presumably by searching it up online. He happily dialled them all up to 30C, which is uncomfortable enough if you’re lying by a pool with a pina colada, let alone wandering around an annexe in the middle of the Westcountry with some chickens and a middle-aged landlady hammering on the door.

I only discovered this after he had left and I went in to strip the beds. On opening the door, I was almost bowled over by a wave of heat more powerful than any tsunami. This was followed by a plague of flies that half-smothered me as they fled towards the cool of autumn.

I had to fan one radiator to cool it down because it was flashing red and an overheating warning sign screamed at me so loudly that I missed the sound of the last iceberg breaking away from Antarctica’s ice shelf.

It was a very low point in my faith in future generations.

One day, perhaps I will be Basil Fawlty enough to keep the heating off and tell people to just go and put another bloody jumper on like I do on our side of the house. But for now I will keep providing blankets, hot water bottles, firewood and throws as well as bossy laminated messages in the hope that someday they will mean something to someone.