I can’t exactly claim to have been brought up in a cold house. I realise that this is a distinctly non-U admission, so I need to clarify things a little. I grew up in London with parents whose differing views about what to do with a thermostat were so entrenched it took them to the brink of divorce. Instead of calling it quits, however, they healthily settled on separate bedrooms.
My Scotch father’s was unheated, year round, and he kept the windows open. He employed the same policy in his study, where the only source of warmth was a bottle of sherry. My mother likes the house heated, year round. It’s as if she’s conducting some sort of sick science experiment to test the expiration limits of
