DEAR JANICE

Our new house has released me from the tyranny of renovating. My only project has been the rejuvenation of an old veneered stereo cabinet so I can play my vinyl collection on the turntable. I painted it with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint. If you haven’t tried chalk paint you should. No preparation of the surface is required; you just brush the chalky paint on. That is all I have to say about renovating.

I have a great deal more to say about insulated rooms. At our old farm Double Tops we slept in a bedroom known as The Icebox. On winter mornings the inside of the windows were often iced with a kaleidoscope of crystals, and after extremely cold nights I would wake to a film of frozen breath coating the blankets about my face. “It’s character-building,” said my neighbour Adrienne when I complained. “We sleep with the verandah doors open year-round and sometimes we have awoken to snow on the foot of the bed.” I shut up after that and got on with acquiring the resilience needed to survive in the Canterbury high country.

We have grown soft in our low country house. I revel in the double-glazed windows and the insulated f loors, ceilings and walls that help maintain an even temperature in the house. I enjoy being able to sit at my desk without a bulky down jacket and a woolly hat clamped on my head to impede my thinking. But, old habits are hard to shed completely. We still sleep best in a cold bedroom. At night we open the bedroom windows and sometimes the doors as well. We don’t have to worry about intruders in the country – apart from the odd mouse that is silly enough to venture in. I don’t imagine open windows and doors are an option in the city so I hope you don’t become too “soft” in your insulated bedrooms.

Remember, Janice, the British conquered the world on a stiff-upper-lipped regime of sleeping in draughty cold bedrooms and bathing in ice-cold water.