Is it just ME?

Or is October too early to turn on the heating?

WOMEN across the land — and, let’s face it, a lot of skinny, shivery men — claim it’s time to turn the heating on.

Resist this! The planet and your bank manager will thank you. Brace up, show some gritty British discipline. Put on a sweater. Move around. Wear a vest.

When you do go out to an overheated office or sweltering department store, pretend you’re off to the loo and whip off the Uniqlo.

You’re not Shackleton, in an open boat in the Antarctic shivering in a rotting sealskin parka, or a pineapple in a hothouse.

There is no human right to drift around the house in a T-shirt while a blizzard rages, like that weedy American kid in Home Alone.

The time will come, when the Beast from the East blasts in, to splash fossil fuels around and fill the whole house with dusty, germ-breeding heat. Even we, who work from kitchen

Brace up, show some gritty British discipline and wear a vest!

tables, admit that typing in fingerless gloves and a woolly hat goes too far. Also, the cat gets resentful.

I aim this spartan advice at myself as much as anyone, because on draughty mornings, yes, my finger itches for the button, until walking the dog or plunging in the North Sea resets my body’s thermal expectation.

Temptation is strongest right now, because every spring I store away the warm clothes and, come October, I can’t find them and end up wearing three T- shirts instead. But, hey, we are lucky to live in seasons, and know what it is to welcome the first warm sun.

So I excavate the vests, and remember childhood in a freezing Suffolk house.

We would read in bed wearing gloves, and the only place to get dressed in the morning was the boiler cupboard. We all fought to get into it, so we could bravely drop the dressinggown. It made me the woman I am . . .