Andrews [sic] blog on his heating regime has prompted me to write my own perspective on keeping warm (http://drandrewthomas.tumblr.com/post/66213665700/having-a-bit-of-a-cold-tonight-ive-had-the)

When I read his piece it generated an emotional reaction from me along the lines of ‘how sanctimonious; good for him but I am not going to be following suit’. Now I freely admit that this is quite a shocking admission from somebody who purports to champion ‘sustainable development’ and I decided to explore why I feel this way.

I don’t need a preamble. I know exactly why. I was brought up in houses without central heating but I don’t recall anything particularly negative or uncomfortable about it as we always had a roaring fired going. In any case, we didn’t know any better.

However, after I left home,  a long time ago by now, at a time when I was still wondering what to do when I was a grown up, I lived on the bread line in less than salubrious rented accommodation. My mother’s comment on her first visit was ‘how the mighty have fallen’ and it felt very rock bottom to me too. The front door was up a fire escape. When it snowed, the drifts prevented the door from opening….. Not a good place at all.

And I wasn’t in a good place economically or environmentally either. Earning a pound over the threshold to qualify for any benefit, I couldn’t even be described as part of the squeezed middle, more part of the squeezed last but one rung of society.

The flat leaked like a sieve. When hurricane Charlie swept past, I ran out of pots and pans to collect the drips. The place was heated by horribly inefficient storage heaters. The bill was so large (£70) that I had to turn everything off and spent most of the year paying it off in instalments. I boiled the kettle up once a day and filled flasks for tea and coffee. I made one large saucepan of chickpea stew to last me the week. I slept in a sleeping bag with multiple layers if woolly clothes and a bobble hat. My breath froze. The toilet froze. It was awful.

The frozen toilet was the final straw. As I packed a few belongings in a rucksack and dug my way out with difficulty, past the snow drift that blocked the door to stay with a friend until the thaw, I remember promising myself that if I was ever able to drag myself out of the hole I had found myself in I would NEVER, EVER be cold again. And I would never wear beige – but that is another story.

I find it difficult to tolerate cold. I know the theory of how much money and CO2 emissions can be saved by turning the heating down by one degree but I am always cold. Cold feet,cold hands. My office is like a deep freeze in winter and an oven in summer. I prefer the oven. Colleagues laugh when, in extremis, they find me wrapped up in a blanket, but what option is there when the Helped the Aged card says ‘danger of hypothermia’, which it does on a fairly reguar basis? In the car my husband and I have heat wars… well not really, but it’s not easy to find a compromise when I want the heating full blast and he wants the heat off and the window open. In the summer it’s the other way round. He wants the air-con on and I won’t open the window!

Andrew is right in his observation that we have become soft. I have become soft. But I think that it goes deeper than that. Being warm is a big thing for me. Based on the pledge I made to myself all those years ago, I have come to the conclusion that being affluent enough to be warm is my personal indicator of success and my negative reaction to being challenged that it might not be the right thing to do is disproportionate. Others measure their success by moving to a bigger house, driving a flash car, sporting the latest fashion and so on – and their objections are as deeply felt if challenged to give those things up ‘for the planet’.

A couple of days later……

Facing up to the truth has been very liberating. Since actually confessing to myself that I have an issue I’ve started to think differently about heat and one event at a time tried to ask myself whether I really need to put the heating on. I’ve worn a couple of fleeces and a woolly hat, dug out some very thick socks and tried to think of the benefits of being cold to me personally. The ‘saving money’ incentive won’t work for the reasons outlined. The two reasons I’ve been thinking about is a) that being cold burns more calories and b) being cold is healthier and will make me more resilient in the long run. I don’t know yet how this will work out in practice and I am prepared to take each cold moment decision one at a time.

It’s certainly got me interested. There are plenty of objections creeping into my head – e.g. woolly hat = ‘bad hair day”. But I’m rather looking forward to the new challenge. No doubt Andrew Thomas will provoke me into sharing progress in due course.

I bet that even the most pious and conscientious of blog readers have an environmental Achilles heel somewhere. Heat’s only one of mine. What’s yours?