It’s the season of mists, mellow fruitfulness…and turning the heating on

My name is Helen Nugent and yesterday I turned the heating on.

I daren’t tell my dad, a man who resolutely refuses to even approach the thermostat until November because ‘once you turn on the radiators there’s no going back’. I was nine-years-old before I realised we had central heating. During the bitter Northern winter months, my mum would lay mine and my sister’s clothes in front of the fire before we got up for school. I have many memories of getting dressed in the half-light, silently lamenting the face that our radiators were just for show. I’m still cross about that.

Now I fear the cold. So it felt good to hear the familiar whumph of the heating firing up yesterday morning. I swept away the last vestiges of guilt about flicking the switch before September is out, reminding myself that I live in the shadow of the Pennines in a town with its own micro-climate.