Meet the heating refuseniks – and how they’re planning to survive this winter

The recent cold spell has sent my wife and I off on our annual pilgrimage to the attic to search for our skiwear. Hats and mittens as well.

That is regulation evening dress at Upton Cressett. Alas, ancient brick houses like ours have no insulation, and no amount of layering of sweaters, shooting socks and pyjamas can compete with full 1990s ski wear - including long johns - worn around the house 24/7.

I can no longer fit into my old skiing jacket, so this year I’ve been walking around like the Michelin Man in a strange combination of a $2,000 moth-ridden cashmere dressing gown given to me by an Italian ex-mother in law and - on top of this - a XXXL size towelling robe from the Elvis Presley Gracelands hotel gift shop.

Our underfloor heating has failed to work this year, so it only takes a few minutes of walking on the stone floors for feet to ice-cube up. My wife is used to it, thank goodness. She was brought up in a house in Norfolk that had no central heating in the upstairs bedrooms. Slippers provide no protection when your stone kitchen floors feel like the inside of a refrigerated truck.

Our mantra is that we only turn the heating on when it gets to sub-zero - as it did last night. Otherwise, our medieval pipes will freeze. But even then, we only have the heating on in two rooms downstairs and strictly rationed upstairs to two bedrooms for a few hours a day to avoid burst pipes. We do have a log fire in our bedroom and electric blanket. Average temperature, 6-7 degrees.

My wife and I have come up with a few innovations this year. A Victorian baking oven in the kitchen has been commandeered by two Calor gas flame heaters. An armchair has been moved inside the hearth of a 15ft-wide fireplace used to roast medieval venison on a kitchen spit. The gardener has been taken off all duties, other than ferrying logs around the house in an old wheelbarrow. Rubber tracks ruin the carpets but it’s necessary.

Above all, we are grateful for our two black pugs, Thimble and Thistle, who take it in turns to dangerously heat themselves up in front like furry canine hot water bottles and then jump into our beds, where they love the electric blankets, which are the holy grail of refuseniks. It’s four in a bed with the children who refuse to take off their furry crocodile ‘onesies’.

Next door, my mother, her head barely visible under a mountain of eiderdowns and a French bulldog on her bed, operates her office out of her electric heated bed, like a character from Love in a Cold Climate; but we’d do anything to avoid turning the heating on. We’d hate to live in a house heated like a five star hotel.

I was at a recent Berkshire dinner of a jet-set couple where the house temperature was 23C, and we had to keep a window open in our bedroom with a shoe to avoid near heat suffocation. Our host was visibly sweating at dinner wearing clothes more suitable for Mustique. No chance of anybody breaking a sweat chez the Cashes.

Why did we ever knock through to join the dining room and sitting room, I wonder on nights like these. It’s hard enough when the radiator at either end is pumping away, but I’m doggedly sticking to the plan made when the energy and cost-of-living crises collided and went mad, like a Candy Crush screen.

The plan is this: All radiators turned off except the shower room, which is timed for one hour each morning to allow for a warm towel. I’m not a monster and no one in my household is a cold-water swimmer.

Since my son left home, I have a spare room, but two walls are exterior and there’s a skylight. Brrrrr. So the rule is, never open the door to the spare room or, indeed, the home office. These have been ‘winterised’. They’re just allowed to freeze over, basically.

When I get home from work, I deploy whatever is needed from the pile of throws, blankets, eiderdowns, old fur coat in the living room to make TV watching tolerable. A glass of red wine, also warmed by proximity to the stove, helps.

As the clock strikes 9pm, the electric blanket is switched on, for One Hour Only, before bedtime. If *someone* - usually said darkly about one’s spouse - has forgotten, bedsocks are worn.

Finally, the wood burner has been declared out of bounds. Who needs a heated ceiling? It’s also to protect the precious log supply for when things get properly icy.

If the management in our house is anything like the government, then Rishi is on to a loser here.

Brought up in freezing cold houses, where the preservation of furniture trumped the temperature of a child’s bones, I am inured to the cold. My instinct is to put on another jumper, light a fire, or leave the house and go for a walk.

Back indoors, and I play thermostat roulette. Then nip into any rooms we’re not using regularly and turn off the radiators. ‘The children’s room is freezing,’ yells my wife. ‘Have you been fiddling with that thing?’ ‘Nope!’ I lie, adding a brilliantly devious: ‘Maybe the boiler’s locked out.’

I nip back and tweak the thermostat before a maelstrom comes at me with words like ‘asthma’ and ‘chests’ and ‘if you can afford Bath Olivers you can afford to keep the children warm’ and ‘I couldn’t care less that you were brought up in a cave’.

So the temperature rests at around 20C and goes on in the morning, off in the afternoon, and then back on at 5pm. Except in my study, where our predecessor installed under-floor heating. My wife Emily meanwhile can luxuriate in the kitchen where there’s an Aga whose glorious warmth keeps one part of the room warm. And, frankly, I rather like the sight of my wife standing in front of it, with one of the doors open, while complaining about me to one of her friends on her mobile.

If the Government wants to save the nation’s finances by nannying us about temperatures indoors, why don’t they go a step further and do what my prep school insisted on each morning: star jumps in front of the house.

Rishi - all toned and nimble - could be the new Mr Motivator. Rather than a gloomy address to the nation he could don his squillion-pound sneakers and lead the country in a collective exercise routine. Otherwise I’ll find myself warming my sad behind in the local pub rather more permanently than I’d planned.

It was when I found myself pondering a few hours in the car, for no reason other than that we could sit in it with the heating on, that I realised I might be losing it.

We’d hung in there for as long as possible. We’d overstayed our welcome in warm pubs, accepted our home attire would now have to include two pairs of walking socks and a woolly hat, and dried more damp underwear with the hairdryer than I care to admit.

I noticed black mould forming on the windowsills last week. That was a low point. I began frantically Googling treatments and found one which involves smearing washing up liquid over the panes, so that’ll be this weekend’s fun task.

In the past few days I have finally cracked. It was Sunday night, my flatmate and I were huddled on the sofa, catching up on Strictly – each under a blanket, each clutching a hot water bottle, our legs intertwined for extra warmth – when she turned to me with pleading eyes. “Els, I can’t actually feel my nose.” I looked at the washing that after three days hanging on the rack still wasn’t dry, saw the condensation pooling on the single-glazed windows, and decided enough was enough.

We’re now having it on for an hour in the morning (stepping out of bed and not immediately feeling you’re developing Raynaud’s in your toes is novel), and an hour in the evening, but only if we’re at home. I worry it’s a slippery slope, but there was only so much more I could take.