A small victory in our own cold war

I don’t know about you, but the diehards of the Dee household are firmly in the ‘put a jumper on’ camp when it comes to twiddling with the thermostat during the supposedly summer months.

So you might expect that I would be pouring scorn on the milksops among us who, according to research carried out last week, have been admitting defeat and ramping up the radiators.

Fair enough, June was the wettest on record and July doesn’t look as if it’s going to be much better, but it’s not exactly cold, is it?

Four in every ten of us, apparently, would take issue with that spartan point of view.

That’s how many people who have cracked and cravenly crawled towards creature comfort, and to hell with global warming and the fuel bill.

But I wouldn’t point the finger, because the iron rule that says the heating goes off when the clocks spring forward and stays off until they go back again in October isn’t my doing.

Mrs Dee, our green gauleiter, commandant of the compost pail and switcher off in chief of anything left on standby, has firm views on these things. To her the chance to save the earth and save a few pennies at the same time means two big ticks in her household manifesto.

But like many in positions of executive authority, while she expects to be able to delegate the nitty gritty of putting her diktats into effect, she has no idea of what happens at the sharp end to make it so.

In common, I believe, with many of her undeniably female persuasion, she expects to have the final word on whether or not the heating is on but hasn’t a clue about how the thermostat timer works, in much the same way as she expects the latest series of whichever witless American drama has taken her fancy – Desperate Housewives I can understand, but Sons Of Anarchy? – but could no more set up a series link on the telly box than pilot the space shuttle down to Sainsbury’s.

That’s the sort of thing men are for, you see. I don’t complain, I am just happy to still have some sort of recognised function now the kids are grown and she has no further need for my seed.

So as we shivered through June, we held firm. To be fair, I’m not bothered – like most men, I’m recognisably a mammal and have warm blood coursing through my veins.

Mrs Dee, on the other hand, like most women, tends more towards the reptilian in temperature terms, – particularly in the feet department come bedtime, but I digress.

So the radiators remained untouched until last week, when she set off on an evening stroll with the girls – I’ll translate that, went to the pub – in bright sunshine.

When she returned three hours later, darkness falling, her impression of a rat which, if not drowned, had just swum home from the wreck of the Titanic was impressive, to say the least.

So she cracked. Yes, of course I will turn the heating on, dear. Run yourself a nice bath, I’ll make you a cup of tea.

Brownie points banked, and cosy warm without having had to beg. I call that a result, and I hope you do, too.

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