Diary: Why does it feel so bloody cold? It's not even winter yet
The first generation to take central heating for granted is discovering what it's like without it.
How did I not realise Edinburgh is so bloody cold? I grew up here, for heaven's sake. I spent much of my professional life in the sybaritic south in overheated BBC offices, but even so. You would think there was some muscle memory or whatever the equivalent is for circulation.
I grew up in a house in this city without central heating. With draft screens, condensation and smelly gas fires that were probably highly toxic. I remember ice freezing occasionally on the inside of windows. But here's the thing: I don't ever remember being cold.
Well, only on the playing fields. At home it never crossed my mind that I was cold when I presumably must have been so for much of the time. I used to wake very early too, before my parents got up, so there was no kitchen warmth.
I'm not exactly a softy either. I can comfortably swim in the sea at 18 degrees, which is really quite cold. But sitting in the house right now I feel cold fingers stroking my legs while I write this column, in the kitchen, keeping an eye on the smart meter.
In past winters I often used to leave the central heating off in my office during the day, just to show myself that I was not a slave to it. It didn't feel cold because I was warming myself with environmental virtue. See: I can conserve energy with the best of them.
But this year it is somehow different. Because the media focus is on the scarcity of energy, rather than its wasteful abundance, I seem to have become more sensitive to the cold. Perhaps it is the awakening of some atavistic fear of hypothermia.
There is clearly a psychological dimension to feeling cold, just as there is to feeling pain. I used to run around in winter with next to nothing on because my mind kept the temperature acceptable. But the mind starts playing odd tricks the moment you become fixated on movements of the domestic thermometer.
I can't imagine what it is like for families right now. It's not even winter properly and the outside air is a damp, grey 8 degrees. The moisture is the real killer in Scotland, not the temperature, as the actor Brian Cox has remarked. It's why he is one of the many Scottish nationalists who love their country enough to not live in it.
Certainly, cold is a killer at any age. The risk of disease rises rapidly as the temperature falls below 18 degrees. The immune system falters. At around 11 degrees, blood becomes thick and gloopy, apparently, increasing the risk of stroke. It's that temperature in the sitting room right now. Though fortunately I can afford to heat it later. I know that I am privileged.
Actually, the worst thing, to my mind is the boredom. Being cold, or just warm, is tedious. Entering a room where the heating is off I immediately lose any enthusiasm for what I was going to do there.
It doesn't do much for the libido either. I'm sure Inuit tribes enjoyed polyamorous activities in their benders and ice houses but I find cold about as arousing as toothache. I don't really want to do much of anything in fact. Reading is ok, but so much better on a warm day with a cold drink than in a cold room with a hot one.
Of course I do exercises and go for walks and cycle rides and all that stuff and of course it does make a difference. Everything they say is true. You can't be depressed after a walk in the rain. Activity generates lasting heat. I enjoy nippy days on my paddle board. But I still find cold a pain in the butt at home. I just don't want to have to think about it. I want it to go away.
I suppose we are the first generation in history to have taken uniformly warm homes for granted. In the past there was a just a hearth and fire – the focal point of the household. Central heating liberated the old and the sick from the fireside chair and the bed. It was a great social advance, certainly. But our acclimatisation to household warmth has made us forget that heat is a luxury and that when it's gone its gone.