I'll tell you when is the best time to put on the heating... it's never!

Heavy layering is the secret of keeping warm... and occasionally scaring your neighbours.

Perhaps the final image the world ever sees of me will be my outstretched frost-dusted hand frozen just inches from the thermostat.

‘Looks like he tried to hold out on putting the heating on until January,’ the detective will say, pointing to the icicles hanging from my laptop. ‘He nearly made it too. The sad sap!’

When is it acceptable to turn on the heating? End of September? October? Never?

Do millionaires really deserve the winter fuel allowance?

The stand-off has already started. Cricket season finished on Saturday, officially ending summer in my eyes but I will not yield. The thermostat remains untouched. I can’t even bring myself to look at it.

Rather than put the heating on when cold, I’ve taken to wearing more clothing around the house. And anything goes.

As my boss commented over a video call when spotting me in an old dress jacket: ‘are you up in court today?’

Nope, it’s just the latest edition to my body-warming project.

Layers. That’s the secret. T-shirt, thermal top, sweatshirt and an old suit jacket.

If the layering continues at its current rate, I will be nothing but a ball of cloth by the end of next week. A Zorb of corduroy. The rag-bound Michelin Man.

By November, my boss will assume that if I’m going to court, I’m clearly trying to get off a charge by plea of insanity.

Whatever fabric I can lay my hands on is being used to swaddle my body rather than nudge the thermostat up a degree.

Come December, I’d have moved on from squeezing into everything on my clothes rack and sock drawer and started to raid bedding and towels.

There’s only so many bobble hats you can put on your head. Seven is my record before the last addition starts to give at the stitching as I heave it into place. That’s when the tea cosy goes on.

Three scarves round the neck and the fourth, the longest scarf, goes under my chin and is tied in a bow above my bonce to hold the tea cosy in place. Mid-December the pillow cases will be applied.

And yes, I know what you’re thinking, ‘how do you see through the pillow cases?’ I touch type, don’t I? You dufus! Don’t need to see.

I can work for a good half an hour before having to lift the pillow case a few inches to proofread the copy I’ve written.

Seems to work well, although, since my workstation is at the front room window, those peeking inside to see the pillow-headed cloth monster pounding a keyboard are often caught off guard. Fortunately my padded ears make their screams barely audible.

Oh, go on then, I’ll put the heating on … but just for ten minutes. To take the edge off.