Dear Big Freeze

Dear Big Freeze,

Do you think you could possibly go away now please? I think our time together must come to an end. I mean, you were pretty fun to begin with. Everything looking beautifully frosty in the mornings, ponds frozen solid even in Central London, a chance to wear the thick winter jerseys that have been languishing in my wardrobe the past two mild winters. Even the alpaca hat that I bought for the Inca Trail has had an outing - and the Doctor (someone who will not even put on a hat while skiing) has been glimpsed wearing gloves on several occasions....

But now I'm getting fed up. Let me list the reasons why.

1. My draughty Victorian house cannot cope with you. Even something as innocuous as a fast food leaflet stuck in the letterbox seems to let in a powerful stream of freezing air. Unless we have the gas fire on, cold comes down the chimney and turns our living room into an igloo. And the radiators on the upper floor seem to have gone on strike.

2. The Littleboys, whom I previously thought were impervious to cold, are feeling it. Every walk we now go on turns into a neverending saga of trying to replace gloves and hats that they have either removed or dropped. Eventually, I get fed up and put the gloves away. The walk then ends in tears, with one of the boys screaming that they are cold.

3. My skin and lips are permanently chapped and even layers of night cream and Vaseline do not appear to be doing any good. I may have to resort to goose fat.

4. The credit crunch having killed off my office job before Christmas, I am now going to be working from home three days a week, so will need to crank up the heating all day, resulting in sky-high bills, or my fingers will freeze at the keyboard.

5. My plan to eat healthily for the whole of January seems much less tempting in the freezing cold, when steaming mugs of hot chocolate and plates piled high with pasta are so appealing. And going for a run around the Common? Well, the horses aren't even running at racetracks, so I've decided that the going is just too tough.

6. If you actually produced snow that settled, it would be quite pretty. But you don't. You just snow wetly and ensure that we can't go to the playground because it's too mucky.

So could you just go back to Siberia, the Arctic, or wherever it was you came from, please. I know we'll be seeing much more of you next year in New York, but I think I can wait until then.

Yours,

a shivering

Nappy Valley Girl