At 7am, my alarm goes off. Its loud, shrill beeping fills the bedroom, and yet I make no move to silence it. I lie there, looking at my chest of drawers across the room, visualising the steps necessary to turn off the alarm, and yet I don’t. The problem is, silencing my alarm means getting out from under the duvet and making the journey across the room to my chest of drawers. And much, much worse, it means accepting that it’s time to brave the cold again.

It’s the middle of January, in one of the coldest weeks I can remember for a long time, and our boiler has broken. It’s freezing. Beyond freezing. There are icicles dripping from the bathroom tap and the mist of our breath hangs in the air.

All right, it’s not quite that cold, but it certainly feels like it. The boiler has been temperamental for a few weeks, and finally groans to a halt one afternoon, stubbornly resisting all attempts at DIY to fix it. We try and contact a plumber, but it’s a few days before he can come and see it, and once he does, it takes a further few days to sort out the problem. I fill the basin using boiled water from the kettle to wash in, carry around hot water bottles wherever I go, and sleep under an enormous mountain of blankets.

Finally, the plumber returns, the boiler is fixed, and life returns to normal. My first hot shower is wonderful, and it becomes a pleasure to wash my hands in warm water, even to do the washing up. It was only a few days, but the incident reminds me how lucky we are to have something so simple, which makes life so much more comfortable. Undoubtably we will all return soon to taking it for granted, but for a brief time we feel incredibly grateful.

I hope you all had a happy new year, and wish you the very best for the year ahead.