ON any given evening at this time of year I can be found curled up on the couch wearing a pair of tracksuit bottoms, bright pink bed socks, fleecy slippers, and a T-shirt (under) a hoodie (under) a fluffy dressing gown.

When it's really cold I even have a special hoodie with a pouch at the front that I slip a hot water bottle into like a kangaroo’s joey.

Why this odd behaviour?

Because at this time of year in our house we enter into the annual battle against turning the central heating on.

We've just about made it into September with only a handful of black marks against us — times when we buckled and (fearing frostbite, even though it was August) switched the heating on.

But I'm determined that we're going to limp into October, shivering and teeth chattering if we must, before I programme the boiler to fire up in the morning and after work.

Well, I say before I programme the boiler, but who am I kidding? Of course I mean before I get my boyfriend to do it.

That means at least another two-and-a-half weeks of gritting our teeth and making frequent cups of tea in an attempt to stay warm. It won’t be easy — our bedroom gets so cold I’ve been known to wear a hat to bed before now.

This challenge isn't helped much by the fact that this time of year is so confusing weather-wise.

One day it goes gloomy at 4pm and feels like the depths of winter; the next it’s blazing sunshine and everyone’s fighting for tables outside pubs and cafes. I’m all for an Indian summer, but it does make it hard to know what to wear in the mornings.

This week I’ve been caught out, wearing winter tights and boots when it was 23 degrees outside, and a white floaty skirt with flip flops in the rain. And all girls know flip flops plus rain equals misery. Perhaps it’s all our own fault that the weather's gone haywire because we didn't listen to warnings about global warming soon enough.

I don't know, but a gardener recently told me that it’s affecting our trees and plants too. They don’t know what they're supposed to be doing because there are no longer four distinct seasons in the year — they all merge into one and you get freak heatwaves in January and snow in June.

Animals seem to be baffled too.

This week the wasps have been going mental. They've been everywhere, in the streets, in the house and all over my car after I parked under a tree. I had to accelerate and brake quickly all the way home to shake them off in a move that resembled a Steven Seagal movie.

Earlier this week a wasp flew down my friend’s top. In a scene that this time resembled a horror movie we both stared at each other open-mouthed as, almost in slow motion, the demon insect crawled out of her V-neck top, antennae twitching.

In a way, I’m looking forward to winter. We'll be able to turn the heating on without shame, we won't be caught out wearing a scarf in a freak heatwave and all the Christmas chocolate in the supermarkets won’t seem so ridiculous.