IF you ever had to describe this time of year to an alien from another planet, it’d be pretty easy.

Typically human behaviour when the mercury drops involves buying a new winter coat (and probably some boots), wearing hats, scarves and gloves outdoors, and spending the mornings chipping ice off your car windscreen with an old credit card.

No-one seems to mind these things. It’s just what we do when it gets cold outside. We adapt our behaviour accordingly.

This, however, would lead me to believe that caretakers, janitors, and building service managers everywhere are not human.

Stay with me on this one.

Because for some reason they don’t seem to understand that in winter people wrap themselves up in winter clothing.

They must think that we all wander around in shorts and T-shirts no matter what the season, because whenever you step indoors at this time of year you run the risk of developing heatstroke.

Someone needs to send an urgent memo to the caretaking staff in shopping centres, supermarkets, restaurants, offices and on public transport across the country to tell them: “Turn the heat DOWN!” Honestly, we don’t need to feel like we’re standing on the edge of the fires of hell every time we step through a door.

Walk into a public building and whoosh! It’s like someone is pointing a hairdryer directly into your face. Dressing when it’s cold outside is virtually impossible because of this. To get it right you’d need to leave home trussed-up like Paddington Bear, then strip down to a pair of shorts and a Hawaiian shirt when you reach your destination.

Standing in the check-out queue of my local supermarket this week at the end of a long line of harrassed-looking shoppers all pushing those extra-deep trolleys filled with bottles of Cava and two-for-£7 tins of Quality Street, I almost fainted with heat exhaustion.

I only got through it by holding my bottle of Diet Coke to the back of my neck like a makeshift cold flannel.

So, in short, whoever is in charge of these thermostats: Stop it! We are all too blooming hot!

Of course, Christmas in general is a time of year when we all do things that any sane person wouldn’t normally dream of doing.

We do them just because it’s Christmas.

Choosing turkey over chicken for instance.

And queueing. We queue for hours upon hours — in the supermarket, at the till, on the phone. And I don’t even want to talk about the Post Office.

We go to church and sing carols, even though it’ll be the last time we go for another 364 days.

We send cheery greetings to people we may well cross over the road to avoid on any given day. We eat sprouts and drink Babycham. And we buy each other bath salts. Who has, honestly, ever used bath salts?

Still, it’s not Christmas without it all, is it?