I've always been a tad ambivalent towards central heating - not for any good reason mind, it's just a feeling I've always had. I blame my childhood (well, why not??). Living in a big old house in Edinburgh in the 60s and 70s, I remember vividly waking up during the winter with a good covering of ice on the inside of the windows, and getting dressed for school while still under the eider-down...we didn't have central heating, but we did have a roaring coal fire in the sitting room and a Belling heater in our bedrooms. The only way to get warm upstairs then was to stand over the Belling and make a tent of the front of our jumpers so that the heat went up the woolly funnel and warmed us a bit. Waking up with a cold nose and sometimes even semi-frozen curtains (if they got too near the windows) was a common occurrence...heaven help you if you inadvertently stuck a toe out from under the covers during the night - frostbite was a racing certainty!!

And of course, it goes without saying that the winters were a lot colder, with more snow more often, than they are at the moment. Funnily enough though, the month-long cold spell the UK has not long come out of reminded me very much of those childhood winters - weeks and weeks of sub-zero temperatures, bitingly cold weather, huge long slides in the playground at school, ripping arms and legs open on the frozen turf ("TACKLE him, Cruden - TACKLE HIM!!! What are you waiting for? The summer to melt the ice???") and slipping & sliding the mile-and-a-half to school and back everyday...

Maybe it was that Draconian upbringing but I've always liked a room on the chill side, and will keep the GCH at home just on so that there's a gentle, subtle heat to the ambient temperature. I'd much rather adjust my temperature by tweaking my sartorial garb rather than whizzing the radiators up to max...and being a frugal Scotsman, it's cheaper to reach for a woolly-pully than it is to spin the heating dial :o)