Beating the Cold

Here’s how to beat the cold the Upward way!

1. Grit your teeth. Grin and bear it.
2. Convince yourself that being warm is bad for you.
3. Wear a string vest (the holes create pockets of warm air).
4. Always sleep with a window open.
5. Admire the frost flowers on the window panes.
6. Keep your central heating turned down as low as possible “to take the chill off”.
7. Don’t go out warm.
8. Run about to keep warm.
9. Set your central heating to go off for several hours a day. Tell your guests that there isn’t an over-ride.

And finally

10. NEVER have a heat source you can “huddle over” because huddling over fires gives you chilblains and probably pneumonia. And it will only make you colder.

Upwards spend all their money on educating their children and think double glazing is common. They are too fey to follow Caro Stow-Crat’s pragmatic heat-saving tips. What they really enjoy is feeling martyred and suffering – because it’s good for you. And they don’t like solving problems directly.

The Weybridges can’t be doing with such nonsense. They have pinch-pleated curtains that reach the floor (you draw them with a system of pulleys - or a remote control) and turn their central heating up. Upwards moan that at their house “the central heating is always at FULL BLAST”. (Upward curtains are too short, too thin, and never meet in the middle.)


Beat the Cold III
Beat the Cold II (the Upward way)
Heat-saving Tips II