The Great Autumn Thermostat Negotiation

October has arrived at the stage where my house can apparently experience all four seasons before lunch.

At seven in the morning, the kitchen tiles feel as though they’ve been imported directly from Antarctica. By ten, sunlight is pouring through the window and I’m wondering why I ever considered putting the heating on. Twenty minutes later a cloud passes over Wales, the temperature seems to fall through the floor and somebody announces, with genuine outrage, “It’s freezing in here.”

This begins the Great Autumn Thermostat Negotiation.

Nobody agrees on the temperature.

Ever.

One person is wrapped in a blanket looking like a burrito with opinions. Somebody else is wandering around in shorts. I’ve got a mug of tea warming both hands while simultaneously insisting that no, we are not turning the heating up another three degrees because we’ve only just turned it on.

Then somebody says the sentence guaranteed to irritate every mum who has ever paid a household bill.

“Why don’t we just leave the heating on?”

Oh, excellent idea. Perhaps we could open all the windows as well and heat Wales.

Naturism adds another slightly ridiculous layer to this because, for much of the year, being naked at home requires absolutely no thought whatsoever. Then autumn arrives and suddenly my philosophical commitment to bodily freedom is negotiating with my nipples.

There are limits to ideology.

I’m perfectly happy being naked when I’m comfortable, but I’m not sitting stubbornly on the sofa turning blue to prove I’m a proper naturist. Naturism is how I live, not an endurance event. If I’m cold, I’ll put a blanket over myself. If I’m still cold, I’ll put something on. If I’m still cold, the heating goes on and I make a cup of tea because I’m Welsh and there are procedures.

What makes me laugh is how personally everybody seems to experience temperature.

“It’s boiling.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“It literally is.”

“It literally isn’t.”

We can have four people sitting in the same room apparently occupying entirely different climatic zones.

And, irritatingly, there is a perfectly sensible reason for some of that. People’s thermal comfort varies according to factors including clothing, activity, air movement and individual physiology. Even the Met Office points out that wind, humidity and sunshine affect how temperature actually feels to us, which means the number on a thermometer isn’t the whole story.

None of this information has ever successfully concluded an argument in my house.

I could arrive in the living room carrying peer-reviewed research, meteorological instruments and a small panel of climate scientists and somebody would still say, “Well, I’m cold.”

Fair enough.

Perhaps that’s actually the useful bit.

Living naturally with other people teaches you quite quickly that comfort isn’t universal. My comfortable isn’t automatically yours. That applies to temperature, noise, personal space, nudity and about seventeen other things families negotiate without ever formally acknowledging that they’re negotiating them.

We tend to imagine family life as a collection of big decisions, but most of it seems to be tiny compromises repeated forever.

Could you turn that down?

Can I open the window?

Do you mind if I shut it?

Who’s moved my blanket?

Why is the back door open?

And, most importantly, who touched the thermostat?

Naturism fits into our home in much the same way. Nobody needs to make a grand announcement about it. Bodies are ordinary here, clothes are useful when they’re useful, and consideration matters more than proving a point.

Perhaps that’s why autumn makes me smile.

Summer makes naturism effortless. October makes it practical.

There’s something rather lovely about being curled up naked beneath a warm blanket while rain taps against the window, somebody else has claimed the good cushion and a mug of tea is balanced somewhere it absolutely shouldn’t be.

Until somebody gets up.

Walks past the thermostat.

And turns it up.

I see you.

So settle an argument for me: what temperature does your house have to reach before the heating is officially allowed on?