Save Me…… from f-f-f-f-freezing winters and woefully inadequate flat insulation

As you read this, you may be sitting in your armchair, on your sofa or in your office chair with the radiator burbling away happily against the wall or the roaring fire glowing in the corner, warming the room from the chilly, windy, wintry, freezing cold outside the window.

Well, if you are, spare a thought for me, because I’m freezing my arse off here in Spain.

Spanish houses and flats (well, ones in the south of the country at least as that’s where I live), are not designed for the chilly winters we get. There’s no wall-to-wall carpets, no radiators in every room and no fireplaces.

Now, to be fair, that’s because if there were, we’d all die of heat stroke during the summer.

As you’ll no doubt be aware, it does get quite hot here in the summer. In Seville, it’s regularly in the mid 40s in July and August. So a flat with concrete floors, air conditioning and windows with shutters but no curtains is perfect for keeping the heat out and the cool in. And it’s hot here more than it’s cold.

But in December and January, it gets cold. Very cold. I don’t mean -10C cold. It’s not that cold. That’s just silly. I mean +5C cold. Now, if you’re reading this in the UK or another northern outpost, you’re probably wondering what the hell I’m going on about. +5C in winter is positively roasting where you are.

But imagine what +5C feels like in a flat with bare concrete floors, no curtains and no radiators. Yes, that’s right. It feels like -10C.

As I sit here and write, I am shrouded in a thick blanket, my teeth chattering and my knees knocking together in time. Add a double bass and a trumpet to that noise and you’ve got a version of “Haitian Fight Song” by Charles Mingus right here in my flat (find it on “youtube” to see what I mean).

Now, ok, I know what you might be thinking. If you’re a regular reader, you will know that back in October I complained bitterly about the hot weather hanging around in Seville well past the summer. I said I was fed up with the sun and wasn’t it time it got cold. So, right now, you might be thinking: “Oh for God’s sake, shut your mouth, you moron. First it’s too hot, then it’s too cold, make your mind up.”

Fair point. But it’s my blog, so sod off. I’ll write what I like. If you were sitting here next to me shivering you’d feel exactly the same way. I don’t claim to be fair and balanced. I just write what I feel. And right now I feel bloody freezing.

I’ve said it before. Seville is a city of extremes when it comes to the weather. It’s loads of sun and stifling heat for months on end, then it’s loads of freezing cold for ages. At least in the UK, you get a general drizzly fuzz most of the year. You know where you stand there, to a certain extent at least.

That’s not to say that I don’t like the weather in Seville. I do. But it takes a while to get used to it. It’s certainly not boring, I’ll give it that.

For example, now it’s winter, my wife and I play the nightly game of “Who’s got most of the duvet?”. It’s a game I normally lose as she is very protective of her side of the bed and grabs hold of the duvet like a teenage girl clutching a Justin Bieber autograph. Try and take it off her and you’re a dead man.

I’ve tried to reason with her, suggesting that if I could just have a bit more of the duvet on my side I wouldn’t have such a hacking cough and the first stages of pneumonia. But she just accuses me of trying to take all the duvet for myself as she pulls yet more of it over to her side. I get my own back by snoring loudly.

The thing is, it’s so cold at the moment that we’ve even put three more blankets – yes, three! – on top of the duvet for extra warmth. But they too seem to edge over to her side during the night, so that I wake up each morning with icicles on my toes and frost on the end of my nose.

I remember a few years ago the comedian Billy Connolly telling a story about a time he stayed in a freezing place in Scandinavia. It was so cold, he said, that he woke up in the morning to find a small ice cube in his bed. He wondered what on earth it could be, but when he finally threw it on the fire it made a fart sound.

I know how he felt.

So, please, I ask you. No, I beg you. Search your soul to find some empathy for me. Send me your warmth and ideally make a contribution to my “buy a portable radiator” fund. All donations are gratefully received.

And tell my wife to let me have some of the bloody duvet at night as well. I need it. I’m so tall that my legs stick out the bottom of the bed anyway, so it’s only right I should have a bit more.