Anne Pickles Blue Monday, Black Friday and a red alert on the bathroom scales… what an annoying explosion of unwelcome colour winter is turning out to be.

And the hefty dollop of white stuff, landing to queer all pitches of normal routine the other day – that didn’t help one bit. Unless, of course, you’re the sledging, snow angel type; eager and ever-ready to kit out and tool up with padded waterproofs and wellies to make like a Yeti on a sugar rush.

Well, as I’m sure you’ll have correctly worked out, I’m not. Never have been. Bad weather – by which I mean other than brilliant sunshine and anything short of 21 degrees – never signalled playtime to me. I’d rather declare a duvet day with a good book, hot chocolate and buttered crumpets when mercury falls… which might account for the recent weighing scales panic.

“There’s no such thing as bad weather,” my clever clogs chum informed me, when I turned down her generously offered opportunity to frolic in snow like a five-year-old. “Only inappropriate clothing and footwear.”

She really should have been a prison warder at Guantanamo. Come to think of it, all her past husbands have said the same thing.

She was cutting no ice with me though. Michelin Man is not my favourite look. Whatever the weather. And this Sebastian Faulks novel is extraordinarily good.

“There’s no time to shop for appropriate clothing,” I snapped back. “It’ll be dark by the time I’ve bought the stuff. And anyway, there’ll be a thaw tomorrow.”

Mercifully, she gave up on me more easily than I’d feared and moved on to bark snowman building orders at her neighbours’ children – they being too well brought up to bark back.

I guess you’re either a winter person or you’re not. There’s not much of a middle ground. And if you’re not – well, your clothing will always be inappropriate between the months of December and May.

I’ve always marvelled with some fascination at winter people. Not with envy, obviously. But winter people intrigue me in the way that any polar opposite would.

All that excitement when blizzards and drifts are threatened. I don’t get it. I certainly don’t feel it. You’d think the circus was coming to town. Actually, I don’t much care for circuses either.

When, on Sunday morning, I poked my nose through the bedroom curtains to see a thick blanket of snow over Brampton, I decided to do no more than take a quick photo to email back to the folks – who at that stage were still suffering rain – and climb back into bed to listen to The Archers .

And then I spotted a little van, skidding and slithering crazily, as its driver struggled to negotiate the hill.

“Silly devil,” I said (Talking to myself is a winter hibernation pastime I rather enjoy). “You’ll never get round that bend to reach the top. Why on earth try?”

There was, of course, a purpose in his determined madness. He was delivering, to my house, a CD I had ordered online the previous day – having anticipated bad weather and inappropriate clothing – and he’d driven all the way from Gateshead in a snow storm to do so. Or so the lettering on his van indicated.

Did I feel badly? Well…

Perhaps it might have been courteous to invite the poor chap in for a hot drink – he, having gone to so much trouble, for one CD. But the dressing gown has seen better days and – more crucially – no mascara. That, my friends, is an inappropriateness too far and not one to be inflicted on anyone from Gateshead. So, I hid.

Not big. Not clever. Certainly not brave nor even appreciative. And you’re right, there’s a guilty conscience still lurking somewhere.

See, had I been considerate enough to anticipate the difficulties of a lone driver detailed to work on a Sunday, whatever the weather, I might have acted differently at the outset.

I might have added another couple of books to the order. Only five chapters left for Sebastian to wind up his enthralling story. And there’s a lot of hibernation to get through yet – before clothing becomes appropriate again.