Winter Blues

Winter has always been my least favourite season, and this year's is a definite contender for 'Worst Winter Ever'.

Here are some reasons why:

My Bed

This is usually my favourite place.

Despite the fact that it is on wheels and therefore prone to skid halfway across my wooded bedroom floor if I get too excited during an episode of Eastenders (I mean the news), it is comfy and warm.

In winter, however, it transforms into somewhat of a smiling assassin. As it masquerades as its usual cosy self, I am continually fooled by its fluffed up pillows and squidgy duvet.

But once I have hopped in, I find myself in what I can only assume is a freezer cleverly covered with bedsheets.

So instead of enjoying my well-earnt sleep, I develop seriously frost-bitten toes and a red nose.

The Shower

This is the only reason I don't spring out of the freezer in relief the second my alarm goes off.

The shower is a constant reminder of my father's decision to single-handedly renovate our house, a project that spanned the latter nineties and early noughties, and looks set to continue well into the 21st century.

Anyway, the water to the shower is plumbed wrong. You have to turn the water to cold if you want it hotter and hot if you want it colder.

Having stripped groggily out of my pyjamas and dived A Team-style into the shower, however, I am usually in such a hurry to thaw out the two blocks of ice that I formerly referred to as my legs, that I turn the tap as far as it will go in the hot direction, and am promptly slapped across the face with a jet of icy water.

My Hair

Having recovered from my brush with hypothermia, my battle with the straighteners commences.

Which really is the most awful waste of time considering that the second I step outside the front door, I am either met with a watery mist or swept off the road Mary Poppins-style in a galeforce gust of wind.

Either way I am left looking as though a bird's nest has just dropped out of a nearby tree onto my head.

The Train

The tube is a sweatpit all year round, which does not bode well when, like me, you feel the cold more than most and don at least ten layers before leaving the house during the winter months.

Once I manage to fit through the doors (a considerable task when sporting half my wardrobe) I embark upon the odious task of removing layerscopious amounts of woollen clothing whilst growing faint from heat exhaustion and trying not to elbow my commuting neighbour in the eye.

And by the time I have managed to free myself from my material sauna, it's time to deboard the train and brave the university air con, which I could swear is still being utilised in the middle of November...