KNOWING that the family was coming over for dinner the other weekend the housemate took the dramatic decision to turn the central heating on.

“Your lot always complain that it’s cold here, so we’ll catch them out tonight,” she said, flicking the switch on the thermostat.

“You don’t really need to do that. I’m cooking Thai curry and I’ve added an extra dose of chilli to the paste so they’ll all be sweating after two mouth fulls,” I replied.

“We can’t rely on that,” she said. “Beside that we’ve just given the go-ahead to have a new boiler fitted so we need to get our money’s worth out of the old one.”

I hesitated to point out that the old one was virtually steam powered, so really didn’t owe us anything but thought better of it as she’s convinced that its about to blow up at any moment.

Later that evening as the effects of the hot curry wore off, my sister pulled her faux fur waistcoat tighter around her.

“You can’t be cold,” snapped the housemate. “I’ve put the heating on. It up to almost 20 degrees,” she added with a smug nod.

“Twenty degrees?” echoed my sister in amazement. “When our house drops to 20 degrees we turn the thermostat up and light a fire to supplement the heating!”

“Liz doesn’t like it too warm,” explained the housemate.

“Too warm? What is she? A ruddy penguin?” asked the brother-in-law-to-be in amazement

“It’ll be warmer here when we have our new boiler installed,” said the housemate with a nod.

“You do realise you have to actually switch the boiler on to make the rooms get hot don’t you?” said The Mother reaching for another spoonful of curry to warm her up.

Last week I headed to The Mother’s house to join some friends and neighbours for drinks.

“I’ve only done some light refreshments,” she said as I handed over the tin of the favourite cheese biscuits she’d asked me to make.

“I’ve made double the usual number,” I explained as she opened the packed tin.

“That’s fine, I can put any that are leftover in the freezer,” she announced, before I could add that I could happily take any spare home with me.

“Or you could eat them all yourself like you did with the tiramisu I sent up for you to share with the ladies of the Plas Derwen posse ” I said with a smile.

“It was two days old by the time you gave it to me and I didn’t want to poison anyone” she said placing the sparce helping of biscuits onto a plate and putting the lid firmly back onto the tin.

“Is it warm enough here? She asked moving the tin out of reach

“It’s not that hot,” I replied. “You don’t want people to be cold tonight.”

“Really?” She asked, looking at me with her eyes wide open. “You of all people are telling me that my house is cold? Unbelievable,” she said helping herself to a biscuit!