MY WIFE and I are having what you might call a heated debate. I like a cold house and a very cold bedroom; she likes a warm house and an oven-hot bedroom. Even though it is winter, I am still refusing to put on the central heating; she is refusing to open the window at night. Words have been exchanged. I wait until she's asleep then let in the fresh air. She gets up and battens down the hatches.

Apparently I am selfish but I am doing her a favour. You have only to look around you at this time of year when it isn't all that warm. First comes a collective bout of sniffling, followed by sneezing and then a sudden rush on hot lemon drinks, throat lozenges and apologies for not turning up for work. The reason for all this is not the weather getting colder but people's houses getting artificially warmer. Which is why I am hesitating to turn on the heating. I admit there have been times recently when we could almost see our own breath (and, as I write this, my fingers are stiffer than usual) but, overall, it's a warming experience.

Everyone else has runny eyes and crackling voices. Everyone else is coughing. Everyone else has dry, tickly throats. We may be cold but we haven't got a cold. Ask any doctor and he will tell you that the day the heating goes on is the day their waiting rooms are awash with shivering patients.

The sudden change in the atmosphere dries the air and the body responds accordingly. Vasomotor rhinitis is the medical term for it, the process by which certain chemicals are released to cope with the new temperature. This gets the blood vessels pumping, which inevitably leads to more blood going to the nose. Then comes the uncomfortable itch in the nostrils, followed by sneezing.

Better health is not the only good reason to keep the thermostat at zero. There is something immeasurably satisfying about living in a big city, as I do, and experiencing the weather more or less as it is. It's phoney enough in the city without adding to it at home with the casual flick of a switch. But, then, I fear I have become a terrible central heating snob: the colder someone's house, the more I tend to like the person who lives in it and the more interesting he or she becomes.

There are one or two drawbacks to not living in a germ-infested Turkish bath. Telling friends to wear a thick jumper may not be the ideal way of encouraging people to pop over for a cosy dinner but you only have to say it once and they will either get the message or stay away until spring. My children never entirely got used to it when they were younger but I like to think they enjoyed sitting around the gas-powered imitation coal fire (allowed because it gives off such little heat but looks friendly), warming their hands and arguing over who had which hot-water bottle.

How to adapt to winter is a personal decision. A friend has a resolution never to wear his heavy coat before winter officially begins. Another won't take his scarf out of the drawer until he's a month into the big chill. Those of us who belong to the Anti-Central Heating Liberation Front have to rely on layers. Lots of them. This has its advantages because most of us have clothes we like but don't dare wear out. Join the layer brigade and you can walk around in the most horrific garments and no one will be any the wiser.
People who overheat their houses also seem to want the same temperature throughout, rather than keeping corridors at, say, 10 degrees and bedrooms at 15 degrees. Cold weather should be the time when doors come into their own as a means of regulating heat.

It's not only your health that suffers in an overheated home. It's bad news for the fittings, too. The central heating at Westminster Abbey has damaged the 700-year-old Coronation Chair in which the Queen sat in 1953. The painted gilding is lifting away from the wood in rebellion. A good church is a cold church. Shops, of course, are far too warm. It's perfectly obvious they are heated to a temperature designed to keep happy the people who work in them rather than the customers who come in from the street in warm coats.

Some stores seem particularly determined to drive customers back out by hitting them with a blast of hot, stale air as soon as they step inside. A spokesman for Harrods said the idea was to keep the temperature throughout the five-storey shop at 21 "plus or minus a degree". The store's heating runs from early autumn to early spring. "Each main area of the store has an individual gauge on the roof but the actual temperature can vary according to the number of doors that are opening and closing. We are very aware that people are coming in from the outside and that they are wearing coats."

I'm not convinced. You may think you have control over your heating but eventually it controls you. It dries you up, saps you of energy, dumps you in bed, then has the nerve to hand you a large bill at the end of the quarter.

Telegraph, London