What is cold?

It's the time of year when Hungary's winter climate begins to dominate people's lives. Maybe I am experiencing the effects a little earlier than hardened Magyars.

In my flat the temperature when I wake is 15 degrees (C.) and the ambient indoor daytime temperature – without heating – reaches just 17 degrees. After a short while, I am not comfortable with such temperatures.

There are hot water radiators in each room heated by gas. Each radiator is located, as convention dictates, beneath a glass window! Each window is 9 foot high and 3 foot wide.

My Hungarian landlady – with inbuilt Magyar instinct for minimising unnecessary expense – insists that heating the flat to 19 degrees is perfectly adequate.

Well, I have had news for her. It takes 22 degrees before the chilly environment I feel recedes and I'm approaching comfortable. The truth is, it's not what others say or a research institute recommends, it's what we feel ourselves that marks the difference between cold and warmth.

It does, nevertheless, seem strange that an adequate temperature at other times of year feels so cold in winter.  Apparently, humidity and radiation are to blame.

Lower air humidity draws warmish water particles out of the body. Radiation, operating like global weather, takes warmth from the body to heat cold windows and walls.

Of course, no-one other than me is responsible for setting the temperature level in the flat – or for paying the resulting bills. I am naturally anxious about winter heating costs. And I feel equally coerced by the prevailing Magyar attitude of denying the Hungarygaz company excess profits.

Ultimately, though, I know which impulse will win. Beset by falling humidity and rising radiation, I'm going to have to turn a blind eye to costs and turn up the heating.

You can't resist the forces of nature for ever.