Snow and winter are genuinely my entire heart. Could you actually enjoy that as part of a shared life, rather than merely tolerate it for me?

Sorry about that.

So, honestly: I find heat easier than cold. That's true and I won't pretend otherwise.

But here's the more useful truth. I complain about cold as a bit. I exaggerate it, I perform it, I turn it into something vastly larger than it actually is — and if you total up the actual years, my life has been split almost evenly between hot places and cold ones. I've been here sixteen of them. I'm not a man being asked to relocate to the Arctic. I'm a man who's built a personality out of grumbling about a climate he chose.

What I actually want, when I'm not performing: to be snowed into an ice hotel over New Year with my wife. Yes — that ice hotel. The one you had to defend to me ten days ago while I was busy being sceptical about the insulation. You were right, and I've come round.

And then, not long after that, building snowmen with our children while trying very hard not to arrange the carrot and the two acorns front, centre, and roughly halfway down.

I can't promise that won't happen. I can promise it will, with 138% certainty.

One more thing. On Sunday you offered me a deal — California at Christmas in exchange for the right to drag me somewhere freezing for New Year. I replied with an innuendo, which is not an answer. I'm accepting the deal.

I snowboard, by the way — badly, and not for about five years. So you don't merely get to drag me somewhere freezing. You get to watch me fall over on a mountain repeatedly while you're presumably excellent at it. Consider that included.