WINTER'S my second favourite season. Of course, the best time for me will always be spring, when your favourite columnist is wont to emerge mole-like from his burrow, sniff the air and say something, well, mole-like.

Nevertheless, I always welcome the great shutdown that seems to take on a new seriousness and urgency once bonfire night is over. The first frost brings the leaves down in showers of gold and copper, the robin finds his voice - and the woman in your life suddenly remembers where the central heating thermostat is located.

Listen guys, you can try every trick in the book but it will never work. Many a time I've been tempted into taping over the crucial bit of equipment on the landing and pretending that it's mysteriously ceased functioning.

Indeed, there are some chaps who have actually tried hammering a nail into the wall to prevent the circular motion of the aforesaid cash-burner.

It's all to no avail. For once the low cloud of a British winter scuds in from the Atlantic and the departure of the swallows seems like an age ago, then the female brain clicks into automatic memory and - like those brave little birds that can navigate thousands of miles - reaches the destination marked central heating'.

A few months ago, I was diagnosed with high blood pressure. In one of our lighter moments huddled around a Baby Belling single-wick paraffin heater at Dun Subbin, my wife asked me - obviously with an eye on the life insurance - to imagine a scenario calculated to make me really go pop'.

I told her that if she really wanted a crimson splodge on the pavement, then she should ring to tell me that she'd been locked out of the house, all the fires were roaring, every plate on the oven was blasting away and the central heating was off the clock.

It's good that we can still laugh about these things - especially bearing in mind that the winter quarter bills will soon be dropping on to the mat.

Is this London Road or the Georgia woods?

WALKING down London Road in the Worcester direction one day this week, I suddenly ran out of pavement.

For some strange reason, the left-hand section of the road makes no allowances for pedestrians. This proved to be a wretched nuisance and so I decided to cut down Cromwell Crescent in order to navigate a passage through to Cherry Orchard.

As I crossed this road, what was probably the ugliest-looking woman in the world gave me a really aggressive parp on the horn. I shot her my much-feared death stare but, ever the gentleman, decided to refrain from verbal intercourse.

A minute later, at the junction with Cannon Street, a rabid collie-cross dog almost came over a garden wall, its teeth glistening with the anticipation of a human leg as a meal. This time, I fired off a few curses and was glad to rejoin London Road. I hadn't realised that Deliverance had been filmed in this suburb of Worcester but I certainly know now. Dadalang-dandang-dandang-dandang