6 Things I Have Learnt This Winter

1. Wear Lycra. Whether they're Skins, Nike or Anne Summers, wear them. You heard the man on BBC Breakfast, “It's -1^oc but...feels like -6^oc”. Surrey-Kent border has become Stalingrad, a far cry from the land of midday spin classes, silver Range-Rovers and lazily sipped glasses of Sauvignon Blanc. So, for the foreseeable future, slide into those bottoms and don't take them off until Spring arrives.

2. Don't buy fancy gloves with 'iPod sensitive' fingertips. The man in the shop will insist this is the path to being a 21^st century mother, touch-screen goddess and fitness guru, but he is lying to you. The fingertip material wears away; you then take them back to the store; they then ask you, “have you only run in these?”; you feel the weight of their omnipotent, retail hardened eyes bearing down on you; you crack and admit to actually having used them to mix up concrete....with your hands, and to wearing them during sculpture classes because the clay was cold; you shuffle out of the shop, looking like a hobo with an iPod, adorned in Lycra.

3. Don't talk about “winter tyres” - very few are interested in what you are driving, absolutely no one cares about what tyres you have attached to whatever it is you are driving.

4. Babies, no matter how young, can be left outside for at least one hour. The legions of mothers that bless the hallowed grounds of bootcamp can vouch for this: baby + pram + blanket + Russian winter = temporarily dormant, content baby.

5. Blackberry’s, cased or otherwise, are a waste of time. There are those who say: “Like, I just find they're the best for emails so, like, you know mate, it's the Blackberry for me” - congratulations, 'mate', you are currently in a job that requires you to check your emails on a regular but most likely, semi-regular basis. This does not endorse buying or being given – in exchange for the best part of your twenties and your soul – a Blackberry. They break frequently enough to bring a grown man to tears and long for simpler times.

6. The Griffin Survivor iPad case works. Snow, rain, foot of toddler, you name it, the Griffin case just brushed them off.