A letter from a reader

At 68, I had eaten ten years of Sunday dinners with my coat on

The only thing I have written in nineteen years of caravan holidays is our names in the visitors' book at the site office, and Brian does the postcode because he says my threes look like fives. I am not a writer, and it has never once been my place to tell another woman what she ought to put on of a Sunday.

But three women asked me about my jumper over a carvery up at Ullswater, one of them while she was carving the beef, and I have told the story twice on the phone since, so it seemed easier to write it down once.

It was June who said it, as it usually is. She and her husband came up to the caravan for the Sunday last October, and we went for dinner at the old coaching inn in Pooley Bridge, the one with the log fire. The girl came to take our coats. June gave hers over. I said I would keep mine on, thank you, the same as I always do. June waited until the girl had gone, and then she leant across the gravy boat.

Pat, you have eaten every Sunday dinner since Brian retired in your anorak.

I told her she was exaggerating. Then I went home and looked at the photographs on my phone. Brian's 65th. The christening. Every Sunday lunch at Easter for ten years. There I was in every one, at the end of the table, zipped up to the chin like I was waiting for a bus.

I want to be fair to myself here, and to you if you are one of the women still in her coat at the table. Nobody decides to eat their dinner in an anorak. You just get cold once too often.

How it happens

There was a time I went out on a Sunday in a nice top and did not think twice about it. Then I got to an age where every old pub and every church hall in the north of England felt like a fridge with a carpet.

So I went looking for something warm. And everything warm in the shops is built for walking up Helvellyn. Long, heavy, thick enough to stand up on its own, and the minute you sit down at a table it gathers in great folds in your lap like a sleeping bag.

The nice tops were the other way. Thin. Pretty on the hanger and no use at all by a draughty window.

So you choose. Warm, or fit to be seen at a table. And when you are cold, you keep your coat on and tell everybody you are fine.

What I had wrong

I thought the answer was a thicker jumper. So I bought one, a big oatmeal thing, and wore it to a Sunday lunch at my daughter's. It came down past my hips, the sleeves dangled over my knuckles, and I spent the whole meal pushing them up so they did not go in the custard. I looked like I had come in from lambing.

It turns out warmth was never the problem.

The problem was the length and the sleeves. A warm jumper that goes down to your thighs turns into a heap the minute you sit at a table. Sleeves with nothing to hold them end up in your dinner. That is why I kept going back to the coat. It was the only warm thing I owned that knew where it stopped.

A warm jumper that stops at your waist and holds its sleeves at the wrist is a different animal altogether. It took me until 68, and my little sister leaning over the gravy, to work that out.

The jumper is called the Lucy

It was my daughter who found it, scrolling on her phone while I complained about the coat business at her kitchen table. She turned the screen round and said nothing, which in our family is how you know you have been told.

It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. The jumper is called the Lucy. It comes in beige and blue as well, but I am a grey woman and I ordered the grey. A chunky knit with little dark flecks through it, like the Herdwick sheep on the fells, a neat ribbed neck, big soft sleeves gathered into deep ribbed cuffs, and a short body that stops at the waist.

It is soft, and it is properly warm without being heavy, which I did not think was allowed. The shape is relaxed and roomy through the body, so there is space for a vest underneath if your dining room is as cold as ours. And because it stops at the waistband, there is nothing to bunch when you sit down. I tuck the front in a little, the way the girl in the photograph had it, and it looks like I meant it.

The sleeves are the bit I would have you notice. They are generous, the full sort, but the ribbed cuffs hold them at the wrist, so they stay put. Nothing in the gravy. Nothing dangling in the custard.

What happened at the carvery

We were back up at the caravan for the October week, Brian and me and Wilf, and on the Sunday we went to the coaching inn again. Same fire. Same girl to take the coats.

I gave her mine. I have not done that in ten years.

The woman at the next table asked me where the jumper was from before the Yorkshires had even come. The girl on the carvery asked while she was carving my beef, which slowed the queue, and nobody minded. And Edna, who runs the caravan site with her husband and has given me a nod and nothing more for nineteen Octobers, came over to say hello to Wilf and looked at me properly for once.

She said it was the first time in nineteen years she had seen me out of that coat, and I looked like I lived here.

From Edna, that is the freedom of the parish.

What I noticed more than the asking was that I did not think about being cold once. Two hours by the window end of that dining room, which is not the warm end, and I never reached for the coat on the back of my chair.

The next morning I put it straight back on to walk Wilf along the lake shore, with my anorak open over the top for once instead of zipped to the chin. A man with a collie said good morning to me twice. I think he did not recognise me the second time.

Three things worth knowing

One. It is short on purpose. It sits at the waistband, not on your hips. If you are used to jumpers that cover your bottom, that will feel strange for about a day. Then you sit down at a table and understand why.

Two. The sizing is honest. It goes from a UK 8 to a 20, the same cut the whole way up, and it is a relaxed fit, so there is room in it. I am a 16 and I did not need to go up.

Three. Grey is not dull if there is something in it. The little dark flecks are what make it. From across a room it reads as a good warm grey. Close to, it has a bit of life in it, the way a dry stone wall does. It comes in beige and blue too, if grey is not your colour.

About the price

I will be straight with you, because the price is what made me suspicious.

The Lucy is £34.95. It was £70.00.

My first thought was that a jumper that warm at that price would be thin by Christmas. I have paid more than that in Keswick for a fleece that went bobbly on the drive home.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, with nobody in the middle taking a cut, and they have a sale on to move the autumn stock while the weather turns.

I do not trust perfect scores, so I went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Mixed enough to sound like real people, so I read on. A woman from Kirkby Stephen had written that she wore hers to a wedding breakfast in a village hall in November and was the only one who did not keep her coat on for the speeches. That sounded about right to me.

Then I ordered the beige as well. For Christmas Day, when the oven is on and the house is warm, and I still will not be sat there in a coat.

If you were stood at my kitchen table

If you were stood at my kitchen table with a cup of tea, and Brian had taken Wilf out, this is what I would tell you.

If you are the woman at the end of the table with her coat still on, telling everybody she is fine, I would have a look. Not because a jumper will change your life. It will not. But handing your coat over at the door and sitting down to your dinner like everybody else is a small thing I had given up on without noticing, and I would not want you to give it up too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first, which June found out when the 12/14 in grey had gone by the time she went to order hers. And the first autumn stock never hangs about once the cold weather arrives.

The anorak stays on its hook now. It only comes out for the rain.

Pat