A letter from a reader

At 68, I had spent every autumn evening under a tartan blanket that fell on the floor every time I got up to put the kettle on

Most of what I write these days goes on the calendar on the kitchen wall, in biro, and Brian still manages to book the window cleaner on top of the dentist. I am not a writer, and I have never once thought it was my place to tell another woman what she ought to wear.

But three people asked me about what I had on in the lounge car of the night train to Fort William this October, one of them before I had even sat down, and one of them was my husband. I have told the story enough times since that it seemed simpler to write it down once.

It started on a Sunday evening after the clocks went back. It was dark by half past four, Brian had the football on, and I was on the settee with my feet up under the red tartan blanket that has lived on the back of that settee since 1994. My sister June let herself in with a tin of parkin, took one look at me with the blanket up to my chest and a cup of tea balanced on top, and said it.

Pat, love, you look like you are waiting for the ship to leave Southampton.

I laughed, because she was right. Then I got up to fetch her a plate, and the blanket went on the floor, and my tea nearly went with it. That was every autumn evening I can remember. Warm as toast as long as I did not move. And I always had to move.

I want to be fair to myself here, and to you if you have a blanket of your own on the back of the settee. Nobody decides to spend her evenings pinned under a rug like a patient. It just creeps up on you, one cold night at a time.

How it happens

When I was younger I never sat still long enough to get cold. There was always a tea to make, a uniform to iron or a child to fetch from Brownies.

What changed is that the evenings got longer and I got better at sitting in them.

So you put on something sensible to sit in, and it is never quite warm enough, so the blanket comes out. Under the blanket you are lovely. Then the kettle boils, or the phone goes, or Brian shouts that he cannot find the remote, and you have to throw it off, and by the time you are back on the settee you have lost all the warmth you had and have to start again.

By November I am up and down like a jack-in-the-box, rearranging a blanket every twenty minutes, and there is always a corner of it trailing on the carpet.

What I had wrong

June thought I needed a bigger blanket. Brian thought I needed one of those electric throws, and bought me one for my birthday, and I spent the winter worrying about the cable. It went in the loft.

It turns out the blanket was never the problem.

The problem was where it was. A blanket lies on top of your legs, and the minute you stand up, it stays where it is and you do not. What I needed was the same warmth on my legs that came with me. To the kettle, to the door, up the stairs and back again.

A blanket with legs, really. It took me until 68, and a remark about Southampton from my little sister, to work that out.

They are called the Noemi

It was June who found them, which I will never hear the end of. She sent me a link on the Tuesday with no message except the word Southampton, which for June counts as a letter.

They are from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. They are plush pyjama trousers called the Noemi. I had not owned a pair of pyjama bottoms I would let anybody see since the Silver Jubilee, but I ordered the cream. A soft, fluffy, brushed feel, an elasticated waist with a drawstring, two pockets at the front, and little gathered cuffs at the ankles.

They are soft and warm, the kind of warm that stays with you when you stand up. The waist is elasticated with a drawstring, so I can have it just how I like it after Sunday dinner and just how I like it after a salad. There are two proper pockets at the front, and my reading glasses live in the left one now, which means I have stopped asking Brian where I put them. And the cuffs at the ankles keep the legs where they should be, so nothing drags on the stairs or catches under my slipper.

I will say this, because I can hear some of you thinking it. They do not look like something a teenager would wear to the shops. They are a relaxed shape, plain and soft, and in the cream they look like somebody who knows exactly what she is doing has decided to stay in tonight.

What happened on the night train

Brian was seventy this October, and for forty years he has said he wanted to go to Fort William on the sleeper. So our daughter booked it. We got on at Preston at about eleven at night with a bag each and a tin of June's parkin, and I had the cream trousers folded on the top of my bag.

If you have never done it, they give you a little cabin with two bunks, you rock off to sleep somewhere near Carlisle, and in the morning you go along to the lounge car for your breakfast, in whatever you slept in, while the train crawls across Rannoch Moor with the mist lying on it. I had been dreading that bit for weeks.

The woman from the cabin next door asked me where they were from in the corridor, before I had even got to the lounge car, while she was still in her dressing gown. The young lad bringing round the tea tray put my cup down and said his nan would love those. And Brian, who has not passed comment on a single thing I have worn since about 1987, looked up from his porridge, looked out at the moor, looked back at me and said I looked like I had been doing this all my life.

From Brian, that is a speech.

What I noticed more than the asking, though, was what I did not do. I did not sit there with a coat over my knees. I did not keep my cardigan pulled down over my lap like a schoolgirl. I sat by the window with my tea and my legs crossed and watched the deer on the hillside, and I was warm and I looked like I meant it.

The next two evenings in the guest house in Fort William I wore them by the fire in the lounge, and the landlady asked as well. That made four. I stopped counting after that.

Three things worth knowing

One. The sizing is honest. They come in a UK 10, a 12/14 and a 16, and it is the same relaxed jogger cut all the way through. I am a 16 and they sit as they should, with room to curl up and nothing pulling anywhere.

Two. They are not just for bed. I wear them on the settee in the evening, for the Sunday papers, for a lazy morning when Brian has gone to the paper shop, and now apparently on trains. They go with a cardigan, a big jumper, or a plain top, so they work with what you already own.

Three. Cream is the cosy way in. If you are a navy and oatmeal woman like me, start with the cream. They also come in pink, powder blue, peach, charcoal, navy and black, and June has bagged the powder blue, which she says is for Christmas morning and I say is for tonight.

About the price

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

The Noemi are £28.95. They were £58.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that for a blanket that ended up on the floor every twenty minutes.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, with no department store in the middle taking its cut, and they have a sale on to move the winter stock while the nights draw in.

I do not trust perfect scores, so I went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over two hundred of them, sitting at 4.3 stars. Mixed enough to sound like real people, so I read on. A woman from Spean Bridge had written that she bought the charcoal pair for the evenings and now has three, and that her husband has given up asking for the remote because it is always in her pocket. That sounded about right to me.

Then I ordered the navy as well. For Christmas Day, when the house is full and I will be up and down to the kitchen all afternoon.

If you were sat in my front room

If you were sat in my front room with a cup of tea, and Brian had finally found the remote, this is what I would tell you.

If you spend your autumn evenings under a blanket that goes on the floor every time you stand up, it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and have a look.

Not because a pair of pyjama trousers is going to change your life. They will not. But there is something in being warm and being able to get up and put the kettle on that I had let go of without noticing, and I would rather you did not let go of it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the middle size is the one that goes first, which June found out when the 12/14 she wanted in pink had gone by the time she went back for her daughter-in-law. And the winter stock never hangs about once the cold nights arrive and everybody starts thinking about Christmas.

The blanket is on the back of the settee. I am on the front of it, warm, with my glasses in my pocket.

Pat