A letter from a reader

At 68, every room I walked into was either too hot or too cold, and I was dressed wrong for both

The longest thing I have written in years is the note I leave for our neighbour when we go away in the caravan, and that fits on one side of paper with the vet's number at the bottom. I am not a writer, and I have never thought it was my business to tell another woman what she ought to put on in the morning.

But three women asked me about what I was wearing at a country dance club last Wednesday, one of them in the middle of a dance, and I have explained it to enough people since that it seemed simpler to write it down once.

It started on a Sunday in September. Brian had the heating on as if we were expecting a polar expedition, and I was sat in my front room in my thick oatmeal jumper over a blouse, going pinker by the minute. My sister June came in with a cake tin, looked at me, looked at my collar squashed flat under all that knitting, looked at my blouse cuffs shoved up to my elbows, and said it.

Pat, love, you look like a tea cosy.

I laughed, because she was right. Then I took the jumper off, and twenty minutes later I was sat there with goosebumps in my blouse, reaching for it again. That was my whole autumn, every autumn. On, too hot. Off, too cold. And never once looking like I had meant it.

I want to be fair to myself here, and to you if you do the same dance with your jumper. Nobody decides to spend October either sweating or shivering. It just happens, one sensible jumper at a time.

How it happens

When I was younger I never thought about any of this. I wore a blouse and a cardigan to work at the building society for twenty-odd years and was comfortable in every season.

What changed is that every room got warmer and every jumper got thicker.

Go into any shop in town and look at what they think a woman of my age wants for autumn. Big chunky knits made for standing at a bus stop in a gale. Then you walk into a church hall, or a café, or your sister's kitchen, and the heating is up so high you could grow tomatoes, and you are sat in the equivalent of a duvet with sleeves.

So you take it off, and you are in your blouse, and somebody opens a door. You spend the whole afternoon putting it on and taking it off, and by the end your collar has given up and so have you.

What I had wrong

June thought I needed a thinner jumper. So I bought one. It was thin enough that I was cold in it and it still shoved my blouse cuffs up my arms and flattened my collar. Back it went.

It turns out the thickness was never the problem.

The problem was the sleeves. My arms were never the part of me that was cold. It is the back and the middle that feel the draught. The sleeves were the part that made me hot, crushed my blouse, and made the whole thing look like I had been wrapped for the post.

Warmth across the back and the middle, and nothing extra on the arms. It took me until 68, and a remark about a tea cosy from my little sister, to work that out.

It is called the Holly

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

It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. It is a knit vest called the Holly. I had not worn a sleeveless knit since I was at school, but I ordered the navy. Sleeveless, with a deep V-neck, a ribbed edge round the neck and the armholes and along the hem, and little slits at the sides.

It is soft, and it is cosy without any bulk to it, so it sits under my coat without turning me into a sofa. It keeps me warm across the back and the middle, and my arms are just in my blouse sleeves, so when a room warms up I do not boil. The deep V means my collar sits out properly, the way it is meant to, instead of being squashed flat. It comes down over my hips, and the little slits at the sides mean it does not ride up when I sit down. And it is easy to look after, which at my age is a feature, not a footnote.

I will say this, because I can hear some of you thinking it. It does not look like a school uniform. It is a relaxed shape, it is not tight anywhere, and over a white blouse it looks like somebody who knows what she is doing got dressed this morning.

What happened at the country dancing

Every October I go up to stay with my cousin Avril, who retired to Allendale up in the North Pennines and has taken to it like she was born there. Avril goes to the country dance club in the village hall every Wednesday night, and this year she would not take no for an answer.

If you have never been, it is all called dances. A woman stands at the front and tells you where to go, a fiddle and an accordion play, and you go round and round in sets until your face is the colour of a postbox. The hall is freezing when you walk in and like a greenhouse by the second dance.

My partner in the Dashing White Sergeant, a lady from one of the farms up the valley, asked me where it was from before we had finished the first figure. The woman on the tea hatch asked at the interval, while she was pouring. And Win, who has called the dances for thirty-one years and has never remarked on anything but who went the wrong way, looked me up and down by the tea urn and said I looked like I had been coming for years.

From Win, that is an encore.

What I noticed more than the asking, though, was what I did not do. I did not once go and stand by the door to cool off. I did not spend the interval with my jumper round my waist like a schoolgirl. I danced every set, sat down for my tea, and was the right temperature for all of it.

The next morning I put it straight back on to walk Avril's dog along the river, over the same blouse and my good trousers, and felt like myself in it. Avril had ordered the grey brown one before I had my boots on.

Three things worth knowing

One. The sizing is honest. It goes from a UK 8 to a 20, and it is the same relaxed cut the whole way up. I am a 16 and it sits as it should, with room for a blouse underneath and no pulling across the middle.

Two. It goes over everything. A white blouse with the collar out for anything with a bit of an occasion to it. A plain T-shirt for the shops. A long-sleeved top for the garden. It is a layer, so it works with what you already own.

Three. Navy is the gentle way in. If you are a navy and oatmeal woman like me, start with the navy. It also comes in grey, grey brown, black, brown, purple, pink and apricot, and June has her eye on the apricot, which I shall believe when I see it.

About the price

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

The Holly is £30.95. It was £62.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that in town for a jumper that made me look like a tea cosy.

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 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 Bellingham had written that she bought the navy for church and now wears it to everything, and has stopped carrying a cardigan about in her bag. That sounded about right to me.

Then I ordered the black as well. For the Christmas do, when the hall will be like a greenhouse again.

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 turned the heating down, this is what I would tell you.

If you spend every autumn taking your jumper off and putting it back on, and your best blouse collar never sees daylight, it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and have a look.

Not because a knit vest is going to change your life. It will not. But there is something in walking into a warm room and not having to do anything about it 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 sizes are the ones that go first, which Avril found out when the 12/14 she wanted in pink had gone by the time she went back for her daughter. And the first autumn stock never hangs about once the cold weather arrives.

The oatmeal jumper is in the drawer. The tea cosy is back on the teapot, where it belongs.

Pat