Sussex columnist: This week Katherine is sick of feeling cold, so she's been eating a lot of biscuits!

​The production of this column has been fuelled by nine chocolate malted milks (yes, nine, they were quite small, okay?) and other work has been aided by copious amounts of M&S dark-chocolate shortbread rounds.

I don’t want to be eating so many naughty treats – especially when it feels like the rest of the world is trying to be good – but I feel like it’s physically impossible to want a salad when your home is constantly the temperature of a freezer. When you spend the day being chilly at best, comforting treats and hearty meals are the only things that will suffice.

So, a poor dietary choice it may be, but my daily dose of sugar is what’s keeping me going through the bleakest month of the year. Basically, my expanding middle is Mother Nature’s fault. I was saying to a friend this week, the relentless cold weather is actually making me quite cross. Yesterday, I was wandering around the house furious, and I realised it was because I was just completely sick of feeling freezing cold.

And it’s not like the cold snap comes on top of a spell of fine weather. Nope, before this we had torrential rain for weeks and weeks, and that came off the back of another spell of icy conditions. We’ve basically had terrible weather FOR MONTHS and I am so over it. My one-woman biscuit protest might not do much to change things, but it sure does feel nice to hide under a blanket and seek solace in a coffee and a packet of crunchy chocolate goodness for five minutes.

And woe betide anybody who moans when summer comes around again because it's ‘too hot’. You won’t find any sympathy here! I am 100 per cent not a winter person – roll on some more warm weather asap, I say.

Moaning and biscuit over-consumption aside, we’ve been back to full busy-ness again this week. On Friday, my son had his first playdate with a school friend, and he just loved going bananas with her. It was sweet, if not a bit chaotic!

And then the weekend was taken up with celebrating my daughter’s birthday. She’d really wanted to go ice skating at the Steyne Gardens rink over Christmas, but we just ran out of time, so we made it into a birthday treat. My husband bravely said he’d take both children on the ice, because thanks to an incident at the former ‘postage stamp’ rink in Brighton, circa 1993, Katherine doesn’t do ice skating. Landing on your coccyx and having a bruised bum for weeks doesn’t a fun leisure activity make, in my humble opinion. And then there’s my fear somebody will slice my fingers off with their skates... But that’s probably by-the-by as the other three absolutely loved it. Initially, I thought it would be a disaster, after both children stepped onto the ice and proceeded to slip around like Bambi. But, after a couple of minutes, they found their feet (literally) and my son was whizzing around with the help of his Percy the Penguin aid. My daughter did what all good novices do, and did laps while clinging firmly to the side, but she did start to relax her grip as the session went on.

I’d forgotten how much fun it is (for people who aren't me) and they were all really sad when their hour was over. I’m so glad the ice rink comes back each year – it’s such a good addition to our town.

On Sunday, we spent the day in Chichester. My daughter had a party at Lush, in East Street, where she and her friends got to make bath bombs and bubble bars, and generally make a mess with delicious-smelling products. It was another party of dreams for me, after last year’s at Jumpin’ Fun, as again it required minimal effort on my part! My husband, somehow, even managed to end up soaking his feet in a huge bowl full of fruity-smelling bath-bomb water. Don't worry, he doesn’t just whip his shoes and socks off everywhere he goes, the party leader suggested it and said it’s usually pretty popular with the party parents!

We followed up with a meal at Ask, where we celebrated my daughter and I toasted myself for getting through nine years of parenting (relatively) unscathed. Cheers, everyone!

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