We all have our favourite season, be it spring because of the rebirth of things; summer because of the sun; autumn because of the beautiful change in colours or winter because of the romantic notion of a white Christmas. For some, however, the winter season brings a reminder of a painful event; a reminder about the virtues of home emergency cover.

One of the abiding memories of childhood for those of us now reaching our retirement years is those early mornings during the Winter where our bedroom windows were frozen on the inside and the morning ritual of washing and dressing was done in record time so as to get downstairs as quickly as possible and into the warmth of the kitchen. We dealt with it only because there was no alternative.

However, with the advent of central heating we seem to have forgotten about our vulnerability to cold weather. This was brought home to me in recent years when my very elderly father called to say that his heating was not working. I immediately called round to have a look. It was freezing and he was dressed in a number of layers. He commented how it was like the `good old days`! He was being sarcastic of course.

I could not find out what was wrong so I called out a heating engineer who arrived later in the afternoon and at great expense. Evidently, the pump had broken down and needed replacing. He would need to call round the next day to fix it and it would be very expensive!

I had to put the old man up for the night and whilst I love him to death, I was glad when the necessary repairs were completed and he could go home. Not before I had made sure that this time he took out some home emergency cover so that he was not left without heating again.

Because you never know when these events will strike, it is imperative, especially if you are vulnerable, that you have the reassurance that you can call someone out straight away and not have to worry about the expense.