Harris Rose Electra - Cosy: the British art of comfort

This book is dedicated to my mum,

my best friend and a hug of a woman.

By Dolly Alderton, writer and journalist

Cosiness was something I always slightly feared. Cosiness would mean not being outand Out was where, I had been led to believe, life happens. Being out was glamorous, sexy, full of experiences and people. It was rock n roll. It was where you were supposed to be if you wanted to make the most out of your one wild and precious life, in the words of Mary Oliver. As Ive grown up, Ive come to realise that so many experiences, lessons and moments of life-changing joy, love and happiness happen in a home. Cosiness, for me, is Radio 4, slow-cooking, every Sunday supplement, long breakfasts, long movies, long phone calls, big jumpers, tangled limbs in a bed or sofa. I enjoy those things even more now that I know indulging them doesnt mean Im missing out on the big party of life happening somewhere outside and that life can be just as wild and precious in the quiet as it is in the noise.

I can remember the precise moment that I first identified a cosy feeling. It was the unusually cold winter of 1990 and Id been sledging with my dad in Greenwich Park, in South East London. We came home, wet, frozen and rosy-cheeked, and sat in front of our log fire with a bowl of Heinz tomato soup, dipping (slightly stale) brown bread that had been coated with margarine into its smooth, scarlet loveliness. The soup was steaming, the fire was crackling and I was slowly thawing. That was cosy. And the soup wasnt the only important ingredientI was with my parents, and that reassuring comfort of being with people you love is key. There was also the log fire, of course; its an alchemic thingwe all know a storage heater just doesnt kick out the same cosy vibe as crackling logs, despite them being petrol-station-bought, rather than forest-felled. I had been out in the wind and snow and had retreated to warm up. Thats cosy too.

Years later, and I feel like retreating again. But this time its not from something as natural and as fleeting as the weather. I work in newspapers and live in London. In my daily life, I am surrounded by noise and opinion, and over the past few years I have found myself seeking comfort from politically dark winters and the relentlessly bleak news cycle. My instinct has evolved and become an undeniable urge to hide away and find solitude. Rather than swipe and scroll my way through life, I want to feel protected and nurtured. I dont just want to drink a warm cup of tea, I want my emotional state to mirror that of a cuppa toowarm, predictable, reassuring.

Perhaps Im just getting old, but I want to swap toxic politics and the anxieties induced by social media for reliability and kindness. I want to feel more cosy.

So this is a hug of a book, conceived to share a few tools to soften the edges of life. It is a paean to retreating; a manual, a text that gives us all permission to seek solace and comfort in harsh times. Being cosy is the antidote to what sometimes feels like a brittle, cold world. It is a theme and a way of life that is universal, and one that people are seeking out more than ever (the hashtag #cosy has 4.4 million results on Instagram, while #cozy has 7.3 million).

The phenomenon of hygge and its concept of homeliness and tucking ourselves in has already piqued our interest, and although it promotes a beautiful cultural lifestyle, there is a certain elitism attached to it now its been hijacked by hipsters and interior design magazines. The British anthropologist Richard Jenkins has described hygge as normative to the point of being close to coercive, and the aggressive way it has been marketed has diluted the pleasantness, and its true meaning.

Whereas cosy... Well, cosy is the thing you do when no one is watching. Its not an image or a way of life, its knitted into the fabric of our wonderful, diverse, eclectic, eccentric British society, through basic, quotidian pleasures such as tea and socks and fires. Cosy is your interpretation of what cosy is. Your version will be different from mine, but one thing is for sure: fairy lights dont have to be involved unless you want them to be. In the British Isles, being cold gives us permission to be lazy, and there is nothing better than that. Stopping still and cosying up has become the greatest luxury of our time.

Would you like an adventure now, or should we have our tea first?

Alice in Wonderland

Life-affirming and soul-warming, a cup of tea solves everything. Your wife has left you? Have a nice cup of tea. The boilers broken? Put the kettle on. Trump has declared war? Mines an Earl Grey. Drinking tea is a ritual upon which most of us rely: we boil the water and drown the bag, stirring in a spoonful of comfort as we go. A cuppa kick-starts our day and mends our broken hearts. Its soothing and today, its a reasonably affordable staple. Theres Assam, Ceylon, green and gunpowder, loose-leaf Lapsang and PG tips, theres Yorkshire and Tetley; made with a mountain of sugar for builders and left black for the more purist among you. Theres a herbal tea for every symptom and desired feeling; detox, love or night time tea. There are the colleagues you make tea for, marking a well-earned pause in the day. Whether its taken in an enormous Sports Direct mug (isnt it amazing that tea is takenare there any other drinks that have risen to such status?), or in the finest Wedgwood china, a cup of tea gives us all the opportunity to down tools and take a break.

There are mindful moments to be stolen in tea, as you watch the spoon stirring up whirlpools: drifting off into dreamland in the cold light of morning. On the face of it, tea is one of lifes everyday indulgences, but thats not all. Its divisive and wonderful and theres a romance to the courtship of a cuppa. How do you take yours? seems an unobtrusive question, yet the answer it elicits tells you so much about a person. If she asks for an alternative milk: I bet shes hard work. More than one sugar: Doesnt he read the news? Some may call it snobbery, I like to think of it as a social study, an enquiry laden with loving judgement. And then theres the question of what to drink it in. Back to that Sports Direct mug or the finest bone china? You can buy tea sets for onea mug and pot that stack, one upon the otherwhich puts paid to the saying that it is in fact for two. Tea drinking can, however, be a glorious solo pursuit, especially on a hangover and accompanied by a packet of Hobnobs and a Netflix account.