So, 2010 is now upon us and my only thought for a New Year resolution is to do some shopping. Yes, I too can help the economy.

Sad though it seems, coming so soon after the spend-fest that is the modern-day Christmas, I’m hoping my need is not so much the beginning of an addiction but merely a response to the blooming cold weather we’ve been having.

As a mother of three, with bikes our main form of transport, I’ve realised there are some things I haven’t yet got right when it comes to cycling at this time of year.

I don’t mean the school run, bleak as it seems when setting up the bike and trying to unfreeze the lock. A two-mile ride I can cope with, just, if there is the incentive of a large cup of coffee at the end.

But when it comes to a ride in the cold for 10 minutes or more, children start bawling if their hands freeze. While they all have gloves, they do seem to tend to lose them beneath the sofa, so what should be a brisk two-minute regime getting coats and helmets on becomes an increasingly frantic 20-minute ‘find the glove’ game.

If you lose your mobile, you call it from another phone and locate it using its ring; if you lose your gloves, that’s it – cold hands. If you lose the bike lights, then cycling after dark becomes impossible. In such situations, what I need is a siren that blares out, ‘warning – she’s chewing the bike lights’ or ‘she’s hiding the bike lights under a tree in the garden’.

If any designers can come up with a fit-anything homing device, I’d happily buy up the entire stock.

The other thing I’m after is a toddler’s bike helmet that doesn’t take out a wedge of flesh every time I try to do it up. With a little girl packed up in all the clothes she can fit on without being mistaken for a sumo wrestler, having to fit a seat strap and a helmet on her is tough work. Nipping at the skin under her chin with the clip makes her even grumpier. Surely bike helmets can be designed with a clip at the side?

I had a reminder of the extra risks you face on a bike at this time of year when coming back from a post-New Year party in North Oxford.

Cycling along Parks Road by the Natural History Museum in the early evening, it was scary to see how the puddles around drains at the side of the road had already turned to black ice. As they are also in our bike lanes, it meant stretches of cycle lane were treacherous to ride on.

It’s at moments like these I have my little fantasies about what it could be like to cycle in Oxford. Did you know that in Sweden there are roads where they have under-road heating? I’ll think of that over the next month or two while dodging more patches of black ice as young voices tell me from behind how cold their gloveless hands are.