Who cares about the cold old?

When I was a child, we lived in a two-up, two-down terraced slum in Walthamstow, East London with bombsites at the back. My father made me a doll’s house by dividing a box into four for the rooms. One year when we hadn’t any coal, I watched my doll’s house, disassembled, burning in the living room grate. I couldn’t grumble. I had asthma and for the first couple of years of my life there was no NHS. Just being alive was a bloody miracle. I rather admired the glittering ice patterns on the inside of my bedroom window. 

I was cold then, and I am cold now. I had hoped things might improve in the 21st century. My £200 winter fuel payment was eaten up in just over a month by my energy company. I must have been too warm. Now I can only afford to have one radiator on at 18.5 degrees, so my clothes and books have been going mouldy. A