I have a scar on the side of my wrist that’s a constant reminder of miserable winters in our freezing family home in the 70s.
Every night I went to bed wearing a vest, nightie, jumper and bed socks and cuddling a hot water bottle wrapped in a winceyette pillowcase.
But one night the cover must have slipped. I woke up with a huge blister having burned my hand as I slept.
Mum was mortified and it led to another furious row with my Dad about how she was supposed to feed two kids and keep us safe and warm.
Get all the latest news sent to your inbox. Sign up for the free Mirror newsletter
Now, I don’t want to sound like one of the four Yorkshiremen in that Monty Python poverty sketch, but we were genuinely skint.
The house had no heating, just a coal fire in the front room and a couple of electric two-bars.
We didn’t have a bathroom or hot water until I was 13, so Mum had to boil kettles on the gas stove to fill a tin bath for our ablutions. And as she couldn’t afford shampoo my brother and I usually had our hair washed in Fairy Liquid.
I’ve been thinking back a lot recently as people keep saying the looming winter energy crisis will be just like the 70s.
Then they reminisce about sausage-dog draught excluders, mittens on strings, having to scrape ice off the inside of your bedroom window, playing Monopoly by candlelight and reading Enid Blyton books with a torch.
Yes, times were hard, they say, but it didn’t do us any harm, did it? Spare me the misty eyed nostalgia.
I was constantly anxious as a child – ashamed that we were broke, terrified about what the future held and stressed by the rows and my Mum’s daily battle to make ends meet.
And when I went to bed each night hugging my hot water bottle I would pray that one day we’d be warm and comfy and she would not have to sell her jewellery to buy us Christmas and birthday presents.
So I only have to rub the scar on my wrist to feel the chill of those miserable winters. And I wouldn’t wish them on anyone.
