Ours is an ice house ours is.

Ours is an ice house ours is.

This morning (Tuesday 11th September) we awoke to quite a cool house. In fact my wife said it was freezing. It was 19 degrees C.

FREEZING!? I well remember as a young lad growing up in a tiny council house with no heating. Apart, that is, from one small fire range in the one small sitting room downstairs that we could barely afford to have lit 'cos coal was so expensive unless there was a collier in the house.

There was no double glazing. No cavity fill. No loft insulation and no fitted carpets. Cold linoleum was the order of the day, with the odd peg-rug scattered sparsely. We kids helped peg those rugs with our own fair chilblain-ed hands.

On many cold winter days we had frost covering the insides of all the windows and even a glass of water would freeze on the bedside table. Our beds were always weighed down with old army greatcoats with lots and lots of pockets. My three sisters and I never tired of going through those pockets in an effort to discover some long forgotten small change or some other valuable. All we ever seemed to find were balls of khaki fluff.

Apart from snuggling under this mountain of coats with some of my siblings (sharing a bed with my sisters didn't affect me in later life, sweetie) we had a cat called Pally that always joined us in bed. We had to share the affections of that cat just like more affluent people shared a hot water bottle.

On luckier days when the small range had been lit, the steel shelves would be removed and wrapped in pages of The Daily Herald and then carted upstairs where they would be laid in our freezing beds. They were a truly marvelous addition to our comfort, just as long as we took care to avoid the possibility of third degree burns.

Kids today don't know they're born. And if any of you lot out there dare to say: "You were lucky....", and echo that Monty Python sketch I'll scream.