A cold childhood

New Statesman​

21-05-2025

Photo by Jamie Smith / Millennium Images, UK
My fiercely political teacher in junior school used to horrify us with stories of the bad old days, as he called them, before the NHS and labour laws, when children went up chimneys and down mines. He told us about diphtheria and polio, and laced his remembrances with regular warnings, reminding us to enjoy fresh air and a free education, things that others had fought for. One day he described Housemaid's Knee, a painful condition acquired from repetitive crouching. 'Always stretch your legs out in bed,' he said. 'Lie straight or else!'
But lying straight brought different agonies for me in my freezing cold bedroom in a narrow, terraced house in south Birmingham. There were three beds for four of us, mine wedged under a draughty window. Sometimes the sheets were so cold they felt wet. I would lift the blankets gingerly and lie down in the smallest space I could, gripping my knees to my chest, not daring to move into a bit of the bed not yet warmed by my underweight body. The night after my teacher's warning, I forced my legs down into the icy tundra and stayed there, miserable and half-awake until the morning, when my father started his shift as a bus driver and my mother as a dinner lady.
The unhappiness of being cold is not something you would know unless you've been there. It isn't the temporary discomfort of getting a bit chilly on a walk, or visiting a relative who doesn't put the heating on. It isn't temporary. It goes on and on. It gets into your bones and affects everything you do.
I was cold every morning until I got to school. I was cold as soon as I walked back into the house; cold in the morning again when I got dressed in damp clothes that had lain on the bed for extra warmth. In the winter I was cold for entire weekends. We had little food to fire my natural defences and very few warm clothes. We didn't get central heating until I was in my teens and then only prehistoric, cut-price night storage radiators, steel grey monoliths that seemed to pump out all the good stuff while we were at school and then fade to nothing when we needed it most.
The cold I endured in my childhood made me profoundly sad and depressed. It made me tired and unable to pay attention at school despite the glorious stuffiness and overheating the other pupils complained about. I never played outdoors between October and May and I never, ever asked my friends back to my house. When I visited theirs, I took jealous note of the raging fires and eiderdowns.
People who speak about the olden days with fondness often joke about the ice on the inside of the windows, net curtains stuck to the glass making pretty patterns in the light. But sleeping under a single-pane window in thin bedding and waking barely any warmer is not and never will be funny, and is something which has not yet been consigned to history.
More than six million households live in fuel poverty, spending more than 10 per cent of their income on cooking and keeping warm. Whether living in poverty or not, heating is one of the first economies people make when money is scarce, often heating only one room and limiting hot food to one meal a day.
Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe
I was fortunate to be able to go to my local library to keep warm. I'd choose any book at random and sit with it unopened on my lap, resting my back or feet against the volcanic heat of the cast iron radiators. I got chilblains, scorched clothes and a sweaty forehead, but the heat seeped through to the marrow and finally helped me relax and made me feel better. But today, with libraries closing by the hundreds and the ones that stay open cutting opening hours to a few days a week, there are far fewer opportunities for children like me to get some respite from a miserable house.
But misery is only one effect of the cold. Keeping a house warm can alleviate damp, mould and poor ventilation – the scourge of substandard houses, and problems that can lead to significant health risks and, in extreme cases, death. In 2020, a toddler, Awaab Ishak, died from severe breathing problems caused by mould in his Rochdale home. The case led to a new law that requires social landlords to address dangerous hazards within 14 days – no help to the tenants who are too vulnerable to take on their landlord for fear of eviction.
Misery itself is often a euphemism for serious mental health conditions. Studies show a link between damp and mould exposure and an increased risk of depression. But they can also cause social isolation, frustration and emotional expense trying to get the problem sorted out, plus the worry of spending more and more money trying to fix the unfixable, or at least trying to mitigate the effect on your and your children's health. The health effects of poor housing are estimated to cost the NHS around £100m per year in London alone.
Good quality, affordable and plentiful social housing is the answer to cold, mould and damp, overcrowding and dangerous structural issues. Better housing leads to better outcomes across health, education, economic growth and employment, as well as giving children like me a better start in life.
I wasn't the poorest in my community. I once slept, three in bed, at a friend's house on a mattress with no sheet, covered with winter coats and towels instead of blankets. I went home glad for my damp sheets and pushed my legs dead straight and shivering, right to the bottom of the bed I had all to myself.
'The Best of Everything' by Kit de Waal is published by Headline
[See also: Why George Osborne still runs Britain]
Related