We were only talking about that yesterday. When the children were little we had no double glazing, the heating wasn’t as good: the house had no porch and both the front and back doors were glazed with thin glass. And when I was a child we just had one coal fire in the living room. But I don’t ever remember feeling cold.
I have to say, I felt cold a lot as a kid. I grew up in a council house (built 1955) that had single glazing and no insulation at all, and just the coal fire in the living room.
My mother was a housewife until the youngest of us was settled in school and she was up before 6am getting the fire lit. Back then it was normal to get both a daily paper and an evening one so there was no shortage of old newspaper which we were well-practised in rolling tightly into firelighters which were left by the fireside.
I honestly don't ever recall being warm - or comfortable, even - in our bedroom (where the five boys slept) even in summer and winter was awful. I hated having to go to bed there. Eventually my parents bought electric convection heaters but my mother was always deeply worried about the cost of running them. They were switched on about an hour before we were due to go to bed and off once we were sleeping, but we were still never anywhere near warm.
Even as late as 1981, the year I was married and moved into a brand new house, there was only single glazing and no insulation. Newly-wedded conjugality was our only heat source beyond the electric bar fire in the living room. During a hard winter that followed the wedding, we bought a Calor gas canister heater which offered extra warmth but caused massive amounts of condensation. One morning the entire inside of the [ceiling to floor] front window was iced on the inside. When I pulled at the edge, the whole thing crashed down on the living-room carpet. We got it cleared up before it melted and immediately organised a visit to the bank to organise a loan for gas central heating, which made a huge difference.
It would be two houses and eight years later before we bought a [brand new] house complete with double glazing, insulation and gas central heating.
When we were house-hunting not long ago, Mrs O fancied older properties and I kept trying to steer away from them so renting the old, cold sandstone house that we did last year convinced her never to consider any house from now on that isn't a timber-frame, fully-insulated and double/triple glazed one with controllable central heating.
It's probably softened me up no end but I reckon I've done my time with discomfort.
