We need to act now to avoid another crisis next winter

There’s also a watery golden orb up above that I seem to have almost forgotten about.

For the past few months, I have spent my days huddled under numerous layers of clothing in my home office in a bid to keep the heating bills down.

To keep the radiators off, we’ve had the log-burner going night and day during certain weeks.

Yes. Hands up. A log-burner. Not massively good for the environment and a bit middle class . . . and certainly not a something that is a feature in every house.

But what do you do? It’s been absolutely freezing – at a point where we’re all feeling the pinch and could really have done with a mild winter.

Mo mother has spent the winter huddled under a duvet on the sofa of her Mansfield home. And she’s just watching out for the pennies.

I am conscious that there are many, many people . . . the elderly and the vulnerable, those in need of financial help, who have found the past few months a kind of living hell.

We’ve had to create special warm spaces for our more vulnerable residents. Our foodbanks have been ‘through the roof’ busy and crying out for fresh supplies.

Fuel prices have gone soared for multiple reasons, and yet we have a Government hell bent on not taking on the oil companies.

Summer 2022 – that idiotically warm spell which gave us the sort of temperatures we’ve never seen before – now seems like a distant memory.

We hear talk of green energy, more use of solar, new fusion plants to future-proof our energy needs.

But all of these things are a very long way off. And whilst we have the incoming spring and summer to look forward to, six months from now the mornings will be getting chilly again, the nights will be drawing in.

Our leaders have an opportunity now to ensure that the elderly and the vulnerable don’t have to endure the same awful conditions many have lived through in recent months.

Because winter, as the saying goes, is coming.