‘Wear your woolly hat and socks in bed’      PHOTO: DNArthun / Flickr / CC2.0

• I HAVE been fortunate and it’s many years since I lived in a brutally cold house, but this no-cost draught-excluding system does work and this winter, with the energy price hike, could be a real help to anyone who is facing fuel poverty.

I am in my upper 80s so can’t offer much more than ideas – I can’t even knit – so may I suggest some volunteers try this out to improve the technique, using this as a starting point.

It may be that everyone knows this cost-free way of insulating single-pane windows with newspaper. But just in case…

All you need is newspaper, an old copy of your favourite title will do nicely, a bowl of water (warm is OK), and a table knife (not kitchen too sharp).

Tear the newspaper into strips roughly three to four inches or eight to 10 centimetres wide. Dampen the strip throughly and squeeze out surplus water.

Place, more like squash, the strip into a gaping gap, like the one between two sash windows. Squish it down with your fingers and the knife until you have filled the gap and made it look as tidy as you can.

Leave the stuffing to dry out and leave it till spring. It works.

I was brought up in the depths of the country, no running water, outside toilet, and only the living room heated with a coal fire.

And here is a second tip.

A huge amount of body heat is lost through an uncovered head.

You rarely see a hill walker without a woolly hat. And people like my mum, who hated the cold, wore a woolly hat indoors especially before she had lit the fire and the room had warmed up.

If you can afford it use wool, tons better than synthetic. And those Victorians who wore night caps and mob caps in bed were far from stupid.

Wear your woolly hat and socks in bed.

‘AUNTIEFREEZE’
– Prefer not to have my name published