Cold morning, 70’s flashback & white dog shit

Four degrees outside.

14 in.

My daughter is dressed for school

And wearing her fluffy red dressing gown,

Just like I did

In the 70’s.

I used to share a chipped white Dimplex

With my brother.

It would straddle our rooms in an attempt to maintain the heat.

The ice

On the inside of our windows

a reflection of its failings.

I don’t remember the cold.

Although

When I think of cold

I think of that ice

And I think of

Billy in Kes, as he’s pulled out of bed by his brother

of the skinny boys standing, shivering on the football pitch

or in the shower

Cold

It goes to the bones.

As a student I knew the cold

With a poor diet I would cough and sniffle through every winter.

Now

I am a man

The world is different

Yet there is this undoing

A reversion to the world of 50 years ago.

It is familiar

And not a place to visit.

It is red bills

That are demands for the gas and electricity

It is winter of discontent

It is Grundig TV with whiteouts and loops over and over

And white dog shit

And the state we are in.