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So I have to have the heating on. A lot. Which makes the house all stuffy and airless and gives me a headache so I open all the windows, and the back door.
You know what, to hell with it. There’s more. When I go out I leave the lights on. I don’t want to get burgled. Oh, god. What is going to happen to me? Am I going to go to that special red-hot circle of hell where they put the climate-change deniers in with the Ponzi schemers and the bankers who are still getting bonuses?
I know that not fretting constantly about climate change is pretty much the worst thing a human being can sink to in our society. Why else would you get the third degree when you utter the words ‘Can I have a napkin, please?’ in Pret a Manger. Have you noticed? The lips curling in disgust, the single miserable brown square of paper pushed grudgingly across the counter. ‘Please, er, er, can I have some more?’
‘More? How many do you want? Are you intent on stripping the entire Amazon bare?’ You want to explain that you are very sorry about the Amazon but you don’t know how else to get the mayonnaise off your hands.
They look at you as though they are in no mood to hear the excuses of a famine and flood wrecker then push a huge, foot-high stack of napkins at you, an attempt at cutting-edge, environmentally conscious napkin satire.
‘No, really,’ you want to say. ‘I just need something to wipe my chin with. If you don’t give me napkins I will only have to go to the ladies and tear off a really long strip of loo paper and that can’t be any better for the environment, can it?’
It’s the same when you get to the front of the checkout in the supermarket. ‘Do you want bags?’ they say, piercing you with accusing eyes. When you say you’re really sorry but, yes, you would like bags as you seem to have forgotten your canvas Zac Goldsmith thing yet again (let’s face it, it’s permanently berthed on the top of the veg rack and never leaves the house), they say, ‘Bag for life?’ and then, narrowing their eyes to a terrifying gaze, ‘or…normal bags?’
You can barely hear your trembling voice as it stammers, ‘N-n-n-n-n-normal…’
And then they throw one at you and watch with glee as you try to force an entire week’s shopping into it because you dare not ask for another.
The thing is, I cannot be the only single woman with cold feet who overheats her house and leaves the lights on when she goes out because she’s afraid of coming home to find an axeman hiding in the wardrobe. You see, I’ve looked, but I can’t find any mention of this issue in the ‘environment’ sections of those election leaflets.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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