What's under your bed?

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‘Is that Vicky?’ asked the man who rang.

‘Yes, who is speaking?’

He gave his name; he was from my electricity provider, the ‘Maturation Team’ he said, and he wanted to talk about my contract. I was pleased and asked about the cost of my future electricity bill. But as you read this, alarm bells should be ringing. However, they did not ring for me. I continued to talk to the caller there seemed to be no reason not to.

We are all worried about the cost of living and in particular energy charges. My electricity contract is coming to an end so I have been trying to work out whether I should opt for a fixed price tariff or go onto the standard rate. There are so many unknowns. What will the price cap do in April and then again in October? The fixed rate option is much more expensive but will be as it says ‘fixed’ and even though it is expensive it is easier to budget for. The standard rate which is cheaper at present will go up in price and so far, I do not know by how much.

Can you blame me for latching onto the caller? Well, yes you can. It is against all my safety rules to talk to a cold caller like this. I believed him right to the end of our conversation as he offered to help. I said that I would ring him back and he gave me his number. After some thought I did not ring back, it may have been an honest caller but when I put his number up on the internet, others were very doubtful and thought it was a scam. Luckily, I did not give any information about my account (but I could have done so easily).

What a strange world we are in now. It is very different from the world that I isolated from two years ago. At first suddenly, flour was in very short supply you could not get it in kitchen sized bags and people started hoarding it; suppliers were left with big catering sacks. Now, you can easily get flour, no one seems to be baking anymore. A few weeks ago, you could not get crisps, today I am finding boxed tissues are the must have commodity that is in short supply.

One thing is predictable though and it is that we have potato sets in egg cartons under our bed every January. They are beginning to shoot but must remain there for some time yet. Wizened and brown their ‘eyes’ stare up at me. I find that it is better not to say anything.

 (Taken from my column in the Shropshire Star)


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