As a kid, did your ma and da’s house have central heating, double-glazed windows and duvets?

Or did you have a coal or two-bar electric fire in one room, fishmonger’s streaming windows and a candlewick?

I asked that question in a light-hearted vein on my X account the other week, and it drew an enormous, humorous, and often sentimental response.

It also comes as arguments bubble over whether what’s known as the baby boomers generation, people born from 1946 to 1964, have had advantages that more recent generations don’t enjoy in terms of pensions, housing and general wealth.

Evan Davis, a BBC presenter born in 1962, also asked recently whether he was “part of the luckiest generation in history”.

Icy winters meant windows streaming with condensation

I was brought up in a council tenement in Kirkton, where icy winters meant windows streaming with condensation and bedrooms cold enough to freeze the iceman Wim Hof.

Many folk replying to my question remembered very clearly the privations endured growing up in their folks’ houses, and of course many added their own vivid recollections of a time gone by, which is still well within living memory.

Aileen Campbell, a former minister in the SNP........

© The Courier