Category: Perspectives

History may not repeat itself, but it might rhyme

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Reading Barbara Penner’s fascinating book ‘Bathroom’ (2013) about how the modern, predominantly Western, bathroom has evolved, the parallels with the energy transition felt noticeable. Very different technologies involved but both water and energy consumption are so firmly entrenched in our lives, expectations and daily practices. The history of bathrooms shows how differently we can behave and therefore suggests we shouldn’t assume we’ve reached an unimprovable, or unchanging situation with the current entrenched position of bathrooms in our lives. How they came to be so offers reflections for the energy transition.

Penner traces the development and refinement of different technologies, showing a mix of reasons and circumstance that dictated which became more widely adopted and which fell by the wayside. How, despite new bathroom related technologies becoming available, there were issues with deployment. They were usually only available to the rich, and even then often only taken up by those who were prepared to deal with the issues getting technologies put in to their home, particularly when the wider infrastructure like sewage pipes wasn’t there to support it. Many poorer areas struggled to get the new products because companies weren’t interested, with a more widespread approach only happening when the public sector got involved. Where efforts were targeted at those who were less well-off, it was often driven by a sense of morality and desire to improve health but also behaviour. Henry Roberts, a Victorian architect, designed flats for poor families which were radical in their inclusion of a room specifically designated as a bathroom. The aim of Roberts was to provide the occupants with the ‘moral training of a well-ordered family’, looking to introduce and enforce an appropriate distance between the bodies of the various occupants and also between the bodies and their waste.

The patchy, ad hoc nature of the change and take-up of bathrooms was interesting to read about. In a world where fitted, matching suites are the norm, hearing about people starting to get some elements of what we would now consider to be fundamental parts of the bathroom, the toilet, sink and bath or shower, but not all of them showed how much has changed. Striking too, how those decisions would be driven by considerations around space, cost and availability, with factors such as health, morality and norms also playing a big part. Even where people did get some aspects of the bathroom put into their home, they would often continue with older technologies in parallel.

In the world of energy transitions, the take-up of new technologies is patchy too – globally but also within countries and across geographies, property types and personal circumstances. Even in the same home, people can have a few different technologies. Perhaps getting some insulation or a heat pump to serve an extension, whilst still having the boiler as the main heating source for instance. Although less explicitly moralistic than some of the efforts in relation to water and bathrooms, there is still a sense that it’s the ‘right thing to do’ to try and support those who are less well-off to get energy measures installed. That said, it’s also true that lots of the early adopters for energy measures are those who are well-off and prepared to navigate the complexity of installation.

Penner is also really strong on showing how the development of the bathroom allowed for our homes and bodies to become much more private spaces whilst also making bathrooms, and by extension homes, much more connected to the public sphere and regulated. Previously, all the functions we would use a bathroom for were done in more communal spaces. People would go to the toilet together, or in more public or shared spaces. Bathing, or cleaning yourself if not actually taking a bath, would be done in spaces with other uses, such as the kitchen, scullery or bedroom. As well as sharing spaces, people would often share the washing water itself.

To allow for the infrastructure which could underpin the kind of toilets we now consider to be standard, regulation and government action happened. The Public Health Act 1848 had clauses regarding domestic sanitary arrangements, marking the first moment when government entered the private bathroom in a meaningful way. The Act required that any new built or rebuilt house needed a sufficient WC or privy and an ashpit with doors and covering. Homeowners were required to notify the local board of health in writing prior to constructing privy/cesspool and surveyors were given the power to shut down any judged to be nuisance or injurious to health. Eventually The Great Stink of 1858 led to the closing of private cesspools and stopped people putting their waste into the Thames, facilitated by the building of a co-ordinated waste system to manage and treat the waste. This led to the adoption of that approach nationally and internationally too.

A criticism of action on climate by those who would consider themselves to be right-wing is that it’s really just cover for more intervention by the State. It was clear reading the book how development of products by the market helped make deployment possible. Without that range of options available, the problem solving to try and improve measures and the mix and match potential that marked the start of the development of the bathroom, it’s hard to see either why more infrastructure might be needed or how it could develop. That said, and I’ve not done further reading so perhaps other accounts might take a different view, it’s hard to see how the development of the infrastructure could have developed in an holistic way without the intervention of government. The private sector focus on generating a desire in those who could pay, and would put up with the challenges of getting measures installed and adapting their homes and way of life, didn’t seem able to provide a comprehensive offer to everyone. Private sector effort and enterprise could generate a want and partially fulfil it.

That sense of the attitudinal changes shifting over time, which fed into and out of the technology changes, was such a strong part of the story for me. As someone who has been brought up with certain norms around cleanliness, so much of what was normal for so many seems unthinkable now. It was a reminder of the fact that even though things can feel quite fixed in terms of behaviours and norms, they are constantly changing, as are how we use spaces, or even if we have designated spaces at all for certain activities. With the advent of new technologies it became easier for people to decry public defecation, once normal and necessary but less so when technology provided other options and design allowed for privacy.

I came to the book to get an understanding of how a part of the home has changed. One of the things that became quickly obvious but I hadn’t consciously engaged with when starting my PhD, was that different parts of the home are subject to change in different ways and over varied timescales. It was therefore really useful to get a sense of how changes to bathing and toilet habits have affected what we now think of as the bathroom, as well as other parts of the home. What was reassuring was how much of it felt relevant for the changes in how homes are designed and used now from an energy and broader environmental perspective. Despite the different technical challenges, I finished the book with a deeper sense of how fundamental social and cultural changes are to if and how positive change unfolds.

‘While it often feels as if change is unthinkable – that people’s beliefs and behaviours are as deeply entrenched and immovable as infrastructure – this history has shown time and time again that our ideas about and our methods of dealing with water and waste are much less uniform, inevitable and fixed than we usually realize. Bathrooms, like sewers, are relatively recent inventions and they constantly evolve and adapt in the face of shifting social, medical, economic, political and environmental factors.’

Barbara Penner, ‘Bathroom’

It takes how long?

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One of the biggest differences I’ve experienced so far in the move from work world to a PhD is having more time to do things.

In previous roles I was used to covering lots of vacant posts, having work plans for the days and weeks of myself and my team that I would constantly juggle as new ‘urgent’ things came in which meant re- and de-prioritising things. Whether it was true or not, and I definitely feel there’s been an outbreak of busy-ness amongst people that even as I try not to feed into myself, either in terms of talking to myself or presenting my workload to others, I always felt like there wasn’t enough time to do things properly.

I think I was good at coaching other people to accept that not everything needs to be gold-plated, and good enough is great most of the time. Even within that, it often felt like myself and my team were being asked to do pieces of work without much time to really explore the subject, consider options, understand the wider landscape or even just have time to think or proof-read things.

Now though, thoughts which I am sure I’ll look back on and shake my head at, I find myself looking at the timelines for a PhD and thinking it seems improbable to have so long to do one overall piece of work. Even thinking about it as multiple workstreams for different research activities, it seems like a really long time relative to the kinds of timings I’ve had before. The fact I’m the only one doing the work, whereas in work world the project plan would be capturing activity for the whole team I was managing, is obviously a big difference.

Things can take longer than I think they will take and one of the things that I have been noticing as my PhD unfolds, is a tension between expecting or being used to doing things quickly, and having the time to be more considered or thorough. Often when working on something now I have a voice in my head that has checked how long it’s taken me to do something and thinks I’ve been too slow. I then chastise myself for being slow and get into a back and forth discussion with myself about if or how I’m being slow. Taking turns to prosecute or defend myself.

Looking more widely, beyond an immediate task to the list of things I’d love to do, then more widely still to issues and challenges in the world, such as climate change, there’s a sense of urgency. A want and need for things to be moving more quickly. A sense of the impacts building up, spiralling out in time and place to this and future generations, all affected by our slowness and inaction. Or back to myself, thinking about all of the things I’m not doing, can’t do, will never do. That suffocating sense of it, rage and fury and want and need.

Then as I’m writing this, I see a man walk past my window, or in truth, very slowly shuffle past my window. I’m distracted from writing this piece, exploring my own sense of frustration and astonishment at the opportunities I have by him. It takes him, relatively or comparably, longer to pass through my line of sight than I would expect it to take me. For him, on the basis of the times I’ve seen him go by, that seems to be his normal, glacial pace. Everything he does or plans to do must presumably be calibrated to how long it takes him to get places. The actual him, not the him he perhaps used to be or wants to be. Maybe he and I might make the same journey but his expectation of timings might be double what mine would be.

As I look back to a screen full of news reports about how climate change has likely made Hurricane Melissa four times more likely, the fraying consensus around the need to act on climate change, slow progress ahead of the upcoming COP30, it all feels so very slow. Too slow. The urgency not matched with action.

I try to soothe myself with thoughts of the man shuffling past my window, telling myself that sometimes things just take longer than it seems they should take. That he might not want things to take so long either, might also be furious and frustrated but that doesn’t make things faster, probably the opposite.

I stretch and play with the analogy, coming back to it over and over to see if it can help me think differently. To find a way to translate the dignity of the man shuffling by, still trying and doing, into something that makes sense of what I see around the action on climate. For now at least I just have to hold those different things in the same view because they don’t feel like they can easily be reconciled. Things can take too long, longer than we want or need and things flow from that – sometimes good, sometimes bad, often unclear at the time or changing in hindsight. Back to the same message, over and over, to just start from where I am and do what I can. Sometimes that feels enough and sometimes it doesn’t.

Seeing is believing?

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With all of the discussion about clean energy transitions, it can feel very abstract for most people. Massive power plants, huge wind turbines.

Talk about the energy transition seems like it would feel more tangible and real to people if they are actually part of it. Every day you’d be likely to see your panels, or those of your neighbours. The talk of a transition would feel like something you were a part of. It would feel true and real and you’d be able to see how your life was better as a result.

Public acceptance of solar across the board seems to be high. The recent ‘Britain talks climate and nature’ report by Climate Outreach found only 11% of people don’t like seeing solar on roofs. That’s a huge level of public acceptance of a measure which can make quite a difference to the aesthetics of a home or street. People are also much more likely to get solar if their neighbours have got it, creating a potentially virtuous circle in terms of acceptance and take-up.

Solar installs are much quicker than lots of other measures, and less disruptive too. In terms of integrating solar into day to day life, there aren’t really any adjustments needed once it has been installed. Unlike with heat pumps which require space to be found for them and then they are using that space on an ongoing basis.

Immediately people get a benefit in terms of the energy being generated but there’s no lifestyle changes needed to be able to use it. There are lifestyle changes you might be incentivised to make as a result of having them – switching some activities to during the day, like using the dishwasher or washing machine – but if you don’t you are the one who might lose out.

With other energy efficiency or low carbon measures, there might be adjustments which are needed to make sure it works properly. There are also potential risks from an energy and climate perspective of the rebound effect. For those who have been under-heating their home that can actively be a good thing in terms of moving to a level of comfort which is better for health and wellbeing.

Directly providing measures which improve homes could also go some way to addressing the phenomenon Chen et al, (2025) identified, where the messaging on affordability doesn’t resonate with those on low incomes. This is something that people within the environmental sector can focus on around the benefits of some measures or the approach to decarbonisation more generally. So it’s humbling but helpful to get some insights into why that message can actually alienate many of the people it’s specifically trying to help. That messaging makes people feel nervous thinking about the costs because they don’t feel they can afford it. This is exacerbated by the fact they don’t think they will benefit from any transition so the costs are for them but not the benefits.

Being able to tangibly show people it’s for them can change that. With some things, like insulation, the measures themselves just aren’t visible to people unless they’ve been badly installed and then it becomes apparent through the mould, damp and other structural issues. Otherwise the impacts of the insulation can easily become invisible. People tend to take the savings from the energy efficiency and use it to fund an increased level of comfort – which can be the intention in fuel poverty schemes – or the savings get lost as prices rise anyway. So people feel frustrated because they were expecting a reduction in costs and instead see an increase.

In the medium term increasing the deployment of solar will also make it easier to shift costs from electricity to gas because people are less reliant on gas. Making that change is something that needs to happen to support the electrification of energy. Given most people are currently reliant on gas for their heating and hot water, there is an understandable concern about the impact of that shift on people’s health and incomes. Reducing the cost to people of electricity through the provision of free solar can then create the space to fairly and progressively make changes to costs.

Finding a way to give people a more tangible sense of ownership of the move to a decarbonised future feels utterly fundamental to getting people on board. Solar could be one way to do that, to allow people to see themselves as part of, and benefiting from that change.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game

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Part of being able to make a good argument is holding on to the core of something that is true and being able to represent it in language that means something to the other person. Being prepared to go to where they are, to try and reach them and bring them with you. It’s not about you and your ego and what you need to say – you can get anything done if you don’t mind who takes the credit. The end justifies the means.

Conceptualising things in terms of the cost and value is a way of making things analogous, or at least finding some way to consider very different things. A way to meet and discuss things with people who might not share the same emotional attachment. To be able to make choices.

What if the means make it harder to get the ends though?

In trying to make the case for environmental action, we’ve spoken in the language of economics. The hard crunchy things that people care about, or at least can use to reach decisions. The factors that respond to the boxes and templates on the various applications, briefings, funding requests that are the ways of getting things done in lots of organisations, lots of parts of society.

Nature has a value of this. Without bees we’d be c.£120bn worse off per year. Energy inefficient rental homes cost the NHS at least £145m a year.

Framing things this way also helps to create a veneer of normality for trade-offs which would otherwise seem monstrous or unacceptable. It also helps to reinforce the frames and parameters – a tacit agreement that this is the ‘right way’ to look at things, to make choices, weigh up options. A shared language for things, or more perhaps, a seemingly shared language but really it belies some big differences in priorities, values, how to weigh things up.

This distancing from the emotional then maybe creates some stress – knowing that there’s a disconnect, putting your faith in something you don’t entirely trust, not feeling like you’ve got much control or agency. Feeling a bit shabby and tawdry, like you’re selling out, or being dishonest because the framing feels stifling, hiding the things that matter.

More importantly though, this framing hasn’t catalysed sufficient action.

Environmentalists, and indeed people working on other issues such as civil liberties or health for instance, have done the things we’re supposed to do. Spending precious time coming up with assessment methodologies to put a ‘value’ on a tree or landscape, or work out how much someone’s bad housing has ‘cost’ the NHS. Then watching as the things we care about get traded off against other things – often things which will make what we care about worse such as new roads or runways.

In lots of ways that’s fine. As I wrote in ‘Picking your poison’ – making decisions is about making trade-offs, accepting that you can’t necessarily have it all and therefore you have to choose. Losing an argument isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes your ideas or proposals aren’t right, could be better, have areas of weakness which need to be reviewed and reassessed. It can create a space to build better connections with other subjects, organisations or coalitions of the willing.

Sometimes though, losing the argument, and then keeping on losing, just makes it more urgent to win sometimes. From climate and biodiversity perspectives, the longer it takes to ‘win’ the argument, the more worrying things become in terms of impacts. Therefore the more action needs to be taken to try and respond, which is then less appealing to more people. So we go round that loop again and again.

In a different time and in relation to a different context, Gramsci said ‘The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.’ There are currently plenty of ‘morbid symptoms’ in the UK and internationally – on migration, health, civil liberties and, well the list is a very long one. The sense ‘That’s your bloody GDP not ours’ seems to still be true for many. It feels like the lack of space for care is part of what has created these symptoms. That people are protesting about the effects and looking around for politicians, proposals and stories that offer something different.

Feeling optimistic at this point can by turns feel naïve and necessary. Yet I love the quote from Rebecca Solnit’s ‘Hope in the dark’, where she takes the idea of hope as something passive and turns it into something more active. She says ‘“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency.’

It feels like the current situation creates the space and need to shift from the stories we’ve been telling about the financial value of things, and gives more urgency to telling different stories. Ones which resonate better with people – both those who hear the stories and also, for many who are telling them. Most of us can’t do something directly about the stories politicians tell, even those we would expect to be doing better. Trying to find ways in our days and actions to tell better stories ourselves and to try and make the case to care is something we can and must do though.

Picking your poison

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In the discussion between fabric first and fabric fifth it can often feel as though people are trying to get to the ‘right answer’ rather than looking at where the inefficiencies are, how big they are and trying to decide which is more feasible.

In choosing fabric fifth it means that there will be a need to generate more energy and increase grid resilience. All of this costs and means building more national infrastructure. It’s not the more efficient approach in lots of ways, as it means putting more energy generation in than might be optimally required. Asking people to decarbonise their heat supply is a much simpler message and one which can have the biggest impact on their individual carbon footprint. There can still be a place for other measures too, particularly if people want to fund them themselves, but if it’s hard to persuade people to take up any environmental measures, focusing on the most impactful could bring efficiencies that way. In addition to generating carbon savings more quickly, it could also help to reduce costs in trying to recruit people by using a simpler message, and cutting the costs of assessing homes as the standalone heat pump installation can be simpler than internal or external wall insulation.

With fabric first, there should be less energy needing to be generated. In practice this isn’t straightforward, with lots of evidence suggesting there’s a performance gap arising from quality issues in the install process and then a rebound effect, with many households taking improved energy efficiency as comfort savings. This can lead to an increase in energy consumption – and for those households who are under-heating their homes, with the knock-on impacts on the health of the people and the building itself affected, this can be a good thing on wellbeing grounds.

To get to those carbon savings also means trying to persuade people to take up the deeper levels of insulation it requires. This can be more invasive, with most of the ‘easy’ to treat measures done – such as loft or cavity wall insulation. There are still some remaining but these are more likely to be complicated works such as non-standard cavity walls, or perhaps they are lofts where the amount of things being stored makes it too difficult for the occupants to contemplate the work. The longer it takes to persuade people, the more carbon gets emitted along the way.

I’ve long been fascinated by the idea of the shape of the decarbonisation curve, what that means in terms of the quantum of carbon which gets emitted and crucially what that means in terms of how the shift feels to live through. Reaching net zero by any date by plateauing in a steady state way and then plummeting to zero, or a more gradual downward trajectory both get to the same point. Imagining the shape of those two separate trajectories, and therefore the space underneath them as a proxy for the carbon emissions, shows the amount of carbon generated is much bigger in the first scenario than the second. The first scenario increases the likelihood of feedback loops, which mean the impacts could be more significant. Thinking about the transitions and how they would feel to live through, goes to some quite different places. Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, what felt like a total transformation in how we lived globally led to a c.4-5% drop in carbon emissions in 2020. It’s hard to imagine a precipitous drop which is good for humanity. Whereas the more gradual drop suggests a more managed approach which seems likely to be much easier to live through.

If we lived in a world where everything was aligned to the fabric first approach – funding, regulation, owner and occupants willingness and interest and the supply chain capacity and capability – it could still be the best option. Effective and efficient. If that isn’t where we are, which it isn’t, then the question becomes one of trade-offs. To make decisions means choosing the trade-offs rather than acting as though they aren’t there and continuing to push specific approaches.

Shifting in real time

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I was astonished to read that this summer in the UK has been the hottest on record, not because I doubt the data but because my own memory of it feels so out of kilter. I’ve lived through it and it felt toasty at times but others have felt hotter. Perhaps the summers of 2020 and 2021 felt hotter. The lockdowns and pandemic situation might have made those feel hotter – everything felt more claustrophobic and turned up a level then. Even more so during 2020, when neighbours were carrying out an incredibly loud, judderingly bone-shaking extension. The noise and vibrations felt so intense, they created a feedback loop between the discomfort and the heat.

A big part of why it felt different to me is also probably because I’ve been lucky enough to move since then. During those pandemic times I was living in an Edwardian, first floor, purpose-built maisonette – a building designed for quite another climate. Now I live in a house that, whilst not very easy to keep cool, is nonetheless much easier to do so. Particularly at night, which meant I’ve been able to get some respite from the heat rather than feeling like my eyeballs were going to burst. I’m also in an area that’s more surrounded by trees, so that’s potentially giving more of a cooling feel too. I can come up with these different ideas to rationalise my thinking, even as I wonder if it’s just me trying to explain being in a more privileged situation.

Still though. The recency bias of a few autumnal feeling days and lots of rain means that those glorious sunny days feel a long time ago. Even scrolling back through photos, I see lots of sunny days but also plenty of grey days with occasional drizzle in the mix too. Knowing that I’m looking back at a summer which is record breaking and struggling to assimilate that information with what I remember and see. To see the shifting baselines happening, in real time, to myself, someone who works on climate issues and is aware of this in a way others might not be, feels disconcerting. If I can’t even persuade myself, how can I be surprised that others aren’t alarmed?

In a New York minute…

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Looking at the weather report last night for today, it said there would be rain, lots of rain, a bit later on in the day. Not just a bit of rain but some good double blob levels of rain.

I woke up this morning to bright blue skies. Not a cloud to be seen in the sky. The soft, warm light gradually growing in its seemingly implacable intensity. As the early morning turned into kind of time that no longer feels like a secret pocket of time to be awake in, a virtuous bonus for the owls amongst us, but the kind of time most might be awake – the big blue sun filled sky carried on.

Checked the weather report again. Surely it wasn’t still predicting rain. Out of this most gently insistent blue sky – it seemed impossible.

Gradually some clouds appeared, then a few more came with tints of grey.

The seemingly impossible happened. Double blob rain out of a darkened sky. No blue to be seen. Replaced with thoughts of putting on a light and getting a jumper.

It is easy to forget everything is changing all of the time. Easy to feel moments are bigger and more substantial than they are. Good and sometimes astonishing to be reminded otherwise, fortunate that reminder comes today in the form of some much needed rain…

On not knowing…

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It’s a weird space to be in, to not know things but be trying to know and explore. To bump up against the edges of not knowing. To not know how to know. To allow yourself to be bored and uncomfortable. To go down some rabbit holes without knowing if they are rabbit holes or the thing that will unlock the knowing…

It’s rare to be in a space where it’s okay to not know. To be able to admit that – because it feels possible, permissible and safe to do so.

I was reminded again of this whilst reading the rightly furious and urgent piece by Rachel Donald – ‘The crisis of imagination’. It’s easy to think we have such a rich understanding of the world – from ever more detailed research, footage from space and down deep into the earth’s core and back in time which shows us our world in so many different ways. Yet public discourse, in politics and online, often isn’t kind to those who admit they don’t have all the answers.

Making ways to allow ourselves, individually and collectively to not know – and not to stop there but be open to finding out – is key. To be prepared to face some mild discomfort in admitting our ignorance, so we can better focus on what needs to be done.

Bedding down

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Beds have come to seem so normal but for most people in time and space, the kinds of mattresses we think of as standard in the UK just aren’t. Sleeping on bare earth – or at least, earth covered with grass and herbs to provide some kind of matting for people to walk around and sleep on. Hammocks and boxes, benches and coffin-like beds. Mattresses made of linen, feathers or straw, beds have been through lots of iterations.

My bed, I’m so happy and lucky to say, is very much not like sleeping on bare earth. It is so comfortable and either explicitly or implicitly I register that each time I get in. A daily joy and privilege. It’s quite firm but not too firm. There’s some give in it but it doesn’t feel squashed or like I’m suffocating or being swallowed up by the bed.

Yet I wonder what it would feel like for people who are used to sleeping on rolled up plant materials if they were to magically be able to try out my bed. Whether they would lie down on it and be blown away by the comfort levels, see their own situation differently. Wish for something else. Or whether it would just feel too uncomfortable. Too much. Or perhaps too little. Missing that connection with the ground. Feeling a bit unmoored from their life and homesick for something that felt more natural, rather than being on some complicated set-up.

Shove suggests that so much of what we experience as comfort is set by wider expectations. With the availability of technologies which allow us to control the temperature in rooms and buildings more easily there was a need for designers to have an understanding of what temperature range they should be aiming for. This has led to the development of a norm around temperatures in buildings which then creates a feedback loop, or ratchet as Shove describes it, which leads to increases in usage more widely. Somewhat terrifyingly, Walker, Simcock and Day found the temperatures people prefer in their bedrooms are generally lower than the 18 degrees recommended by the energy sector. This guidance can help to reset expectations and could lead to further increases in energy consumption.

So perhaps those mythical time travellers who get to test my bed might not like it if they just gave it a one-time try. Their expectations would still be with their own beds and perhaps mine wouldn’t feel right for them.

A really big shift, perhaps bigger than the actual bed technology, is the one from sleeping being a more communal activity to sleep as something private. There is a wider move to more privacy at home, and beds are just part of that. Until around the Victorian times in the UK, sleep was a much more shared experience. It used to be common for all the members of a household to bed down together. Halls were multi-purpose rooms where people would eat, work, hang out and sleep. Servants and masters, young and old sharing beds or a room. Hard to imagine that being the norm for most people in space and time, yet there was considered to be an intimacy to sharing that space. For many members of the nobility, inviting people into their bedchamber was considered to be offering or getting a huge privilege. A much more communal existence than most people have now.

This shift by the Victorians was driven partly by increased concerns around the moral implications of people sharing beds, and partly because of hygiene considerations. There became more awareness of how infectious diseases could be spread, and therefore more of a drive for people to have their own space to try and reduce that risk.

That seems impossible for most of us to imagine. A tangible way in which people from previous generations lived lives that are very different to our own.

Of course, there are now hundreds of thousands of people around the country, one of the richest in the world, for whom imagining that is easy because it is their reality today too. Families or groups of individuals sharing one room. That room becoming like the Hall of old – with one room also becoming the living, working and eating space. Sometimes the room they have to use for cooking too. Living rooms in rental places increasingly getting used as living rooms, either by the people renting having to make that decision to be able to afford the space, or landlords making that decision for people.

As with other changing expectations, the gap between expectation and reality means what once might have made a home feel communal and normal, now feels like a lack of care or respect. This creates a sense of emotional discomfort which can be just as unpleasant to live with, and in, as physical discomfort can be. Much has changed with beds and how we sleep but until we have more of a shared agreement, and actions to match, we’ll continue to have people living amongst us who have beds and sleeping arrangements that seem like time travel to most of us.

In plain sight

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Always really humbling and hopefully helpful to see things hiding in plain sight that have been taken for granted that don’t quite work.

The definition of fuel poverty has changed a lot over time. Broadly speaking it’s about finding different ways to express the fact that people don’t have enough money to be able to heat their homes to a suitable temperature. There’s a separate debate about the term, and it’s not one that many people would recognise for themselves but still, those are not really for today.

There are all kinds of subtleties to that though. People’s circumstances can change for various reasons, all of which affect their ability to pay. From changes in their income – which is the main reason people move into or out of fuel poverty, to changes in the household – increases or decreases, or someone becomes unwell. There are plenty of other reasons besides but they give a sense of the fact this isn’t an absolute number that can be used as the benchmark to assess a household’s situation.

Yet when we look at fuel poverty, we look at the energy costs. This includes costs to heat the home and typically heating is the largest part of the cost. It’s not the only part of the cost. Even just looking at gas costs doesn’t allow you to separate out the heating costs, as people also use gas for hot water and potentially for cooking too.

Somewhere along the way those different aspects – assessing fuel poverty on the basis of ability to heat the home, and looking at energy costs in the round, got joined together.

Perhaps it wouldn’t matter. As many, including Druckman and Jackson suggest, energy costs for heating are more variable than electricity costs. Heating costs are more dependent upon the energy efficiency of the home and the need for different levels of comfort. So perhaps it’s a pragmatic proxy that avoids making life even more complicated.

Nonetheless, that sense of being shown by Walker, Simcock & Day how those two different considerations have been joined together in a way which isn’t articulated clearly was astonishing.

A reminder of how often there can be shared blind spots. Unspoken understandings and misunderstandings which then block opportunities or set parameters unnecessarily.