Each week dozens of Mirror readers write to our much-loved columnist Val Savage. But of all the messages she has received there was one Val got recently which has shaken her to the core.
It was a letter which no one should be forced to write in Britain in 2023. It is a letter which shames our nation.
In it, three women in their seventies tell Val how during the cost of living crisis they’ve dubbed themselves the Bus Monkeys after spending their days riding around on buses to keep warm, and cooking their food on camping stoves to save on energy.
In one harrowing section they tell how they even ate pet food as a cheap alternative to stewing steak.
Val, 74, says: “I broke down and could not speak for a good hour after I read the letter. How can life be so hard, in Britain, in this day and age? It’s so bloody awful it makes me feel ill.
“I can’t get these women out of my mind. We can’t let this carry on.”
The letter was postmarked South Tyneside but had no return address.
It was signed with the writer’s first name, which we have changed to Jean to retain her anony-mity. “I understand if the Bus Monkeys want to stay private,” says Val.
“I know pride might get in the way of asking for help. But I’d love to hear from them, only because I desperately want to help.”
The letter begins by agreeing with a column in which Val talked about poverty returning to levels seen around the time of the Second World War.
Telling how she and her pals cut costs as prices soar, Jean writes: “We all have camping stoves and eat at each other’s homes once a week as it is cheaper.
“One of the ladies makes a lovely dinner; tender beef and chicken. We were puzzled how she did it.
“She owned up: she used dog food pouches Winalot. So far we’ve had no ill effects. One of our neighbours catches squirrels and dresses the (pesky grey ones) for us. Very tasty.”
Jean says she missed out on watching the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations and funeral last year because she does not have a TV and relies on a battery radio instead. But she says she is still harassed to pay for a TV licence.
She adds: “No more showers, just top and tail. No light, candles only. But we were used to that life.”
Val, who is the mum of football legend Robbie, is horrified at the deprivation revealed in the letter.
She says: “Times are not like they were in our grandparents’ times – they are far worse. Television is a luxury, but for people in their 70s like me it’s company and comfort, and keeps me informed. If I didn’t have it I’d be lost.
“Surely we’re entitled to a hot shower or bath to ease aching bones at our age? I’m so upset and extremely cross that people are living like this today, my stomach is in knots. It’s made me want to meet Rishi Sunak and give him a piece of my mind. Does he know how the other half lives?”
The letter explains that the reason the women go to such lengths to save money is that they help pay towards their adult children’s mortgages, food bills and petrol as soaring costs take an ever-bigger slice of their low pay.
Val is moved by their selflessness, saying: “What amazing women they are to make so many sacrifices for their families. But we can’t ignore deprivation like this. How would we feel if they were our mums, sisters, nanas?”
Although some of the details of the letter seem almost incredible in this day and age there is plenty of evidence of such things happening in pockets of the UK over this long, hard winter.
Charity volunteer Mark Seed, from Cardiff, said recently: “We have people who are eating pet food.
“People are trying to heat their food on a radiator or a candle.”
And fire chiefs recently had to warn against the use of camping stoves or barbecues indoors to cut energy costs after Derbyshire firefighters tackled a blaze sparked by an improvised heating device made with tealights.
Gran Linda Foster, 73, from Skegness, told the Mirror
the cost of living crisis had hit her
so hard she had to ride buses to keep warm – and that was last summer.
And John Alcock, 53, of Stoke, Staffs, told how he cannot afford showers and lives in darkness.
Age UK chief Caroline Abrahams said of Jean’s letter: “It’s deeply shocking to hear of older people struggling
to such a degree that they resort to eating pet food.
“But arguably the saddest thing of all is their realisation, and ours too, that they are being forced to live in ways we all thought had been consigned to history in our country.
“In the 1940s and 1950s it was not that unusual for the poorest older people to be living in homes that were unbearably cold, lacking the wherewithal to eat properly and keep themselves warm.
“Today, in the 21st century, some lives seem closer to that kind of existence than we would ever have dreamed possible just a few years ago.
“We should be ashamed that this is what we’ve come back to in 2023, while taking our hats off to the bravery and resilience of older women like these. They surely deserve so much better.”
Val is desperate to hear from the Bus Monkeys. She says: “Every time I make a cup of tea, I want to share one with them. It breaks me to think of them working out where the heater is on the bus before going back to a cold, dark home for a tiny, questionable meal.
“I’d love to think of them getting off the bus to buy warm clothes then all enjoying a nice hot lunch. We have to do something. We can’t let this go on.”
