For 63-year-old Brian Preston, the cost of living crisis is unlike anything he’s ever experienced. He lives alone in the valleys in Wales where, because of soaring food and energy bills, he fears turning on his cooker. At home he eats only tinned food, cold sardines and beans, unable to afford to cook regular hot meals.
Brian no longer has a washing machine, again, because of the price of energy and washes his clothes in his bathtub and drip-dries them on a clothes horse. “We’re going back to Victorian times,” he said. “I can’t afford to eat hot food. I can’t afford to put the gas or electric on. I’m eating cold beans, sardines. It’s very rare I put my cooker on. It’s got that bad.”
