Winter warmth? I have a cunning plan...

I NEVER used to worry about getting old. Insofar as I had a plan at all it was to live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse, to coin a phrase, but precisely the opposite actually happened; I've led a dreary life of misplaced prudence bordering on cowardice, unreasonably protracted into near-senescence, and the funeral director who draws the short straw and has to fettle all that's mortal of me for my farewell performance at the Chapel of Rest should at the very least be getting time and a half. I turn 60 next month and, while I'm still the best part of a decade off retirement age (at the time of writing; they might put it up to 85 tomorrow), I'm finally having to confront the fact that I'm getting old, and what that might entail. In short, I need a Plan B.

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I've nothing much in the way of a pension - as was expected of the model citizen I used to be, I've paid into every one of my various employers' schemes and faithfully kept my National Insurance contributions up to date, and have next to nothing to show for all that scrimping and self-denial - and so I face what (with luck) won’t be too many years of pinching poverty.