A FEWweeks back I was lucky enough to receive my electricity bill. This event is always met with slight trepidation as I live in an energy goliath, which is poorly insulated and always cold.

This summer it has been a joy to live in the house because for four months we were warm. On a few occasions, I even opened the windows.

But this electric bill was a third up in price on last year’s bill of the same time period.

I put this down to the late start of the summer, as it was brutally cold in May. Then I happened upon some text informing me that the electricity company was planning to put my monthly direct debit up by £70, without any consultation.

I can’t afford for them to put it up by this amount and certainly think that these actions should be done following some dialogue between us rather than being presented to me as a fait accompli.

I picked up the phone.

Calling them is in itself is a time consuming activity as there is a complex series of requests which, hopefully, direct you to your desired objective of having a conversation with a living, breathing human being, ideally someone fluent in our native language.

If you press the wrong number by mistake you can end up back to square one.

This drives me apoplectic, partly because these telephone directions are often voiced in a soothing manner with lullaby music so I sometimes forget who I am ringing because I have been on the phone waiting for so long.

Eventually, after waiting patiently for three days, I did manage to get through to a friendly Welsh lad called Gary.

He and I had a very interesting conversation indeed.

I have been paying my electricity bill by direct debit for the best part of a decade. I was foolishly under the assumption that I paid a monthly sum so that I could spread the cost over the year because undoubtedly energy usage peaks in the winter months and falls in the summer months.

But no, this is not the case.

Somewhere along the line, the energy companies have moved the goal posts and decided that they are actually a bank and would like me to save for my bill upfront and then if I overpay they will credit the money back to me.

Now, I have no intention of giving the energy companies a penny more than I owe them, as I am sick to death of being held to ransom by their corporate greed.

I think we, the consumer, should collectively show our might and have ‘a day of darkness’ where everyone in the UK, for a 24-hour period turns off all appliances, lights and heating.

In the meantime, as I politely told Gary, I would rather take all the lightbulbs out of my house and give my children head-torches to wear than have them increase my direct debit.

Oh yes, and my heating is still off.