I’m walking down what used to be my street – I remember I would run down this path as a child, laughing and playing with my friends. It used to bring us great satisfaction, being able to skate all the way up the path to the top of the hill without having to stop. Now though, it holds no interest to me. There are no children laughing and screaming now – in fact, there are no people at all.

A thin coating of dead leaves cover the ground; they crunch and snap their complaint under my feet as I walk on them, but I ignore it as I reach the top of the hill. I’m stood by my old driveway, but it’s clear that everyone has been gone longer than I thought. The ivy creeper my parents used to keep so neat, so perfect, has become so unbelievably overgrown that it covers the entire garage; it’s claimed the front of the house, crawled across the door and into the lock. I can see a chink of light through the gap it’s created – the strength of the ivy seems to have forced a gap between the door and the doorframe. I smile – if my father could see his creeper now, I think he’d have a breakdown.

It doesn’t take me long to manoeuvre around the remnants of our front garden and the rusty skeleton of the car they left behind. The door protests as I force it open, almost falling through onto the doormat as it suddenly gives way under my shoulder.

It seems I was rude enough to unsettle a layer of dust, and it scatters up into my face, up my nose and down my throat. I splutter and wave my hand in front of my face in a vain attempt to clear the air in front of my face.

If you look beneath the layers and layers of dust, and if you imagine there is neat, well cared for furniture instead of broken windows and overgrown plants, it’s easy to imagine what my childhood home used to look like. I suppose you could say, in its former glory, my home was beautiful.

The silence is broken as I climb the stairs – the wood has been neglected for so long it strains under my weight. A wave of sadness hits me; it’s like a wall I’ve hit at the top of the stairs. My mother always used to complain that the stairs creaked and would always ask my father to re-secure the floorboards, but it seems he never got around to it. The strong feeling wells up in my gut and I have to cling onto the banister to stop myself from breaking into tears of frustration. The anger grows in my chest, swells until it feels like I can’t breathe. They should have done something about this. They should have done something while they had the chance. Their mistakes drove us out of our house, out of our home. And they have the cheek to say they did all they could. It may be true, but whatever they did, they did too late.

The government are always too late. They’re killing us. They’re killing us all. All because of Global Warming. And their own stupid ignorance.