Alan Marland approaches the cash machine, pulls out his bank card and pushes it into the plastic slot.
A message pops up on the screen as he goes to withdraw £10. ‘Insufficient funds,’ it reads. His legs go weak. His head is spinning. He’s hit by an overwhelming sense of dread.
That money was all he had in the world. The dad was forced to sell his home in 2017 after losing his decorating job and he had been living off the £40k profit ever since.
Now he found himself begging his son to lend him a tenner. “I nearly keeled over and died,” the 65-year-old, from Oldham, told the Manchester Evening News.
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Alan, who is unable to find work due to suffering from dizziness, is now down to his very last pennies as the cost-of-living crisis continues to cripple the nation.
“I’m struggling like mad,” he added. “I’ve just been to the job centre because I’ve had dizziness for four years.
“There’s a food bank near me on Huddersfield Road. When I’m really desperate, I’ll go there. I’ve had people say, ‘If you ring this number, they’ll deliver door-to-door'.
“But I’ve worked all my life and I’m quite a proud person. I’d rather starve to death than beg people.”
Life was going well for Alan, who lives in the Waterhead area, until he lost his job as a decorator for a family business.
Without the help of his family, he believes he would have ended up on the streets of Oldham a long time ago.
“I had my own house when I was working as a decorator for a family business. I lost my job and I struggled to get another job so I ended up having to sell my home,” he said.
“I had £40,000 in the bank and I’ve been living off that ever since 2017. Not long ago, I went to get cash out of the machine and it said ‘insufficient funds’.
“Well, I nearly keeled over and died. Then I had to ask my son if he could lend me a tenner. My sister helps me with gas and electric.
“But if it wasn’t for my sister and her husband, without them I really don’t know what I’d do. I could be sat outside Tesco with a cup in front of me. I’m frightened to bits, honestly.”
Alan isn’t the only one struggling. Shaun Reynolds, who works on the trolleys at Tesco, is only just managing to afford his shopping and energy bills.
“It’s hard, I’m just about managing,” the 62-year-old said. “I’m just scraping by. It makes you feel horrible; it’s rubbish. I just take it as it comes. I reckon it’s going to get worse.”
His struggles come as food inflation in the UK hits another record high, with prices rising at the fastest rate in more than 45 years.
The latest BRC-NielsenIQ shop price index found food prices soared 15.7 per cent in the year to April, the highest on record.
Cucumbers saw the largest increase, according to the Office for National Statistics, with prices rising by 52 per cent.
Olive oil came in second, rising by 49 per cent, while hard cheese increased by 44 per cent.
Oldham resident Mark Livesey lost his job at the Department for Work and Pensions on January 31.
While the 56-year-old receives an Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) benefit and got a redundancy pay-out, he doesn’t know how long the cash will last him as costs continue to soar.
“I worked up until January 31. I worked for DWP and was made redundant,” he said.
“I need to find another job. I’ve got a load of medical appointments coming up so hopefully I’ll get this sorted out. I’ll worry about [money running out] more when it happens.”
One million households claiming Tax Credits from HMRC recently started to receive their first £301 cost of living payment, intended to help with rising bills.
The cost-of-living payment is to be made to people claiming Child Tax Credits or Working Tax Credits from HMRC.
Daryl Hilton, who delivers beds for a living, takes a break on a bench in Oldham town centre. He takes a pack of chocolate out of his plastic bag and shows me the receipt.
“Everything goes up,” the 45-year-old, who lives in Shaw, said. “Last week, this was £1.49. Now, it’s £1.79.
“It’s getting ridiculous, isn’t it? I live by myself so I’m okay, but I’ve noticed everything is going up. I feel for families with children. I don’t know how they do it.”
Daryl hasn’t had the heating on since January in a bid to keep costs down. “I put a hot water bottle on my legs and a cover over myself,” he added.
“Things are depressing, aren’t they? I emphasize with these with families. If I had children, it would frighten me to death.”
Nearly three million emergency food parcels were given out by Britain’s biggest foodbank network over the last year as demand from hungry families broke all records.
The Trussell Trust's 1,400 centres provided 2,986,203 aid packages - with enough ingredients for 26.8 million meals - over the last year as families were gripped by the cost-of-living crisis.
Some 1,139,553 parcels went to children.
The overall surge in demand was a 37 per cent increase compared to the previous 12 months when 2,183,625 packages were distributed.
The total number given away between last April and this March even topped the record number needed at the height of the coronavirus crisis.
Chief executive Emma Revie said: “This level of need is even higher than we saw during the first year of the pandemic, which I think we all assumed would be a once-in-a-lifetime level of need that we were seeing - but we actually provided 16 per cent more parcels than we did in that year.”
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