I'm nearly 65, so I will speak for my generation of late Baby Boomers. We all lived in freezing cold houses, and the old iron kettles hung over the smoking coal fires, hissing and steaming. In those days, only the working men of the house had a hot drink. The children would stare, shivering and longingly as their fathers and big brothers gulped down boiling tea and blew steam geezers from their mouths. Then, we (the children) had to suffice with cold water from lead coated pipes, tepid milk from the cow of lukewarm gin from our mother's knitting bag. We longed for the day when we could stave off hypothermia with just a few sips of something hot.
At school, it was cold water or cold diluted orange squash for lunch, and, freezing milk at break time. A decade or two later, a lovely lady called Margaret stopped the torture of forcing young children to drink freezing milk, but our generation had to suffer it.
When I grew up, I vowed to myself that I would drink nothing but scalding hot beverages. Each time I spat the infernal liquid back into my mug, and peeled the skin off my blistered lips, I felt triumphant. Here I was, drinking the volcanic dregs that I longed for as a child.
My children could never understand my habit of boiling everything to the the heat of Vesuvius. Indeed, my need for heat extended beyond drinks. I boiled custard and rice pudding until it bubbled in the bowl. I cremated roasts, believing that not only was 'hotter better', but that the purifying nature of fire would kill anything bad in the meat. I even had the hot water temperature permanently set to 'third degree burn' and added cold water to make it possible to enter the tub and still live. My children could not understand.
Now, I still relish my hot drinks. The cold, damp memories of being brought up in the post-Dickensian world of the Sixties and Seventies, has left my soul so frozen that only a boiling beverage can melt it into life.