Authors Electric

Wikimedia: a down feather  Duvets. Last month, I wrote about the art of Jack Frost and how he used to paint the windows in the freezing winters of my childhood. That started me thinking more about the way things were back then... Our bedrooms were freezing in winter. The cold was painful. My mother used to heap blankets on top of us until we were laminated to the mattress. When I say we could barely move for the weight, I am not exaggerating. Thick woollen blankets are heavy. We were pinned. And yet we were still cold. I remember lying awake for hours, unable to sleep because I was too cold. Cold feet, cold knees, cold bum, cold ears, cold nose. After an age, your own body heat would create an egg-shell thin border of warmth around you... But if you moved even slightly, if a toe or finger strayed over that thin border of warmth, then you leaped with shock at the thrilling, cold-ribbed regions of ice-sheet beyond. And your shocked movement shifted the crushing layer of blanket eve...

    Image credit:   https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frost_patterns_2.jpg When I was young our house was freezing in winter -- literally. There used to be ice on the inside of the windows. This was because we lived in a council house built in 1954 which, although well appointed for its time, had no insulation, no central heating and only single-glazed windows. In winter, the heating was a fire in the living-room which didn't even heat that room very well. (The part of you nearest the fire was roasted; the part of you furthest away was cold.) There was a fire-grate in the front-room, but it was hardly ever used. The upstairs rooms had no heating and the cold up there could be -- often was -- bitter . We lived, as I still do, on top of the Rowley Hills. My Dad often observed that there was no higher point between us and the Urals and the east wind blew to us straight from Siberia. Going straight through us, of course, not bothering to go round. But Jack Frost use...