Duvets --- Susan Price
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...