Spring bedding

Thank you for all your well wishes. I have had to spend this week doing things at a much slower pace than usual but am beginning to feel as normal as I ever will. One of the things I really miss about being younger was those days off school when you were poorly. I was always allowed to spend the days in my mum and dad's bed. Their bed seemed huge to me and was always so much more comforting than mine when I was ill.



When I was very young we didn't have duvets, just crisp clean sheets, that always smelled of being outside on the washing line, blankets and bedspreads. Candy stripe pillowcases or pure white cotton sheets that my mum washed every Monday. The blankets on my bed were pink and the ones on my parents' were a soft shade of aqua. I remember that they all had a satin ribbon trim, were incredibly soft and were the best thing, apart from my mum, to cuddle into.



All these memories came back to me this week when I was ill and cuddled on the sofa with these lovely old blankets. Beautiful soft shades of old wool, looking lovely across my bed. They're used more as the icing on the cake these days rather than the basic ingredients of bed making. Whilst I think I will not resort to giving up my duvets and eiderdowns in favour of blankets and sheets I do remember loving the ritual as a very young child of watching my mum make the beds. These days it's a quick shake and smooth of the sheets, plump up the pillows and on with the duvet, done in minutes.



Bed making seemed to go on forever when I was little, sheets neatly tucked in at the corners, another sheet added with huge wafts in the air as my mum threw it over the bed and then the pile of blankets began, each neatly tucked and turned back. I can't remember what I found the best bit, the smell of the linen, the safety I felt at being so tightly tucked in or the cosiness of the piles of fabric on top of me.



We used to live opposite my primary school. A huge field separating my house from the school. What made days off even better for me when I was sick was lying in that bed, rereading "Heidi" for the nth time, listening to my mum chattering on downstairs. smelling the days meals as they were slowly cooking away and hearing the school bell being rung by the teacher, signalling the end of playtime and knowing that, for me, there were no lessons that day ...