Apple pie order

Today

Back to the flat today via the London-Brighton Classic car run. Becky had been to the flat the previous week and I'd asked her to make our bed up for us.

With some instruction from me "cotton beneath and linen above"  she did - "I don't know if it's right, Madre", she said "I'll never make a chambermaid."

"So long as you haven't made an apple pie bed," joked Paul. Becky and Richard looked puzzled. "The trouble is," I said "is that this generation's been brought up with duvets rather than sheets and blankets".

In My Day

We were brought up with sheets and blankets - top, bottom, two blankets and an "eiderdown". This last conformed to a standard design of paisley patterned quilted covering with frilled edges and was quite weighty.

Apple-pie beds were a normal part of having an older brother. You trot off to bed, looking forward to snuggling down with your Hans Christian Andersen book. You fail to notice that the bed looks suspiciously well-made or that the blankets seem very well-tucked in. You climb into bed, slide your feet down and come up short against the doubled-back sheet. Sometimes you accidentally tear the sheet in the struggle.

Knowing that your mother will just ignore your protests and possibly be annoyed with you for having damaged the sheet, you groan, get up and remake the bed. By which time you're wide-awake.

Your only recourse is to try to visit the same kind of horror on your younger sister, but you'll probably get caught in the act, and  anyway Beatrice has by now become suspicious and will turn back the covers to check. So in the end you don't bother.

Just think what fun the younger generation have been missing.