I have decided to embark on a bit of a self indulgent journey, well, OK, a very large self indulgent one as I am not generally known to do "bits". The theme is to be recollections of the first time of doing or experiencing something that is now commonplace and indeed not today worthy of mention because it is the norm in the lives of most of us. Part One was my first glimpse of a Japanese made car, yesterday was my first experience of Chinese food and today....
Even at an early age I envied the Europeans.
In contrast and lets face it, life in Britain in the late 1960's and early 70's was a bit dull and dire.
Joining the Common Market gave some legitimacy to adopting the fashions, cuisine, fads and fancies of our near but water separated neighbours and gradually the economic entity grew to encompass most of the continent.
The supermarket shelves in our High Streets were close to bursting with the produce of the EU, our roads teeming with their vehicles and we began slowly to assimilate into a lifestyle and culture that traversed boundaries and ethnic differences.
Even though Sweden did not actually join the EU for some years they were at the forefront of the revolution of all things European which lit up our shores.
The Pop Group Abba , in particular, were responsible for a lot of changes in our house.
It was, under their influence, acceptable to sing aloud and dance a bit in a refreshing way after decades of conservatism and formulaic music from the usual home grown artists who just went on and on. Our parents would sometimes host a party for friends and we, as children supposed to be in our beds, would peer down through the bannisters and marvel at the dancing, small talk and revelry thinking to ourselves that, in the distant future, when we were that old we would model our own gatherings on the same.
The women wore flowing kaftan or maxi dresses, a bit like Frieda and Agnetha and some of the men had beards like Benny and Bjorn. If I knew at the age of 10 what chic and cosmopolitan actually meant I would have tried to say them in describing what went on in our through living room at such events.
It was shortly after the Abba fixation that our parents introduced us to the idea of the Continental Quilt, another import from Sweden.
Us siblings were not at all sure how to react to this revolutionary concept.
After all we only knew about bedsheets. The word "quilt" was associated with a sleep over at our grandparents who possessed those heavy, dense, silky finished and rather fusty smelling items of bedding referred to under the same name.
Conventional sheets were, to us, comforting and at bedtime our parents, after reading a beloved story, would tuck us in so tightly that we felt like we were safe and sound from anything that the bogey man or dark shadows could threaten us with.
It must have been quite a leap of faith for our parents at the time.
The airing cupboard above the hot water cylinder was crammed full of cotton sheets, towelling covers, bedspreads and a multitude of linen. These had been requested and gratefully received as bottom drawer gifts, wedding presents and no doubt formed the basis of many a Christmas wish list for their rapidly growing family in successive years.
It was the British way. A bed made up of sheets and covers. Always had been and would be so ad infinitum. I remember Monday wash days and helping in the stripping of the beds as a precursor to that ridiculously labour intensive process for housewives. Something just had to give.
Terence Conran of Habitat lays claim to introducing the continental quilt, or as it was more colloquially called, the duvet, to the British public but it took some persistence in advertising and marketing to gain acceptance. The unique selling point that it was a "10 second bed" appears to have swung it. This would gain a considerable time advantage for our beleaguered Mother of five.
There was an innate mystery in the duvet inspite of its simplicity. This was the Tog Rating. We were a bit confused by this. Tog was a character in one of our favourite animated TV programmes, the best friend of Pippin in Pogles Wood. It appears that in terms of duvets the higher the Tog Rating the warmer the quilt. I expect that was an easy decision in sub Arctic Scandinavia but less easy to gauge for a small sleepy town in North Lincolnshire.
It took some time for me to be entirely at ease with a duvet.
The thing kept slipping off my unconscious body and could be found in the morning in a heap in the gap between my bed and that of my younger brother with whom I shared a room. I referred to this, I thought quite cleverly as continental drift.
In winter it was necessary to be wholly submersed and cocooned in the soft downy folds even to the extent of having no natural ventilation and in the hotter months of the year the whole shroud could be kicked off as soon as my feet got hot. My pet cat would find its way to the bottom of the duvet and take up residence in a deep, reassuring resonance of purring.
Still, the important thing was that the composition of the duvet still allowed our loving parents to wrap us up tightly and securely at bedtime, as snug as a bug in a rug.
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