Blanket approval

My wife got back from England, yesterday, after a week looking after our grandson. In preparation for her return I tried to get the house looking presentable: hoovering, washing the floors and - finally - changing our bed-linen. The first of these tasks was quite fun: she'd bought a Dyson just before she left in attempt to save money on the exorbitant amount she was being charged for disposable bags for her existing vacuum cleaner - a similar scam to that perpetrated by printer manufacturers, except that the previous machine was very expensive. Dysons look really cool and apart from having to empty them every five minutes are quite efficient to operate. The final task was anything but fun.
Although, unusually for the 16th century, my old school’s charter established it as an academically inclusive institution - … ‘educati et enutriti deinde bonis moribus et litteraturis instituti si eruditioni et litteris [sic] apti fuerint literis [sic] opificiis et mechanicis artibus perite instructi … - by the mid-twentieth century it had long since ceased to teach any non-academic subjects. So for those of us who hadn’t joined the cadet corps and learned to shoot a 303 rifle the only practical skill the school imparted was how to make hospital corners. Beds were inspected every morning by the dormitory monitor and a sloppily made bed was a punishable offence.
I like to think that I’m not a luddite or a technophobe. I’ve cheerfully embraced most advances in technology. Producing lecture notes on a computer and photocopier was so much easier than typing them - with a huge expenditure on correcting fluid - and then running them off on a spirit duplicator. And as for the iPhone - Che farei senza that little Eurydice? But the duvet is a completely different matter. Whatever induced the British people to abandon the crisp sheets and blankets I was brought up with for this Scandinavian monster? For a nurse or a public schoolboy making a bed with hospital corners gave a satisfaction akin to that felt by joiner constructing a dovetail joint. A practical task completed with consummate craftsmanship. But stretching a fitted sheet over a mattress affords little satisfaction. And as for fitting a duvet inside its cover - that’s a labour that would have Sisyphus screaming to have his rock back. The wretched thing has a life of its own fighting back as you struggle to get it to lie flat and rectangular in its cover. Thank God the wife's back and I won’t have to try to cope with this modern ‘advance’ for another few months.