THE DUVET DAY

It’s always a struggle isn’t it? When that alarm goes off, cruelly early, at 6.30 am (an hour I have never come to terms with, I’m an 8am girl myself), it is still dark and now, thanks to Siberian winds blowing in from the east, absolutely freezing cold as well. Which makes waking up, never mind actually getting up, nigh on impossible.

But still, being a mum with responsibilities, (two: aged 12 and 15 years), I manage to drag myself from my warm duvet, shuffle blindly down the landing in my dressing gown and wake the two offspring, who themselves are snuffling in their pillows and equally trying to avoid the whole Morning Has Broken thing. Needless to say, Mr C is, by that hour, long gone, he being a morning bird and all. He springs out of bed like a clockwork soldier on the first note of the alarm, gets dressed in the dark like a stealthy panther and slinks down to breakfast in the manner of a crack SAS mission on night patrol. He then heads off to work shutting the front door silently behind him, at a time that in my book, is still classed as very definitely the Middle Of The Night.  

But this morning, the dance mad daughter would not be roused. She has been struggling with a sore throat and cold for a few days – that tricky side of being ill, when you are definitely under the weather, but not feverishly sick. And last night she performed in an Amnesty show at school, not getting home until 9.45pm. “Mum,” she mused, her face pale, her eyes ringed with grey shadows and her nose red and sore, as we pulled up outside the house in the freezing dark quiet of last night, when most sensible people were on their way to bed. “I have been out of the house for over fourteen hours. I’m doing longer hours than most working people.”

So it was no wonder she didn’t want to get up this morning. I left her sleeping, while I fried bacon (oh yes – I am that domestic goddess) and took the younger son off to his school bus. Now, the dance mad daughter is sitting up in bed, looking a lot perkier for her fourteen-hour sleep and watching Downton Abbey re-runs. Sometimes you just need a Duvet Day, especially in February. And one of the joys of being self-employed is that I can join her. I shall just ask the boss:

Me: “Please can I bunk off this afternoon and watch Sense and Sensibility on DVD with the dance mad daughter?”

The boss (me): “Why, I think you jolly well can.”

So today it will be two of us under the duvet on the sofa, with a toasty fire going and hot, buttered crumpets as we enjoy a girly afternoon cuddled up with bonnets, bustles and a box of Kleenex. Ah, the joys of the Duvet Day.