M has a phobia about birds and especially feathers - she can just about tolerate a bird at a distance through the window but always turns the channel over if birds appear on wildlife programmes. Feathers are even worse. It's fairly easy these days with foam mattresses and polyester filled pillows and duvets, but her hard pressed parents had to change her feather mattress for a flock one when she was a child, and when someone gave her a doll with a feather in its hat, she screamed the place down! The visiting cat found a feather today and helpfully took it to her, so I can well imagine the chaos that ensued that Christmas morning eighty-odd years ago!
When I was a child, all our mattresses were feather - like enormous, fat, oversized pillows, plumped up everyday and bliss to sink down into on a cold night. With these came the ritual of restuffing and changing the ticking which took place at my grandmother's. I've no idea how our mattreses got to Granny's, I suppose my father and older brother took them on their way to work that morning, but as soon as everyone else had left the house, I would be hustled into my coat, clutching a suitable toy, and we'd make the short walk over the railway bridge to Gran's.
On arrival my mother and grandmother would down a sustaining cup of tea and debate which to do first - ours or hers. Then they would begin the preparations. Gran had a completely empty back bedroom - its only contents a large zinc bath. The floor was covered in old sheets. Mum and Gran then donned plastic macs, which reached to the floor, and headscarves, and tied old rags over their shoes- and so did I if they were feeling indulgent, otherwise I was sent off to play. The stitching at the end of the mattress was unpicked and its contents very carefully emptied into the bath - half only for a double mattress. A new or clean ticking mattress case was fetched and the feathers tipped and stuffed into it, the process repeated until all the old feathers had been rehoused. A sack of new feathers was produced and the mattress topped up as felt necessary. One started on sewing up the new mattress while the other unpicked the next. Sneezing was frequent and wiping feathers off one's face, as they floated up at the slightest provocation. By mid-morning, when they stopped for tea, they were both red in the face and dripping sweat because of their clammy plastic coveralls. The floor was covered with a light layer of feathers which had escaped the process. We were all revived by tea and fresh bread and butter, and off they went again, stopping for lunch and mid afternoon tea. By the end of the day the household mattresses were all redone and stacked in the corner - even the floor covering had been shaken off the sheets into the last ticking and the bath was empty. Thanks to the plastic macs, we were all fairly feather free and we went home to get tea for the rest of the family. me clutching a sixpenny piece and a piece of cake, usually. The mattresses had mysteriously reappeared by bed time - plumped up by air and new feathers!
I have never known where the sacks of new feathers came from, or the new ticking cases, but as so many people had feather mattresses there must have been easy sources of supply. To a three or four yearold as I must have been, it was terrific fun but I'm sure my mother found it exhausting - Gran used to say it was like a turkish bath treatment, whatever that might be!
All our feather mattresses disappeared, one by one, during the 1960's - and with them the lovely brass and wooden beadsteads. I'm sure it was a great relief to my mother when Gran, too, got a new flat and swopped to a stylish sprung divan!
