Karloff and Crimplene

 Memory is like a baking soda diver, sometimes stubbornly staying under, sometimes rising madly in the bubbles.

As I get older my diver prefers not to rise as much now and infuriatingly I find myself forgetting my youth.

One thing I can't recall at all now is actually going to bed as a kid. 

I know I did or else I'd be a gibbering wreck somewhere.

No, the physical act of getting under the crimplene cover (hiding the coarse blankets) eludes me.

I know what my room looked liked. Well some of it. I had shelves with toys on. At some later point I had a stereo and some LPs (my first was Rock Around the Clock). There was an old coat cupboard, which I kept well shut as it was scary. Below the window was a large sideboard, where there must have clothes but I've no memory of any clothes in the room. The single clearest recollection is a huge six foot black and white poster of Karloff's Frankenstein, which was directly above my bed. 

There may have been a metal alarm clock.

Unlike my European partner, who enjoyed comfy feather duvets as a kid in the Sixties and early Seventies, my blankets were itchy and everything was covered in rayon or frilly crimplene. Do they even exist anymore?

Years earlier, when our sisters still lived at home, I shared a room and bunk bed with one of my brothers. I have no memory of this at all except an old fish tank and the toilet next door!

I'd love to recall lying in bed, getting tucked in, sipping Mum's cocoa and reading Thunderbirds annuals all night but I can't. They're as elusive as Tracy Island itself!

Do you recall going to sleep as a kid readers?