IS this the end of civilisation as we know it?

The Queen is giving up on sheets and blankets. Instead, visitors to Windsor Castle will sleep under duvets. Horrors.

Duvets have their place, of course, especially if you sleep alone. They can be cosy and snuggly – not for nothing do Americans call them “comforters” – but they are also the invention of the devil.

They are either too hot or too cold, or too much over the other person. Your feet stick out, your bum sticks out, you fight with it during nightmares. Over-heated hotels with over-heated duvets are a version of Hell with absolutely no chance of a decent night’s sleep.

Dream you’ve been swallowed by a giant marshmallow? Blame it on the duvet.

Which is why, although all the other beds in the house have duvets, husband and I, after the briefest of duvet days years ago, went back to sheets and blankets. Bliss.

They tuck in and stay put. They are endlessly and easily adjustable for different temperatures (hand up all those who can barely breathe under your winterweight duvets in these milder nights). And it’s really quite hard for husband to steal all the blankets – however much he tries.

And no, it doesn’t take two minutes to make the bed. You don’t have to fight with a king size duvet cover with a mind of its own either.

Sadly, there’s a whole generation growing up who’ve probably never known the superior charms and comfort of sheets and blankets. Poor them.

The Queen should be setting a better example. Shame on her.

Sleep well…

9 x 7? 8x 6? 11 x 12?

Over 50 you probably snapped the answers out immediately – and could probably have done so from the age of seven. Thirty-somethings might struggle. Under 11s had better start practising. Every child will now have to learn their times tables – up to 12 x 12 – by the time they leave primary school.

Most already do, of course.

These days we consider times tables pretty basic stuff. But it wasn’t always so.

Samuel Pepys for instance – Navy administrator, diarist, musician, scientist, man about town and Cambridge MA – didn’t learn his tables until he was nearly 30.

Arithmetic in those 17th Century days was for clerks and the building class. Posh people were meant to fill their heads with classical verse, not simple sums.

Yet Pepys’ job involved contracts for supplying the Navy – everything from masts and timber to sails and ropes and barrels of tar. Not to mention pay and pensions for sailors.

So when Pepys discovered times tables, he was ecstatic. He realised he would have an instant calculator inside his head. Interestingly, it was an “uneducated” seaman – the mate of the Royal Charles – who taught him.

He was a good pupil. “Up at four o'clock and before I went to the office I practised… my multiplication table, which I am now almost master of.”

It paid off. His subsequent skill with numbers and the speed at which he could spot a bargain – or a con – made him one of the Navy’s greatest ever administrators. He also made himself very rich on the proceeds of pay and back-handers.

Three hundred and fifty years later, some of that snobbery about maths still survives. We’d be ashamed to say we can’t read but quite cheerfully admit to being hopeless at maths. No wonder people get into a mess over money…

Calculators can only do so much. We need arithmetic. We need times tables. Remember Sam Pepys – it’s never too late.

OMAKAU Races on New Year’s Day in New Zealand’s South Island are possibly closer to a point to point than Ascot. But my old school friend – now a Kiwi doctor – was dressed up for the occasion – posh dress, silk jacket, fascinator.

And a shopping bag from Taylor’s Pie Shop, in Darlington…

They fell in love with Taylors when staying with us a few years ago and stocked up for their round-Britain tour.

Proudly displayed on Facebook, the pic at the races shows that Taylors’ pies have class – even on the other side of the world.

NOT sure about pies, but black pudding has been hailed as one of the new superfoods of 2016. Full of protein, zinc and iron, ever so good for you.

Husband’s fondness for the stuff – in a sandwich for breakfast – obviously explains his amazing superfitness. I’ve brought him back black puddings from Iceland, Austria and even Monte Carlo.

As a child on my uncle’s farm, I used to help make black pudding on pig-killing day. I stood on a stool to stir the blood, fat and oatmeal and can still remember the smell.

Watching a pig killing and stirring bowls of blood… If a child did that today, the parents would probably be arrested for cruelty.

But I still like black pudding.

KYM MARSH, Davina McCall, Lorraine Kelly, Lauren Goodger… they’re all at it, bringing out fitness DVDs to persuade us we could work off the Christmas stodge and be lithe and lissom by Valentine’s Day.

Or maybe not. Apparently, most women who buy a fitness DVD know quite well that they have as much chance as a snowball in hell of actually following the regime. But just buying the DVD gives them a sense of purpose and makes them feel better. Job done. That was easy, wasn’t it?

Meanwhile, in another piece of the year’s most unsurprising news so far, university researchers have discovered that New Year’s diets are doomed because we have been programmed since our days in the caves to top up our fat stores over winter to make sure we survive until spring.

So trying to exist on a bowl of kale and courgette spaghetti – even without the exercise regime – is to fight against hundreds of thousands of years of conditioning.

Like hedgehogs, human beings were meant to hibernate. In the long bleak darkness of January, we were surely meant to embrace sloth and curl up and conserve our energies until brighter times.

Sounds good to me. Wake me up in spring. Or if the sun ever shines…

PS... Interesting reaction to Aidan Turner in his teeny tiny towel last week – amazing the number of normally sensible ladies of a certain age who were longing for him to sneeze…

But Lucy Rushton made a good point. “Doesn’t it make a pleasant change to see a man’s fit body not covered in tattoos?” she wrote. “One or two tattoos can be interesting, but the full-body inkings like David Beckham are more of a turn off than a turn on to most women. Maybe Aidan Turner can change the fashion.”

Tattoos or not? What do you think?