Reading Rana Foroohar’s magazine piece on the fight for control of the Arctic (“Icebreaker”, February 8), in bed in my shocking pink fluffy onesie to keep warm, I suddenly remember my bed is made from wood from Archangel on the White Sea.
Timber from the Russian port of Arkhangelsk came to Cornwall for pit props in the mines and when my old Sunday school was built in 1861 they used the lovely long thick planks for the floor. These sadly had to be taken up to put in a damp course but were then repurposed in the renovation of the next-door chapel with enough left over to make me a bed! An icebreaker indeed!
Jane Swan
Delabole, Cornwall, UK
