As a child I used to hate it. Why go to bed when there’s so much to do? And going to bed in the spring, when the clocks had just changed, was a nightmare. The birds would still be singing and the sun shining and yet I was expected to go to sleep ready for school the next day.
Saturday mornings in bed were the best. Awoken at eight by my dad with a cup of tea, the biscuit tin and my ‘Twinkle’ magazine. A blissful hour of reading and scoffing before burning it off in my ballet class.
In my teens, my whole relationship with bed changed. It’s what teenagers do - they sleep. They can never get enough of it. My Laura Ashley bedroom was where all my dreams were conjured - awake and asleep. Diary finally written for the night, I’d snuggle down and sleep for anything up to fourteen hours.
Years later and my twenties nearly over, I met my husband and we ‘courted’ - a great old-fashioned word, but we truly did. This involved many nights on the town ending in a parked car where we really couldn’t bring ourselves to say goodbye. Bed at four and up again at six for work, resulted in many happy months of love-induced sleep deprivation.
Marriage and a baby turned the whole thing on its head even further. Whoever said “Sleeping like a baby” had never met mine. He didn’t sleep - not during the day and very little at night. I longed for an hour of uninterrupted shut-eye. I think I finally got one when he was about three, and that’s no exaggeration.
So perhaps that’s why I love bed again so much now. I’m making up for all those lost hours. ‘Baby’ is now fifteen and I’m still trying to catch up on my precious zzz’s. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
REASONS TO LOVE BED!
Smoothing very quickly over the obvious (my mum reads this!), you can have fun there! Babies can be made (or not!) Enough said, you get the picture!
Most people are born in a bed. It’s where our lives begin and a mother’s pain ends (the physical part, anyway).
It’s where you go at the end of a tough day. You shut the world and all its dramas out and you can be alone in your head with more pleasant thoughts. Ah, the softness of the sheets, the delight of the duvet and the plumpness of the pillow - they’re all there to greet and lull you to sleep.
If the day hasn’t been too tough, and yet you feel you want your bed but not sleep, your entertainment can carry on long into the night. Bathing completed, cup of tea and a packet of chocolate biscuits (no, I don’t care about crumbs) and you’re all set for an old black and white horror film. Just make sure you don’t have a hubbie like mine, who’s prone to rigging up cotton through curtains to make them lift at scary intervals - he frightened the beejeebers out of me once! The tongue-lashing he got made sure he never tried it again.
I’ve heard that people have ‘Duvet Days’. Not something I’d partake in, as I think it’s bad enough to have to stay put with an illness or ailment during the day. I’ve spent many a day prostate with a slipped disc and, as much as I’m singing the praises of bed, it’s boring when you’d rather be up and about.
It’s normally the place we die. Now I know that’s not a very pleasant thought, but it beats collapsing at a train station or breathing your last in the queue at Sainsbury’s. Our journeys (generally) begin and end with the comfort of a mattress.
So next time you’re heading ‘up the wooden stairs to Bedfordshire’, take time out to love your bed. Feel those sheets, fluff that pillow, relish that feeling.
Bed - it’s highly under-rated!
If you like my ramblings, why not have a go at my ‘real’ book’ - “Diary of a Mummy Misfit” on Amazon for Kindle or PC/Smartphone.
Now also available in paperback at Lulu.
Now also available in paperback at Lulu.
I am reading this post IN BED which is ironic x
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