A small UK family firm has landed the dream job of making THE bed for Prince Charles and Lady Diana.
I’ve studied a few beds in my time. It’s one subject you can take lying down.
When it comes to considering beds I like to spread myself, grabbing a clean sheet and scribbling frantically. We spend so much of our lives in beds, tossing and turning on them, staring at the ceiling on them, rearranging and changing them: Some people spend so long in beds they get a quilt complex.
We’ve had a variety of beds. I’ll tell you about them. You’re just dying to know, you gigging stickybeak.
One of our fastest beds had castors and would speed around the room like a chariot. We called it Bed Hur.
There is the well-bred bed and the untidy layabout.
A friend of mine bought a brass bed but his wife kept chaining herself to the railings, demanding breakfast. You can’t have that.
Yet the bed is part of our language. Try sleeping late and the language will go on for hours.
I’m one who makes my bed and lies in it. Come around any time and see me shuffling a pack of lies.
Nevertheless I’m fond of my bed. As soon as I’m there you can hear my deep, regular breathing. My family calls me the Wind in the Pillows.
There are a variety of beds. I remember going off on a romantic anniversary weekend to discover our holiday shack had a double decker bed with a ladder.
I just lay there wistfully waiting for a stocking in my ladder.
Life can be a bed of nails but there I am going off on the wrong tack.
So why not turn to mattresses and if you’ve turned one of ours the word “hernia” won’t be something remote in a dictionary.
This week my daughter screamed: “There’s a great lump on the mattress.”
My wife said: “Isn’t he awake yet?”
But like James Bond I’m one of those under coverlet agents.
So I operate in a blanket of secrecy—when I can pull some over on my side.
But a good mattress takes some beating. On a winter’s night I lie there hearing the rustle of spring. But a word of warning. Beware of things that go BOIN-N-N-G-G in the night.
Yet come morning, people grab your legs and you know that your slumber’s up.
What else is there to say? Oh, I know. It’s what my wife croons to me over her Barbara Cartland as the reading lamp blazes down: “Goodnight, sweet Prince.”
Max Fatchen