….and so, to bed.

Never having lived in a bedsit, until recently I kind of assumed a bed has just three purposes.

Perhaps bedsit dwellers find lots of other things to do with a bed – sitting on it being the obvious one but perhaps as a generous ironing table for people of restricted growth?  A relaxed dining table where you can lie about munching with friends?  With a board on top, a flat surface for a really really big jigsaw?

I’ve never really had a hankering to just hang around in bed for no reason but recently, under doctor’s orders to rest dodgy knee in position where it was elevated, the bed seemed to be the most convenient place to do it.

“Are you going to make breakfast?” I enquired of DT man last Sunday morning.

“Well, yes. You have managed to win the war of attrition because I’m now uncomfortable whereas your ass is still clamped, unshifting to the mattress, so I suppose so.”

He’s just so gallant like that.

His parting shot from half-way down the stairs after collecting the morning tea mugs rather heavy-handedly:

“Anyway, you are cultivating a nice big ass.”

The sting in the tail.

I leapt to my feet with surprising nimbility for one with dodgy knee.

His laughter reached me from the bottom of the stairs.

“I knew that would get you out bed…”

Little did he know I was merely fetching the power cable for my laptop because it had low battery.

Anyway, the horrid truth is that I have become a bed slob.

I would still be limited to the normal world of sitting and standing  if not for a small local inconvenience recently involving star jumps, a muddy hill, and jogging, the results of which were painful and opened my eyes to the theraputic benefits of a personally-warmed mattress.

Bed slobbage has come late in life for me.  There have been only a few times in my life when I have been ill and on those occasions, I have occupied the sofa beneath many layers of warm swaddlings. Not for me the isolation of a lonely bedroom.  I wanted to be conveniently adjacent to the TV, kitchen and kettle in my snivelly misery lest the family get totally out of control.

The only time I was ill in bed was when I had measles, aged seven and hallucinations that the stripy pink wallpaper was undulating and closing in on me like the candy bars of some diabolical gingerbread prison. There was an unusual shadow from the half-open bedroom door which terrified me for half of one night;  the profile of a witch’s face complete with hideous hooked nose. She was standing out there on the landing for ages before it dawned that, ok, if she was going to come and get me, er she would probably have done it within the first hour, rather than just stand there until 4am.

So in my new study, there is a big extra comfy desk which gets warmer the longer you spend in it. T’here is plenty of room to prop up and open a couple of books on one side, loads of space to open all the weekend newspapers (the Telegraph is banned because the print ink would be all over my nice coverlet) AND I’ve discovered the true benefit of a laptop.  Mr Dell boy obviously saw a gap in the market for a smooth gadget that acts like a hot-water bottle that you can type on, listen to music with and watch amusing film clips.  Calling it a lap-top doesn’t do it justice somehow. I was thinking along the Teasmade lines but I could only come up with Pleasure-Master and that gives entirely the wrong connotation.

With a cup of tea to my left and the sight of sky, tree tops and flittery birds out of the window to my right, I can remain typing with the knee propped on a sausage of eiderdown for at least half an hour in perfect blissy comfort.

Course there is a downside to taking to one’s bed.

You have to wait for help before you can nip down to the shops.

And the fire brigade make such a tediously big deal of removing the window so you can be winched out.

Maybe it’s time for me to get out on the bike.

Unknown's avatar

Author: janh1

Part-time hedonist.

48 thoughts on “….and so, to bed.”

  2. couple of points re using laptop as hot water bottle. probably more radiation in the former. Two, cup of tea in the vicinity of laptop is always a really bad idea.

    WHen i lived in a bedsit in Manchester a french guy in my house accidentally stabbed a local with a kitchen knife, severing an artery and the guy almost bled to death on the pavement outside. Needless to say, the locals took umbrage at this action and vowed revenge, For the first couple of nights there was a police car parked on the street in preparation for hte promised retribution. After that we found a bedboard placed up against each windows worked well in preventing any projectiles entering the house.

  3. Thanks Beary. It took a while but I found the magic text paste box.

    Hey, CB. I thought Mr Dellboy put those nice flat squares either side of mousey thing specifically for safe mug sittage.

    Was that incident one of those where the victim stupidly runs on to the knife? Well that’s another very practical use for a bed.

  4. details were vague, apparently the other guy was coming at him with a fencepost with a nail in the end. he got off with a suspended sentence (the french guy) I’ve always thought it was a pity Manchester didn’t get the olympics.

    you can certainly put a mug on the laptop, just don’t sneeze.

  6. Perversely, Jan, if I am confined to bed for any reason whatsoever, I just want to get up! Normally though, especially in the Winter, I listen to the radio for a while, before braving the cold. I don’t have one of those lap-top inventions, but I’m not sure I could cope with typing on my knee.

    I hope the dodgy knee is recovering though.

  7. Mornin, Janh – I have this wonderful image in my mind’s eye of you shopping in Snores’R’Us or somewhere similar, trying out a new bed and asking the salesman, “Does my bum look big in this?” (Snigger!)

    OZ

  9. I’m sure I saw something recently that suggested the most ergonomic way to use a laptop was lying down, so you could be onto something.

  10. Hi, Jan

    We share a similar experience, produced by high temp. When I was in bed with the ‘flu (about 7 years old too!) my bedspread levitated and hovered, undulating scarily, and a witch’s profile appeared on the wall; she said that if I called out to my mother, she would kill me; I didn’t. I remember it vividly.

    Knees are a pain! 😦

  11. Evening Janh

    I’ve inserted a ‘more tag’ for you, you can read about them in the FAQ’s, you will see that it limits the blog on the home page (keeping it tidy) and allows the reader to click and ‘read more’

    If you would rather the tag be inserted elsewhere by all means remove mine and reinsert your own.

    you may delete this comment after reading, thanks 😉

  12. janh1, I hope your knee recovers soon. I remember having to lie absolutely flat with a bad back for 10 days. It got very tedious. I’m glad you’re managing to entertain yourself.

    Bilby, I loved your 5.55 comment. When I was in bed as a child and the cover started undulating, it was generally a cat trying to sneak into the bed with me.
    Perhaps they kept the witches away.

  13. Hello, Sheona

    Thank goodness we kept dogs! A witch’s familiar creeping under the undulating bedspread may have increased my terror! 🙂

  14. Oh, soft big European fluffy pillow topped mattress with real down pillows, my favourite books, TV, relays of green tea, living dog hot water bottle on the inside, another dog on the outside! (They are not allowed to fight in bed)
    I have always taken to my bed in true Victorian manner!
    Wonderful place, I hate sofas, bloody uncomfortable things! Always made for giants.
    Forget the laptop, why aggravate myself, it lives in the den and I can’t be bothered to unplug it and carry it to the other end of the house.

    Good blog.

    Really as a defence mechanism I’m surprised you have never discovered it previously!
    Every now and again I declare a bed day for no reason at all, teaches the other occupants to scavenge in the fridge, cook for them selves or go and buy a carry in supper. It also teaches them to make copious amounts of tea!
    Salutary experiences for them.

  18. Ah, well, who knows who Mr Kirby is, Bearsy, but I dare say we will find out where he is coming from in due course. I have my suspicions of course, but the proof of the pudding and etc 🙂

  19. Bearsy,

    It could well be a false flagger who has an axe to grind about this site, perhaps a flouncer? The avatar is far too obvious.

  20. Christina

    My dogs, being polite creatures, would keep me company in bed (when invited), but would slope off to their own beds when I fell asleep. It was a weather thing; too hot for comfort.

  22. Wonderful imagery Jan.

    I lived in a bed sit for some (short) while. It was compact, and, providing I remembered to fill the kettle at night, I could make myself a cup of coffee in bed, reach for any book I wanted, in fact reach for almost anything from the bed. The problem was trying to find enough space to get dressed …

  24. Mr Kirby’s ISP has its headquarters in Woking, if that’s any help?
    Perhaps he will enlighten us – or perhaps he won’t.

  25. Ah, Boadicea, I shared a house once, and the bath was in the kitchen, so I used to turn down the veg whilst soaking myself in bubble bath. There was a downside to this, in that the only entrance to the house was through the kitchen. It was all a question of timing 🙂

  27. Ah! Araminta the joys of a ‘shared space’ bathroom. In one house the bath was in the passage between one end the house and the other. One could shut the doors, but that blocked off access to the main bedrooms. The bath was an enormous Victorian creation, and the hot water system was from the same era – by the time the bath had filled up the water was virtually cold. It was a matter of some skill to get sufficient water to wash at a reasonable temperature. And then, of course, someone would want to go to their bedroom…

  29. Aha, Boadicea: I must tell you about the time I lived on a landing for three months, but not just yet. I ended up with a bed occasionally when those who possessed one went away for the weekend.

  35. I could add my sorry tale about my bedsit in Sheffield, right over a drop in centre for drop outs, crusties, rastas, hippies, you name it. One day I got so sick of the bloody non stop drumming that I opened the door, and they all came tramping in for herbal tea…

  36. Aha, Claire, we could have a competition. I haven’t even mentioned the knifings and the pig’s head fiasco. Yippee, this could be very very interesting!

  39. Thanks Janus.
    If Darrell had entered his site address in his profile, we wouldn’t have had to speculate! Never mind.

    Welcome Darrell. 😆

  40. Yes, CB but he still had a knife on him…
    reminds me of a court story where a woman, in fear of her ex, spotted him coming up her front garden path and stoved his head in with a claw hammer. Self-defence, she claimed.

    When she was asked how come she was carrying a hammer, she said “I wasn’t. I went back into the house to get it.”
    Ahem. 🙂

  41. Morning OZ! Love Snores R Us! Very droll. 🙂

    Three things? Sleep, sex and the third thing you do most…which is my case is reading.

    Hey Darrel! Nice to see you. I must stop talking like Bruce Forsythe.

  42. Bloody hell, Bilby, so witches always appear when you are at your most vulnerable, with raging temperature?!
    They are fiendish indeed.

    Thanks Soutie. I’m hopeless with technical stuff. One of these days I’ll find out how to put an av. on.
    I’m still traumatised from Bearsy mentioning HTML.

    Hi Sheona and thanks. It’s a lot better already thanks.

    Greetings Tina and love and best wishes for a speedy recovery from your procedure, whatever it may be.
    How I would love a dog hot water bottle. I’d chuck the lappie in favour of a spaniel any day.
    Bed Days are SUCH a good idea. Spontaneously declared too. Perfect!

  44. “Hot bedding” Tocino. Like hot-desking but among people whose beds double as desks? Yes I can see how that could work… 😉

  45. You see Boadicea, I’ve never had a bed-sit. Missed out on all that valuable life experience. My pal had one – shared with her bloke. They had a war of attrition on washing-up which meant when I visited, dirty crockery had expanded from the sink to draining board, to a chair and half of the bed. I didn’t stay long.

  46. Attention Araminta – I think we should hear about the knifings and the Pig’s Head Fiasco. Is that a pub or are we talking about a genuine pig’s head?

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