Until recently we had a fairly respectable queen sized ensemble for a bed. It was great until the little fat guy came along. We could still all fit but if one of the kids sneezed, either Charles or I were unceremoniously dumped out of the bed depending on which way the source of the sneeze was facing. So we decided that with the sale of our old house, it was time to invest in something more family friendly in the bed department – something king sized.
As is the usual practice in our relationship, I did all of the groundwork and research, scurrying through bed stores armed with catalogues and outraged brats in tow and then, when I’d narrowed it down to a couple of choices, I brought Charles in to make the ultimate decision. This is where all of my careful research and frugal negotiations are thrown aside and we buy something I would usually never look at twice.
I’m not disappointed. In this instance Charlotte’s King Single with trundle for sleepovers was quickly upgraded to a purple princess double bunk monstrosity. Then my modest King sized sleigh bed with middle-of-the-range mattress is transformed into an enormous phallic monstrosity in dark timber with its own gold name plate…and matching side tables that rival the size of the sideboard in the dining room. Oh yes, and deluxe mattress. All up our new bedroom suite costs five times what I paid for my first car.
For a visual check out this ace photo, clipped from the catalogue: 
This always happens. Charles’ tastes are a lot more extravagant and expensive than mine (just look at how much jewellery the man wears as opposed to me) and he always manages to talk me into these ridiculous purchases with extremely reasonable arguments. Which in this particular case were;
1.) The bed I’ve picked is solid timber, not just pine with a dark surface stain so when it chips or dents, it won’t have cheap pale pine showing through.
2.) If we buy this bed we won’t need to buy another bed for as long as we live. So really we’re saving money in the long run.
3.) I have a bad back so I need a top-of-the-line mattress.
4.) We may as well get the matching side tables – it’s not that much extra compared to the price and it will look really nice. Did I mention we won’t be buying another bed for as long as we live? So we should get a bedroom suite and not just a bed.
Then he divides the cost over ten years, breaks that down into a weekly cost and suddenly I’m not looking at $ but instead a fairly minimal amount that could be spent on either going to lunch or buying an impressive bed. So I give in and we get the very masculine bed. In my head, where occasionally I divide our assets into "His" and "Hers" as a mental exercise for the purposes of maintaining sanity and recognising that divorce, not murder, should be the first choice for concluding our marriage, I assign the whole thing to the “His” column. As soon as we’ve given them a non-refundable deposit I go home and start having misgivings. I’m not even sure the whole lot will fit into our bedroom. Charles remains confident.
When the whole thing comes it is massive, it barely fits, but Charles is right and it does indeed look awesome. In fact, it makes the rest of the house look a bit small and crappy. It also helps if I don’t think of the price or compare that amount of money to all the other things I could have spent or, worse, how much interest I would have saved if all that money had gone on the mortgage instead.
When she sees it in person for the first time Pippa spends a long time looking at it and when I prompt her with, “I know, it’s all very phallic, isn’t it?” she looks at me appraisingly and says, “It is very ‘this is where me and my whole medieval family of twelve sleep’”. She won’t be drawn further on the subject.
For all of my misgivings the new bed does the job it was bought for and all four of us fit comfortably, even accounting for Charlotte’s personal preference for sleeping sideways while thrashing. Unfortunately all of Charles’ predictions about it lasting a lifetime failed to factor in the kind of abuse it was likely to see at the hands of our family. I personally had thought the first blood would come from Charles' penchant for throwing himself down onto furniture instead of sitting. Instead, it came when we discovered this morning that some of the decorative moulding had been snapped off the foot of the bed.
The instant I point it out Charlotte pops her hands on her hips, narrows her eyes and says, “Well I didn’t do it.”
Our eyes instantly meet – whenever a four-year-old announces that she isn’t responsible for something, especially before anyone has accused her or asked her about it, you can conclude that she is 100% the source of the trouble at hand.
In this case her habit of scrambling over the foot of the bed in the morning and launching herself onto us from her delicate toe-hold on the moulding has taken its toll on our month-old super deluxe sleeping apparatus. There’s no point being cross about it – this is the sort of thing that kids do. It’s why we only own cheap, solid Fantastic Furniture couches and a dining table made from cheap Indonesian hardwood that requires either four men or a small explosive device to shift it. It is the latest in a long line of wanton destruction, the worst of which included an explosion of Picasso-esque activity throughout the house with a permanent marker while I slept one afternoon.
That particular incident, which included the “prettying up” of our white kitchen cabinets, our new fridge, our new flatscreen, my mother’s antique hall stand, every wall and door up the hallway of our BRAND NEW HOUSE, every piece of furniture in James’ room and, indeed, James himself (who was turned into a baby zebra), gave us quite a benchmark by which all future naughties will be assessed. Compared to that the bed is a minor blip on quite an erratic radar and no doubt it will all be fixed with a bit of PVA and some brown shoe polish to hide the seam.
Clearly as parents we're becoming accustomed to the destruction of everything we own, despite our efforts to contain the source of the trouble. This time all she got was a stern, "No more climbing over the end of the bed". It's not even worth yelling about. The point of relating all this is to serve as warning for people who don’t yet have children. It’s no good having nice things if you have littlies. This is the reason older people fill their houses with beautifully polished timber furniture, snow white lace doilies, fine china and elegant crystal everything. Because, for the first time in their lives, they can.
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