For years it was just me, a blue rabbit named Buddy, the complete collection of Milly Molly Mandy and another book called 365 Bedtime Stories.
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I slept in a skinny single bed with pink woollen blankets surrounded by pink embossed wallpaper. By age 14 the walls were covered with posters of Led Zeppelin, Mary Hopkins and Cat Stevens. Remember posters?
There was an invisible friend, David, who lived on the top shelf inside the wardrobe, and each Christmas there was a red net stocking left empty on the bedroom door and filled with soaps and undies in overnight magic.
My next significant bed was cast iron. It's claim to fame was the conception of two gorgeous daughters. Underneath, on my side, were stored the complete works of Thomas Hardy. Under the other side of were the complete works of US Penthouse, which partly explains why by age 29 I'd left my first marital bed.
Next bed was the ‘lucky’ bed, purchased as a single mum from a deceased estate for $100. It was a small double, 1950’s dark timber, ugly thang with a brand new mattress that gave me the best 10 years of my (bed) life along with another husband who could read.
The books were stacked high on the window side of the lucky bed. Poetry. Spike Milligan, Les Murray, Anne Brooksbank and Geoff Goodfellow with fiction, the complete works Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Marcel Pagnol; fine old friends who didn't mind a little dust and came to my rescue whenever my head needed to escape.
Last month I moved beds, in the middle of the night.
I unplugged my lamp, collected my books and crossed the hall, into our spare room.
Was there ever been such bliss?
The move was an action-woman response to OUR snoring and sleep-farting and his very beautiful sleep-whistling.
We sleep. We fart. We snore … in harmony for almost 25 years, but lately the rhythm has been awry .. he wakes, goes downstairs watches the occasional Wallaby win, comes back upstairs and before you can say “PASS! PASS the ball NOW your bloody idiot” he's sound asleep and I'm wired … awake.
I made the move at 4.25am on a work night. I took a set of crispy-clean sheets from the linen closest and opened the door to paradise.
With me went my buddies Walt Whitman, Bill Bryson, a Woolies recipe book and Elena Ferente.
I opened the door to paradise...
Bill holds the door open when the wind is blowing, Walt whispers to me when I'm insomniac and Elena … is my latest infatuation. I'm reading four of hers (again) simultaneously, skipping in and out for more pleasure than sex and food combined.
Husband’s companions of the night are some hefty door stopping Peter Fitzsimmons on WW1 and Richard Flanagan’s Booker Prize winner, The Narrow Road, along with a collection of Wallabies and Swannies sleeping apparel.
My sleep has returned and with it the bonus of a tidy, lady-space.
Me and LuLu (slinky Burmese), the naughty girls in bedroom two. We sleep with the window as wide open as we like, with as many blankets and doonas as we who sleep cold need, and just enough room on a bedside chair for a lamp, clock and a glass of water.
The books, as usual, prefer the floor.
One of my daughters reckons husband would be jealous of the tidy space, because bedroom one is regularly dishevelled.
He visits, with cups of tea and digestives and we sit, silently, reading.
Bliss. Bed. Lucky.