Beds

Beds, huh. Tried buying one recently?

It seems that the days of well-sprung mattresses have died and one has to factor latex into the hunt.

Latex? I thought that was for gloves that we wear when fixing the Land Rover. And of course, for products made by the London Rubber Company.

It may well be, but it seems it is also a prime component of the latest shiniest mattresses.

Sprung mattresses, my dears, are a thing of the past.

Then of course there are frames, divans, headboards - my head was reeling.

I needed a bed to lie down.

Now, it has to be said, I am a woman who loves her bed. I might happen to have been sleeping on the floor for the past couple of years, but that is only because I have not found the perfect bed.

What I do not want is cheap tat. What I do not want is to walk into a 'shop' to have to look through a catalogue, be told that the cheapest possible bed and mattress is very good, and that I can't even see it before parting with Partner's hard-earned dough. Oh. No.

I do not want to be shown a picture of a metal bed that bears a very uncanny resemblance to the one I spent some time in aged six when I was in hospital for weeks after I had my appendix out. If it looks like a hospital bed in a catalogue, it is bound to look like a hospital bed in real life and I do not want it in my flat, regardless of whether it is very good value for money.

Nor do I want to have a lecture about how the most important thing about my bed is buying fine linen so that it looks expensive. I am not trying to sell either a bed or a flat. It is for sleeping in and the most important thing is that it is comfortable for me to sleep in, or on, or whatever. (Note to saleswoman - I actually do have some rather tasteful bed linen - my bedspread alone cost more than the bed you were trying to sell me).

So, worn out with all that, and after a not too bad night's sleep on the sofa, I wandered off to different furniture suppliers who actually had things in stock. I sat on mattresses. Loads of them. I wasn't quite at the lying down stage. I bounced around on a few relics from the past - mattresses with springs. I sunk into some top-of-the range latex jobs.

I wrinkled my nose at divans. I worried about cleaning underneath them because I wouldn't be able to get the mop or sweeping brush under there. Cleaning may not be one of my favourite past-times but I do like the option of being able to do it. I envisaged a whole pile of Pippa fur gravitating to an unreachable spot far under a divan.

I looked at nice simple frames. I looked at frames with headboards and footboards. I looked at separate headboards. I looked at wood, MDF, and metal. And PU mixes - described as faux leather in the cheap shop the previous day. Why is it that people selling cheaper products are more pretentious?

I really don't care if catalogue purchasing cuts the price by loads of quids. If I am spending half my day or rather, all night, lying on something, I want to know a) what the hell it is going to feel like and b) what it is going to look like.

But this time I had a choice. I could see what I would be buying. I could buy expensive, I could buy cheap, or I could buy somewhere in the middle. I learned about mattresses, which frames were stronger, which frames were solid wood and which were MDF, and how to move beds around (for cleaning, obviously). I did forget to ask which mattresses would be good for sex.

Next step - drag Partner there one day after work and make The Decision.

The dog may be disappointed though......