A Goldilocks Moment

I have been very busy of late – not busyness that has achieved nothing, but necessary busyness. One item ticked of a very long To-do list was to phone the cleansing department of the council to make arrangements for them to uplift on old mattress. It’s currently living in the spare room.

In the January sales we decided to replace the mattress. For more than a year or two the springs were finding their way to the surface. Turning the mattress over or around just gave you a different set of spring to deal with rather than solving the problem, and I had taken to covering the worst offenders with a spare duvet but it made for an uncomfortable night.

One Saturday we toured the bed shops. It was like a re-enactment of the story of Goldilocks without the bears, or the chairs or the porridge. We skipped straight to the beds. One shop operated a scale from one to five. One was rock hard – you might as well be sleeping on the floor. Five was very soft – the sinking sand equivalent of a mattress.

There was an invitation, almost an order given by the sales person that you lie down on the bed. The bottom part was covered in plastic so no one expected you to remove your shoes. Children were gleefully jumping one some mattresses given such freedom and encouragement.

We did the tour and like Godlilocks pointed out the ones too soft and the ones too hard. We swithered over a memory mattress but the price was higher than we had budgeted. It was down to a couple of “just right” ones.

We made our choice, filled in the right forms for delivery and surrendered the debit card.

Swapping the mattresses over should have been an easy affair. It is not rocket science to take the old one off and put the new one on. We didn’t factor in the dust bunnies lurking under the bed. They were clearly visible.

Joe left me to hoover the carpet.

I am not sure whether these dust bunnies were a fiercer breed than most bunnies – they hadn’t been tackled in a while and had perhaps had the chance to evolve into another life form or whether there was something up with the hoover. I had dismantled it to clean it a while ago. Putting all the bits back together in the right order could have been a MENSA entry examination. Whatever the problem, the hoover whined on an unhealthy note, overheated and the emergency cut-off safety thing kicked in.

The dust bunnies laughed. I think one or two mooned in celebration.

For the next half hour or more there was hand to hand – or rather bunny to brush skirmishes - under the bed. The dust bunnies were not laughing anymore.

Finally the new mattress took its place.

What was “just right” in the shop was transformed into “more than alright” on the bed. After the battle with the bunnies and then with the duvet cover, the urge to crawl into bed was strong.

We have entered a new phase of sleeping. This mattress should have come with a government warning – once in bed, it is soooooo comfortable that, like Goldilocks, one can’t help but fall asleep. Even the arrival of bears would have little bearing on whether Goldilocks would have left the bed and jumped out the window.

Joe and I are more than amazed that we put up with the past mattress for so long. We just applied the spare duvet to the worst of the springs and moulded our bodies to the dips and fell asleep.

I am just thinking about the things in life we put up with – the uncomfortable springs of trials and tribulations that poke through our faith. Maybe we find a word from the Bible to cover them over, to make things a little more comfortable. Maybe we just mould our Jesus walk around these things.

If that is the case…it’s time for something new.