Make your own bed and lie in it

I hate making my bed. You need seriously long arms to cope with a king size duvet and cover. The pillows are too billowy to fit easily into their cases and have to be scrunched up. The elasticated sheet pings off the diagonal corners. I end up grumpy. I can't help it, I just do. It's like pumping up my bike tyres with a hand pump, I end up in tears. Some things just do that. (I have had my wheel rims drilled to take a foot pump now, so no sympathy necessary, thank you anyway).

I wish I was taller, I wish I had arms like an orangutan. The duvet cover is always still a bit damp in one place, but then I quite like that. It's cooling, and I'm always hot. I have to have my feet sticking out of the end to achieve the right temperature. Perhaps my hypothalamus is trying to tell me something.

The good thing about making your bed is you can have a sneaky little lie down when you've finished. It is exhausting work and you deserve to collapse in a bit of a heap. Strangely, when collapsing onto the bed after making it, I always end up at a jaunty angle. It seems a shame to dent the newly billowed pillows. There is something rather pleasant about dangling my head over the edge and staring at the wall, upside down. I wait for all the blood to rush to my head and then decide to get up. There's that slightly giddy feeling, which I quite enjoy, like I've just been on a roundabout without the vomity feeling.

It is then essential to forget about changing the bed, so that you have a lovely surprise at night time, slithering into crispy, cool sheets and letting the fluffy pillows take the strain. I adopt the starfish pose and let the day sink into the mattress. It's a starfish with one limb missing though. But I'm not going to let that bother me. Somewhere on the planet will be a four legged starfish, it's just that no-one has found it yet.