This whole changing of the bedclothes thing is a trauma from start to finish, to be honest.
First of all, I don't know how to fold a fitted sheet on my own so it always comes out of the drawer looking like a crumpled mess. I stretch it from corner to corner of the bed, wedging it under the mattress, hoping that tension will smooth it out.
It pops off after the second or third corner so I have to go round again, using Herculean strength to lift up the mattress each time - especially the one by the bedside table. It thuds back into place when I let it drop, at least until the sheet pops off again. I end up chasing around the bed like Muhammad Ali.
Once that's done though, I slip the pillows into the new pillowcases and hurl them onto the bed. I've turned that bit into an Olympic event, that. But the old pillow-hurling, while of course an ancient and noble sport, is clearly the easy bit in the bed-making pentathlon. For it's followed with some degree of athletic trepidation, by the duvet.
I did wonder, tonight, what I must have looked like, wandering around the flat wearing a duvet cover inside-out over my head like a ghost costume. I'd forgotten where the duvet was and I was fumbling around trying to find the corners. My Mum has always taught me you see, that if I could match up the inside corners of the cover with the corners of the duvet, all I had to do was shake it inside-out, holding onto the corners, and it would all be fine.
I pulled the cover over my head and found the corners, then grabbed the corners of the duvet from inside the cover, ready to shake. I have no idea what anyone in the park would have seen had they looked up and into my bedroom. Presumably I looked a bit like a moomin.
Of course, It turned out I had hold of the wrong corners and I was trying to shuffle the duvet sideways into the duvet cover!
So I started again, pulled the empty cover over my head and grabbed the corners. Success this time! I dragged it to the top of the stairs (for extra drop), pulled the cover from over my head and started shaking.
It was about then that I noticed that the whole thing was still somehow inside-out. Round again then, a miserable looking spectre pulling a duvet behind him like a kind of forlorn trick-or-treater with his security blanket. My arms were aching.
This time I cracked it though! The duvet was the right way round in the cover and the cover was very much not inside-out. So I pulled it and flapped it onto the bed. Then I grabbed a corner and flapped it some more to even it out, knocking a glass of water from the bedside table into my sunrise lamp.
Once smoothed flat and looking like a proper duvet instead of a marshmallow moonscape, I went to the foot of the bed and did the poppers up. Then I did them again because I'd missed one out, and then I unpopped them all again, and finally I got it right.
Of course, by this time my hair looked like it had been pulled apart by magpies and I was so tired I was just about ready to collapse into the dishevelled arrangement I'd completed.
I rubbed my eyes tiredly with my fists and yawned. A moment later I stood there looking puzzled. Where are my glasses? I asked myself. I'm sure I had them on just now...
I can't be bothered putting socks on. I'm just going to have to lie still and hope I drop off to sleep extremely quickly. I guess that shouldn't be too difficult.
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