Feest Isolation Days -16 April
Mattresses! You don’t have a new one for over ten years then three come along at the same time! When I was little we used to watch a television animation cartoon called Casper the Friendly Ghost and to this day whenever I see the word Casper, the white smiling face of this childhood spirit flashes before my eyes and I smile all over again. Now what, you may ask does this have to do with three mattresses? I’ll get there, I promise.
Before lockdown began we decided that after sleeping on the same mattress for over ten years it was time to “throw something down” on top of our bed frame that was worthy of 2020. “Throw something down” or “the place where something is thrown” is the Arabic origination of our modern word for what we sleep on today. We were determined to sleep tight –a phrase which possibly comes from Shakespeare’s days when mattresses were supported on a bed frame by ropes and which had to be tightened so they didn’t sag. No ropes required these days. A NASA scientist, Charles Yost, developed memory foam in order to create a more comfortable surface for astronauts. The man who took “one small step for a man, one giant step for mankind”, slept on memory foam on the way to and from the moon.
Memory foam our new mattress would be. We did our research and a key worker arrived with our big blue box (drivers didn’t yet realise in March that they were key workers). We removed the packing and waited for the squished thing to puff itself up. The smell that emerged would soon go away we told ourselves as we opened the windows in the spare room where we left our purchase for over a week before transferring it to our bedroom. After one night’s sleep, the damp chemically smell permeated the bedroom, the bed clothes and our sleep wear. It had to go. The company we chose guarantee that you can return the bed for a full refund within a hundred days, no questions asked and the helpful woman at Casper was indeed very friendly. She said she’d check the batch number as it shouldn’t smell like that and would send us another one. In fact, somewhere an error occurred. Our delivery driver (now key worker) brought not one, but two blue boxes and we now have three!
Sadly, the new one smells, not as much but it won’t do. The cartoon Casper was friendly but sometimes a bit cheeky too. He would no doubt have laughed at our developing mattress collection. We certainly laughed, though through gritted teeth, as we humped the old mattress for about the fifth time back into our room.
Lockdown means we aren’t going anywhere for awhile so as I drift off to sleep I spend a few moments thinking about those moon trips and smile once more as I think of Casper the friendly little ghost flying around the world making people smile. For now, we are certainly sleeping tight and can’t imagine why we thought we needed a new mattress in the first place. Sweet dreams!
Love,
Kathy x
Nice touch about the ‘key worker’ label which transforms people’s status in society through discourse. I will believe it when the government announces an increase in the salary of all key workers..
I did not know Casper as a character I am afraid. I was of the Tintin, Spirou and Pilote generation.
I hope you manage to get your money back, one odourless mattress, and that you will have a key worker to collect the 3 mattresses. Useful to have lots of space!
Where would we be without our key workers? They are keeping us going. Delivery people are wonderful. Our lovely mailman Tom has even offered to get anything else we might need. People are so kind!
Kx
Maybe our Government will even rethink their description of low skilled workers – I seem to recall that Care assistants were on the list – and realise that in a humane society we will always need these skills and yes maybe some of them will by necessity be immigrants. Tell that to the Home Office!