Oh, luxury. I’ve just had a great night’s sleep under a new duvet. Not only that, but the duvet had a new cover. And I was sleeping on new sheets. And I also had new pillowcases and a £15 pillow from IKEA that puts your heid in the right position.
I am breathless recalling the excitement of it all. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs were the Dickensian-style benefactor providing the wherewithal for all this slumbersome sumptuousness.
Before their uncharacteristically kind tax rebate, I slept with a higgledy-piggledy arrangement of three thin duvets stacked atop each other.
One or other would always slide off in the night and, often, I’d wake in the morning in a contorted yoga position, with my bottom and my elbow in interchangeable positions, thus proving the adage.
Now, with a proper winter duvet, I could sleep like a king or a normal person or, indeed, like a log, which I did. I should add that, armed with my new largesse, not only did I buy much-needed new bedding, I also bought pants and socks for the first time in decades.
As it happened, my good friends Cedric and Millicent were back from tiger-spotting in India and invited me out to a swanky restaurant as a thank-you for looking after their domestic moggies.
Needless to say, I wore my new pants and socks. But, when I wanted to show the other diners my new pants, Cedric and Millicent forbade it, good-naturedly feigning horror at the suggestion.
Later, stravaiging aboot the west end, they also forbade me from lowering the waistband of my trousers like the hip-hopper people do, saying that rappers and young people generally would not find my Marks and Spencer label “cool”. Millicent added that the “three pairs for £7.50” sticker still visible on the waistband might incur derision.
Sometimes I think they fret too much. However, I did not let this lesson in the strange rules of contemporary fashion dampen my spirits. I was a man of means. No longer did my knee-length socks slide down to my ankles because of depleted elastication. They stayed up.
I did not stay up long myself when I got back to my wee semi in the ghetto but rushed into bed, half-formulating a plan to stay there forever. I’d a terrible time the next morning trying to make myself get up.
It’s by far the worst time of day for most people: the realisation that one is still alive. And the worst thing about being alive is having to get up.
You need some kind of incentive. Then I remembered: I’ve got new pants and socks! I rushed out of bed to the chest of drawers and there they were: all folded and everything.
Though it wasn’t Saturday, I had a shower and donned my new apparel, once more becoming a king clad in – not 70, 80 or 90 – but 100 per cent cotton.
Friends frequently say I’m easily pleased, but I believed this to be a virtue, much like good manners. Not forgetting the latter, I have written to HMRC, thanking them once again and enclosing pictures of the duvet, bedding, pants and socks that I bought with their donation.
I expect that it will make their day.
