Carol’s Column

So who needs sleep?

AFTER 16 years of marriage, I realise I've made a terrible mistake.

We are just not compatible.

Now this is not an easy thing for any ostensibly happily married couple to admit. Especially when we are both deeply committed to this marriage.

Why, you might ask, has it taken so long to discover this fact? After all — on the surface, we're an ideal couple. He squeezes the bottom of the toothpaste tube. I squeeze the middle.

To put it in a nutshell — it's all a question of rating. You remember that film "10" starring the luscious Bo Derek of the knock-kneed legs and stringy hair? Well — that's what really got the rating system going.

And last Tuesday, at 3pm to be exact, we discovered we were not suited.

We were bouncing around in bed. In several beds actually.

It was quite an orgy. Not at all the usual way we spend a Tuesday afternoon.

It had actually started the night before — when at 3am, I found myself lying on the floor. Our bed, which has been in constant use over the years, had developed an irrevocable list to the right. Which meant that when my husband, a man of not inconsiderable mass, clambered in — I rolled out. We tried to counter the list by swapping sides.

The crunch came, when the left-hand side of the bed began to list too.

"That's it," said my spouse, joining me on the floor. "Tomorrow we'll splurge and buy a new bed."

Which was why we found ourselves in a showroom that displayed enough beds to accommodate the entire cast of Arabian Nights and the Khama Sutra too.

In the good old days, a bed was a bed and a mattress was something to soften the blow.

Today, a mattress is a science that makes even nuclear research pale into insignificance.

As was obvious by the numbers of sleeping receptacles placed strategically around the showroom.

The salesman was superb.

"Shape, size, colour, Sir?" he said. "Hard soft, medium? Posturepeudic, sprung, foam; padded? Sprung base, box base, padded base? Rating 1,2,3,4,5,6,7?"

Rating?

My sleeping partner was stunned.

"I just want to buy a bed," he said quietly.

It will suffice to say we experimentally bounced our way, jointly and separately through 25 beds.

My husband bounced with gusto. Indeed, had I not acted promptly and grabbed his ankle on an upward bounce, he would have sailed through the window — so exuberant did he become.

And then we made a decision.

"I want a 6 (the hardest) bed," he said.

"And I want a 7 (the softest) bed," I replied.

We compromised and bought a 5 (medium) which neither of us find comfortable.

"This isn't an ideal situation," remarked my husband from his side of the floor last night. "Your ideal mate is a 7 and mine a 6."

He's right.

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