Problems in the bedroom

When you first start to live with somebody there are a few issues you have to face. For one thing - if one or both of you have long hair, turning over in the middle of the night can be a problem. ("Ouch - you're on my hair!")

Then there's the issue of who has which side of the bed. (Believe it or not, back in 1973 I was so averse to routine that I user to make C swap sides every few weeks. After a year or two I accepted that it worked better with me on the right.)

But there is one issue that keeps recurring however long you share a bed with somebody. I may be criticised for writing about such a personal matter - and I know that C will be aghast if/when she reads it, but I've always felt that honesty was important in this blog. And being honest is even more important when it comes to personal issues, don't you think?

This is a problem that simply never arises when you're single and are alone between the sheets. A single person just gets on with it; it goes on in the background, as it were. But when you share a bed, well, you just might get away with a quiet one, especially if your partner is half-asleep, but generally speaking he/she is going to notice and, more than likely, react badly.

I refer, of course, to that perennial problem - farting in bed.

I seriously doubt, when the vicar or priest prepares his/her pre-wedding couples, whether this important issue is covered. (Not that I'd know.) But it surely deserves at least one session. Because, although, as mentioned above, one might get away with a silent innocuous offering, there is no ignoring the Richter-scale shocker that comes out of nowhere. Then there's the moral dilemma that is the silent-but-deadly mid-spoon stinker: to issue a warning or not?

In my mind there are two solutions to the noisy noxious fart. My preference, which I like to think has scientific validity, is the Dilute and Disperse approach. I.e. one, or preferably both, of you grabs the covers and wafts vigorously, thereby instantly releasing the unwanted gaseous material from the bed, no more to threaten defenceless nostrils. This approach does, admittedly, have the disadvantage that it lets cold air into the bed.

C, on the other hand, has an alternative - what I call the Hope it Goes Away method. She'll say "Keep still!", the intention being to trap the gas in the bed. This might be a temporary solution but it has to come out sooner or later! (I have yet to come across a charcoal-containing duvet.) And the instruction to keep still invariably comes at a time when you're about to turn over, or at least adjust a leg or arm and simply have to move to get comfortable.

Needless to say, my solution has never been tried.