Pillow talk

This is a photo of Pillow alongside its new replacement.

I admit Pillow, in this photo, appears slightly discoloured but it had been a daily companion over many (possibly 20+) years, travelling with me on many a trip. Now I lie awake missing Pillow every night.

In my view a pillow has just 2 functions and it doesn't really matter what it's stuffed with:

• it must support your head the correct distance from the mattress, a measurement which varies with the width of your shoulder, size of head, favoured position for sleeping etc. Just half a centimetre one way or the other and it simply doesn’t work. 

• for side-sleepers like me it must be possible to lie on the pillow and not have the nostril that is lowest occluded by pressure from the pillow. If occlusion occurs then basically you have to breathe twice as fast or risk hypoxia and, if not brain damage, at least insomnia.

The new pillow fails miserably on both counts; it's about as much good as an oversized marshmallow. I have not had a good night’s sleep since it intruded, cuckoo-like, on my side of the bed.

I should have known better.

I rashly invited my brother M and his other half to stay while we were away in Dorset, so he could visit Mum in her care home. Little did I know that "having someone stay is not like having people for a meal". (The latter involves spring cleaning - the former Armageddon.)

It wasn’t too bad until a couple of days before we we were due to go away. By then every floor had been vacuumed, every surface wiped, every edge dusted, every ceiling, wall and corner de-spidered. Washable ornaments were washed, documents tidied away, bathroom tiles polished, toilets and wash basins cleaned…

I’ll swear that there must be multiple letters that have deadlines, which I usually keep on the desk or table - i.e. close at hand, which are now out-of-sight and out-of-mind in some drawer or other for possible re-discovery in the future like some Celtic burial artefact.

The place already looked more like a show house than our home, but next C started on the insides of the cupboards and drawers! AND the cellar! (“You know what your brother’s like”!)

And then: “We’re having new pillows”. Hence our first brave trip into town on the bus after lockdown was ...to get new pillows.

I'm now on a mission to find a replacement that works; the dustbin was emptied while we were away and Pillow has gone to meet its maker. (It is a late pillow; it has ceased to be.) There are 7 other pillows in the house so I shall try one each night and then, if necessary, start to search local stores for something that approximates to Pillow’s size and essence.

I am not optimistic.