Sleeping Arrangements Part II

30th September
It’s an age thing isn’t it, wanting your own room to fart and snore away in to your heart’s content. But as a child I loved sharing a room, especially with other kids. Between the ages of five and eight years I slept in a lot of other households and had some very ‘formative’ experiences, mostly in a good way. There was the Grandmother who let me share her big feather bed - I imagined it as our ship, sailing through the torrid waves of smelly, peach-coloured full-body corsets, vests and big knickers that surrounded our vessel. My grandmother would fetch us coffee with a big slug of rum in the morning and then we’d sit in bed getting sozzled while she read me the latest episode of her blood-and-guts novel.

The only sleeping place I wasn't keen on was at the Sunday-School Aunties who had picturess of morbid subjects like The Slain Wives of Bluebeard on their walls. When I stayed here, a door was laid over the bath for me to sleep on - which was a bit like having an en-suite now I think of it, except that other people could come in and have a pee in the night.