The Bedgate Conspiracy

Habitual behaviour is difficult to break.

It is not all bad.

I would encourage parents to read that bedtime story, tuck up their children and give them a kiss on the forehead. It worked wonders for me both as a recipient child and as a giving Dad.

We all have our little traits and rituals be they based on superstition, practicalities, routine or they are just an integral part of our coping strategy in the big bad world.

I have a few of my own. Those who know me may say that I have lots and most of them rude.

I have always slept on the right side of the marital bed, for example.

This must have been a habit based on something basic as before wedlock I only ever had a single bed.

Our first joint home as a young couple brought with it a huge iron framed bedstead. With mattress in place it was a good three feet above the floor.

This gave some reassurance against the unwelcome arrival on the Slumberdown of small rodents and large insects. Our first place was a bit run down and with gaps in roof, walls, sash window frames and floors it was a bit of a short cut for creatures on their way back to their own homes.

Later on in our married life it prevented our two dogs from being able to slabber us awake first thing in ther morning and no doubt will have afforded a refuge in the event of a flood or a Yorkshire tsunami.

On the downside any uncontrolled turn and roll outwards from the quilt could result in tangible injury over the distance to fall to the floor.

The appearance of a childs head in direct level plane and view to us as dozing parents could be both magical and frightful, dependant upon what they had brought up the stairs with them to gleefully show us or had smeared on their rosey cheeked faces in variable quantities.

Our eldest daughter then aged seven would delight in leaving, in the cavernous open space under the industrial strength sprung frame, her Fisher Price first tape recorder quietly whirring away on its AA batteries.

Only when this covert operation was discovered, some considerable time later, did we realise that she was not indeed endowed with psychic or intuitive gifts in strangely knowing all of our immediate and longer term plans in life.

We chose to gloss over the possibilty of the saving on cassette tape of the detail of intimate conversations between husband and wife on a lazy sunday morning.

Perhaps, my decision to sleep on the right hand side of the bed, being nearest the door to the landing was deeply subconcious just to prevent such an invasion of privacy be it from a housebreaker, in the interests of national security ( imaginings of conspiracy theory) or fledgling private investigators heavily influenced by the Scooby Doo ethos.