The smell of my own bed welcomes me. It isn’t a bad smell, but a me smell. There are fragrances of washing powder and nightmare sweats, but they are mine. At night I snuggle under the soft cotton duvet and flatten my face against my own pillow. I can smell my hair shampoo on the pillowcase and there are hints of make up forever stained on its white cotton sheen. I adore my own bed and I miss it when I am gone.

There is a hollow on the mattress that hugs me like a lover. It knows all the places to caress me and keep me warm. Strange beds have no idea how to touch you and feel like a bad one night stand that refuses to accept their elbows are jutting into your flesh.

My bed has seen me through the worst and the best of times. It supported me when my marriage became a war, sometimes right there on its very surface. It held me close when I cried in pain through illness and it welcomed me every time I dropped into it travel weary and exhausted.

That bed opened up its strong comfy heart when babies like my great nephew and nieces Shaun, Abi or Julia needed hugs in the night when they stayed with me. All of these children have been newborn infants tucked up safe within its billowy borders, now they come over and bounce up and down on its springy spines!

It has comforted Ashley in the dark nights when she had nightmares and the bed miraculously seemed to grow bigger to make space for her frightened angular teenage body.

My bed is the best place in the world and I will miss it when I go to New Zealand on Sunday.

I will miss my family as well, but at least I can talk to them, I can only dream about my own bed as I lay between stiff, dry cotton sheets in a host of strange beds that will treat me like a rapist who overstayed their attack._
_
_
_
_
_
_