Time for a New Mattress

We bought a new mattress. Sam reckons the old one was giving us bad backs, but, I think that was because he found out how old it was. Still, they say, they need to be replaced after a certain time, (the mattress, not the boyfriend) and this mattress' time, by all accounts, was up.

We went to a couple of shops and lay on all of the beds.

“Oh yes, take your time,” said the pregnant shop assistant about to burst. “You won’t know unless you try them all.” 

A sea of quilted cotton fabric lay stretched out in front of us.

Hard, soft, inner coil, individually sprung, outer coil, posturepedic, thick, thicker, thicker still. Seals, King Kong, ortherpedic, pillowtop, muffintop, some as wide as the lesbian florist’s arse on Victoria Parade, but prettier, some as thick as the effeminate barista on Gertrude Street, except smarter. It gets a little confusing. 

"Um, er, did we lie on that one?"

There are so many to choose from. How many do you think you can lie on before you become numb to it all and just a little confused?

All of that information, so many mattresses with so many names. Romeo, Conquest...

They've all got thicker and thicker and thick, and thicker, until they remind me of old Auntie Pat's horse hair mattress’ in her country mansion that looked like Victoria Falls when I peered from the top of them as a kid. The way they are going, we’ll be back to the past with step ladders to climb into the cot. Apparently, the depths of the fitted sheets have got deeper and deeper and deeper, like some ho boy's arse down Shakespeare Grove, to accommodate all of that extra girth.

"Do they have to be so thick?"

"They have got thicker?"

"I like thinner beds." I laughed. "I always fancied a futon." (Ever since I moved out of home, how many years ago?)

"Why don't you lay down here then."

She was pointing at a plain white nondescript mattress, which I didn't pay a hell of a lot of attention too. Head spinning, decisions, decisions. I wasn’t sure I could lie on another mattress, still it seemed a relief to lie on one just for a rest. We lay down on what they call a memory foam mattress to take stock.

"Ah, this is nice."

"These are the best," said our pregnant friend. “I lay here between customers to get some relief from this.” She rub her stomach.

“But much more expensive,” I see.

“Yes, there is that,” she said.

Still the sales were on, so now was the time.

Another weekend, another mattress shop to visit.

“Is there anything I can help you with,” said the sales boy.

Well, hello handsome Keaton. He was very attentive. We tried all of his beds enthusiastically. When we lay on the beds, and Keaton stood next to us giving us the spiel… well, at that angle, in those black trousers… he got the sale. Not that he really influenced us all that much. We had decided on the memory foam mattress, the others just didn’t seem to compare. It is like sleeping on the top of a cake, it is so dense, it is like sleeping on your very own brownie. It doesn't move as you get on it. I can't feel Sam move. I sleep well on it. It hugs you. Ah memory foam, zzzzzzzzzz.