Duvets

From time to time I'll indulge and have a day sat in my duvet at the computer. I must say they are highly recommended as far as the need for "me time" goes. It's like never really getting up but still doing all those things you're supposed to (as long as they're not too strenuous). Indeed, I have written many an essay with my faithful duvet wrapped around me to keep me warm and snug.

Pampering myself comes naturally to me, and days in duvets are particularly coveted, especially since the times I can have them will become ever more limited as I become older and hopefully a little wiser also. I don't engorge myself in make up, I don't use any creams or facial packs or anything that other women might call "pampering". Though i would not personally condone the use of cosmetics as a bridge to personal pleasure, I know many women who would, and so I shall let that debate slide until another day.

It seems strange to me that I have never found a duvet quite like my own. My prickly hedgehog friend talks about this own bed often, personified as a she with tempting fingers that are insatiable around the hour of eleven pm. Once in the arms of his mistress he rarely rises until the morning, when she is seemingly done with him. Indeed there have been several occasions when he has vanished halfway through something on Guild Wars, and we have had to continue without him. "My bed, she calls to me" he will say, and vanish.

I guess beds are worth a mention, I mean each of us spends around a third of our lives in them. Each have their own personal preference: I personally love to sleep with the window open, Alex sleeps with the radio on, but there's always, always a bed. Even if caught out in the wilderness with nothing, our instinct is to cover ourselves with something to sleep under. I mean it's a security thing, that duvet is the one that protected you from the monsters when you were little.

I admit I still run for my bed when I'm entering my room in the dark, because it's warm, and somehow the doubts, and worries, and fears of monsters, aliens, creepy crawlies and others nasties, are unable to reach me there. In my mind they cannot penetrate the shield that holds my bed secure.

Perhaps that's a good thing though, I mean we all need somewhere where we feel safe, and if we can sleep there so much the better; after all, it's difficult to sleep in places where we don't feel safe.

So, perhaps my days with my duvet are an outreach for the safety that the bed represents. Perhaps I long to feel that all the time and those days of pampering are really an outreach to the safety from the imaginary monsters, as well as the real monsters in my life.