If you are to the manor born, what do you to the bed wear?
It was in 1955 that I unintentionally put a foot through the worn seat of my Wynciette pyjamas. Granted, they were weakening a bit as I’d been wearing them for three years and I was finding it difficult to breathe once buttoned in. I remember them very well. There had been a cord but mum had replaced that with elastic for fear of me strangling myself in my sleep and there were steam trains puffing all over me – I especially liked the funnel and the cloud of steam that had somehow found itself stitched in the seam and appeared to be coming out of my bum. In those days, comic strips always showed men in striped pyjamas buttoned to the neck and tucked in the trousers with the cord tied over, never under, the tummy making them look like little, well-fed concentration camp inmates. They dressed like that in Carry on Nurse too.
Since then I have never worn pyjamas – even when I lived in my own house and was too mean to pay for heating, winters were spent under double duvets.
Now I’m living in a flat and can keep the temperatures as high as I wish – why not? Everybody else does. But I do like the window slightly open and this week has been positively Siberian with nocturnal brass monkeys of -8°, so in anticipation of those moments when the duvet slides, I wear one of my favourite Jimmy Buffett Coconut Telegraph tee shirts which has, inexplicably, a huge rip down the left side.
I have a fondness for satin sheets and pillowcases and I have four sets in ivory, taupe, burgundy and gold. Pretty, but a little slippery and restless nights are spent picking it all off the floor. I once bought, for the girlfriend of the month, a very expensive white silk pyjama suit and every time she turned over, she slid out of bed. One girlfriend from the Southern hemisphere insisted on having her full-length mink on the bed whenever the temperature dropped below 10° and it made me sneeze. Another beauty who would not be seen without make-up and had to have lights out for our more intimate moments would scare me in the mornings. I had gone to bed with a gorgeous mature broad and woken up with a 90-year-old crone in a Betty Boop tee shirt. More than once I had considered gnawing my arm off at the elbow rather than wake her. Nightshirts, baby dolls, boxer shorts, rugby shirts, ski bonnets and socks. The list goes on and on but nothing can beat nothing.
Sleep on it.
