The world outside bed

Welcome back after Christmas! Hope ye all had a good one. I know you were all dying for a new blog post over the festive season but I took some time off to be generally festive and drink too much.

I could review my Christmas outings quite easily but I fear that if I did there would be a comment from my liver saying “Go f*** yourself Mike!”. A sentiment that would be readily mirrored by my wallet.

Clearly as a result of outings like this I also got very acquainted with an old friend of mine over Christmas…bed.

Bed is epic. Bed is one of the nicest places to be in the world. Its unrelenting comfort, warmth and support is exactly what so many characters in romantic comedies spend their lives searching the world for. But bed needs no searching. Bed stays in the same place (unless you have a crazy mobile bed or something but even then it’s there for you).

Bed would never be the first guy our friend in the romantic comedy falls for. The guy who turns out to be a racist rapist who cheats on everyone with his receptionist. You know, the guy with that “I know I’m a prick” smirk on his face while he generally mills around the place acting the knob before returning to the poor, innocent, trusting girl who deserves better and says something like “Aw, I’m just so beat from work, it’s been a long day, but here look I bought you this lovely shiny something to make it all better” and gets away with it.

Bed wouldn’t even be the second guy the girl in the film falls far. Bed isn’t even the nice, clumsy, Hugh Grant character who all the girls in the audience hope the girl in the film ends up with. Because at some point in the film, right before the end, this character will be caught in a seemingly prickish act (though there is usually a perfectly innocent explanation for this and it “isn’t what it looks like”) by the girl character who will then run off in tears because all the guys she’s met in the last hour and a half have apparently been undercover sh*ts. Bed doesn’t get in to these situations. It doesn’t stop to help the injured hooker get to hospital (thus placing it in a car with a hooker so you can see it and assume the worst before it makes an undying plea of love to you in front of a crowd to win you back right at the end of the movie). It just loves you.

Feel the love...

But this isn’t about bed. As the title suggests, this is about the world outside bed. Where the undercover sh*ts live.
The world outside bed has two sides to it. There’s the side you see through your in-bed eyes, and the side you see when you finally muster up the courage to put your feet on the floor of your bedroom.
These are VERY different places.

The outside bed perspective

Sure, the world generally comes with its good bits and its bad bits but to avoid getting in to some seriously deep stuff here we’re just gonna say it’s not all that bad really is it?

There’s lovely stuff about outside bed. There’s trees, and puppies, and music, and ice cream, and sweets, and chocolate, and friends and family and loads of other pretty cool crap to keep you entertained.

Like this 🙂

Look at how happy he is…Fantastic!
We should probably mention all those wonderful sights to see like the Grand Canyon or The Pyramids or something but I’m pretty sure Carlton covers it.

From outside bed you really can appreciate all the dancing Carltons you want and when all the surrounding loveliness gets too much for you bed is there to welcome you back, re-energise you and send you back out to go look at the puppies and eat chocolate.

Sure, there's all that murder and war stuff too....but look at the puppy!

The in-bed perspective

But then, there’s the in-bed perspective.

Bed has the power to distort everything. Without sticking so much as a finger out from under the covers you can tell that the outside world is cold…far too cold to risk getting out from under the lovely warm blanket you’ve wrapped yourself in.

From bed, everything outside seems unimportant. Even the most important things you had to do today can and will be re-assessed in those few moments lying in bed after you wake up. Does it really matter if you don’t go to that class? Do you really ever learn anything in that class anyway? Someone will give you notes, right? And even if I don’t hand that assignment in on time today it’s only a 10% penalty…10% is nothing…be grand!

It’s at this point that you start to think about how your life would be if you just spent it in bed. People would come to see you, bring you food and presents and news of the outside world you don’t have to care about. You could become that wise beacon of philosophical knowledge for all your friends as they visit you with their outside world problems and lament the fact that they have to deal with them while you sit their enjoying day-time TV and enlightened obesity….and chocolate. Lots of chocolate.

Yeah the outside world has puppies and trees and the Grand Canyon but puppies can be played with from your bed, you can see trees from your window and are you telling me that if it were an option you wouldn’t prefer to go visit the Grand Canyon in your bed?

Eventually though, you accept that you will have to leave bed. It is then that I, personally, try to envision ways of fashioning my duvet in to an outfit that wouldn’t look out of place in college. So far I have been unsuccessful (any ideas would be appreciated in the comments section).

Though these people may be on to something...

 

In essence the outside-bed world may seem like a cold, pointless, bedless place filled with problems, idiots in snuggies and Jedward. But it isn’t all that bad when you muster the courage to actually get up (and stay up long enough so that you can’t go back to bed only to wake up later unsure if you actually got up or had a dream about getting up…which has happened to me).

And on top of this there is that one saving grace of the out-of-bed world. The compromise that may be just enough to give you the courage to stick that second leg out from under the covers. One of the key parts of the outside-bed world. I speak of course…of couch.

The bed of downstairs.

Or, if you live in a bungalow, the bed of the other part of your house

 

Having said all that though I wrote this from bed….God I love bed!