1. Avoid The Sun. Spending an extra hour in bed in the summer means that you avoid an extra hour of exposure to the sun, This is a good thing. The sun gives cancer; the sun gives burn; the sun can cause blindness. It’s a hazard. When people are exposed to the sun, their skin warms and darkens like that of a chicken in an oven. This is because the sun is slowly cooking us, though for what nefarious purpose, I cannot begin to speculate. The sun is evil: Stay in bed and avoid it.
2. Regress. Being a grown-up is not always fun – I am told – and sometimes a return to more infant-like-state is just the tonic that an adult needs. Being in bed is oft compared to being in the womb; naked, yet protected, insulated from the outside world by the smothering, security of the duvet. It’s better than that though. Being under the duvet is also like being in a den. And what better place is there for your inner-child than a den?
3. Mornings. The morning is the wrong time to be up and about. It’s the time of day when you stumble around bleary-eyed trying to pour coffee and multivitamins into yourself in an attempt to feel vaguely human, and usually fail. The morning is full of dull events like selecting a shirt; commuting; the consumption of muesli; junk-mail; conversations about last night’s television. If you lie-in though, you suffer less morning and you’re more alive and alert when the best part of the day comes; the evening. All of the best, most glamorous and wondrous things happen in the evening; award ceremonies; parties; dining out; gigs; owls; theatre performances, they’re all things that happen at the better end of the day that you shouldn’t be too tired to enjoy.
4. Plans. People plan things, it’s what we do. You probably had today already mapped out before you went to bed last night. But plans aren’t a good thing: The CIA planned to assassinate Fidel Castro; Hitler planned World War II; the VCCP agency planned the Compare The Meerkat advertising campaign; an idiot planned Milton Keynes. If you spontaneously decide to lie-in, you say “no” to plans and liberate yourself from their fiendish tyranny.
5. Toast Avoidance. One of the hazards of mornings is toast which, for some reason, doesn’t exist after 11am. Stay in bed: Avoid toast.
6. Romance. You don’t have to lie-in alone, you can share your den…er…bed with someone else. You can even have breakfast-in-bed together. Not toast, obviously, as the crumbs will get everywhere and could be physically painful: Imagine trying to sleep on a toast-crumb covered pillow. But, even if there is toast, it’s still quality time with a loved one, and that must be a good thing.
7. Health. Sleep debt is the name for a cumulative lack of sleep. It is said to shorten life. So, logically, for a longer life you should be in sleep credit. A lie in will help with this. You can also become immortal by sleeping for 24 hours per day – though modern science is yet to cotton on to this – which, ironically, would make immortality almost exactly like death, but without the flowers. Or I may have dreamt that last bit during a lie-in, I’m not certain.
