7 Reasons

Tag: pillows

  • 7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Share a Bed With Me

    7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Share a Bed With Me

    The 7 Reasons Sofa with a big, red arrow

    Hi, I’m Marc.  I’m half of the 7 Reasons team – the one with the feet.  Some of you probably imagine that after a long day on the 7 Reasons sofa, in the manner of Laurel and Hardy or Morecambe and Wise, Jon and I put on our jim-jams and nightcaps and retire to the 7 Reasons bed for some hard-earned slumber.  This is not true, please un-think it.  The reality is, in fact, more bizarre than that.

    I would just like to make it clear that today’s 7 Reasons post is not 7 reasons that you shouldn’t share a bed with our website, and it isn’t 7 reasons that you shouldn’t share a bed with Jon (you’ll probably have your own reasons for that), it’s 7 Reasons that you shouldn’t share a bed with me – sorry if that upsets any plans.

    Red and white image of an insomniac man with alarm clock

    1.  Reading.  I read in bed.  My bedtime reading matter of choice is often a large, heavy, hardback biography or a similarly weighty historical tome.  Consequently, holding a book tires my arms – especially when I’m fidgeting (I do a lot of fidgeting) between positions.  At some point I will use the nearest person as a book-rest – their head is the most practical place to rest my book as it is at my eye-level.  I’m told that this is annoying.

    2.  Decapitation.  I like to have two pillows to myself – one placed on top of the other.  In my struggle to get comfortable/block out sound/block out light/keep my head warm/move into the night’s eighty-third position, I often place my head between the pillows.  I find this position comfortable.  If you wake up sharing a bed with me, you will briefly believe that you are sharing the bed with a headless man.  This will startle you.  Every time.

    3.  Radio.  I listen to the radio in bed – BBC Radio 5Live’s Up All Night programme – it keeps me informed, educated and entertained while I am failing to sleep.  This is fine until 2:40am on Wednesdays.  That’s when Cash Peters is on.  That’s when the sound of my (poorly) stifled laughter will wake you up.  You will probably wonder why tears are streaming down my face; you’re likely to wonder why I’m biting the duvet (this is for your benefit, you’re welcome); you may wonder if I’m having a funny turn; you will definitely wonder if the spare bed is unoccupied.

    4.  Soft toys.  If I should find a cuddly-toy in, or even near, the bed, I feel compelled to tuck it in.  If you are not expecting to wake up flanked by a slumbering bear, a recumbent penguin, a sleepy elephant or a dozing handbag (I get confused in the dark), it can be quite disconcerting.

    5.  Curling.  Not everything I do in bed is annoying.  I often curl up into a tiny ball under the covers.  This hampers my breathing somewhat, so I fashion myself a small air-hole in the side of the duvet and poke my nose out through it.  This, I am told, is one of the cutest things in the world.  And it probably is, right up until you try to move my painstakingly-positioned sheets.  Then you’ll find yourself involved in a life-and-death tussle for control of the duvet.  And I always win.

    6.  Experimentation.  During the night many important questions will pop into my head, prompting me to experiment on the nearest sleeping person.  What if I poke my finger in her ear?  What if I blow in her eye?  What if I drip water on her forehead?  What if I tie her hair to the headboard and shout “Boo!?”  What if I loudly mimic her breathing pattern for several minutes then stop abruptly?  What if I coo like a pigeon and flap the top of the duvet around?  The possibilities are limitless.

    7.  Sleep.  Eventually, I will wear myself out and fall asleep.  Don’t think that’s where the fun ends though.  It’s then that I think up entire 7 Reasons posts that make no sense at all and get chased around the house by a horse.  As I flee the dream-horse my legs will flail and I may emit noises – I might even say, “Crikey, a horse!” again.  I have also been observed barking like a dog and trying to dig a hole in the mattress with my front paws…er…hands.  I meant hands.  By this stage, you may not know what time it is, but you’ll probably decide that it’s time to get up, which is great as I’d love a coffee.

  • 7 Reasons to Replace Chickens With Flamingos

    7 Reasons to Replace Chickens With Flamingos

    1.  Flavour.  We’re all familiar with the expression, you are what you eat.  This is true; diet informs flavour.  The diet of chickens is dull.  Chickens are fed corn and grains and the sort of dreary stuff that we use to bulk-up stews and casseroles.  Flamingos eat shrimp, which are wonderfully flavoursome, and a substantial portion of their flavour comes from these.  Chickens taste dull; flamingos taste of fish, which is much, much better.  Also, as you are what you eat, which would you rather be, a chicken or a flamingo?

    2.  Health.  Most flamingos are wild and are, therefore, game.  They are free to roam and free to eat natural food.  Most chickens are not.  Eating flamingos would, consequently, be healthier than eating chickens.  It would also provide American hunters with exercise as they stalked their dinner by the lake rather than driving their pick-up trucks to the supermarket.  They would also have to camouflage themselves in pink, which would give the rest of us a laugh.

    “Billy-Bob, you’s a sissy.”

    3.  Leg.  Everyone wants the chicken leg because it’s firm:  this is because the leg is one of the few limbs that the sedentary farmed chicken exercises regularly – as a result of this, it is toned.  Flamingos spend most of their lives standing on one leg – they alternate regularly between them.  This means that flamingo legs are firmer and nicer than chicken legs.  They’re also bigger.  This will mean that sharing the leg becomes a possibility, saving mealtime arguments.  Or it will mean that you get a bigger leg, it depends how mean-spirited you are.

    4.  Milk.  You can’t milk a chicken.  You can, however, milk a flamingo.  We all know that the aisles of Waitrose are choc-full of people shopping for organic, Bermuda grass-fed, hand-reared, free-range Angora goat’s milk.  Imagine how much they’ll want the new fad  – flamingo milk.  Waitrose shoppers will be buying so much flamingo milk that they’ll probably have to fold the seats down in their Audi estates to transport it home.  They may even have to buy a second Smeg fridge to put it all in.

    5.  Farming.  Eventually, of course, the new niche popularity of the flamingo will lead to a mass-market demand for it.  This will cause flamingos to become the exotic farmers livestock of choice.  These people are usually found experimenting with farming ostriches, which will be replaced by the new glamorous avian farming fashion – the flamingo.  This is great, as I’m – justifiably – terrified of ostriches, with their cruel, murdererous eyes, their sharp, oversized talons and their menacing, powerful beaks.  I have no fear of flamingos.  They are pink.

    6.  Colour.  There are few sites in the British countryside more breath-taking than vast swathes of bright yellow rapeseed in full bloom.  With the new flamingo farms, it will be possible to stumble across fields full of pink clusters of gangly birds – all year round.  This will brighten up the landscape no end, especially at sunset.  Countryside campsites will become countryside camp sites where you’ll be able to enjoy the countryside camp sight of intense pink colours in tents (pink coloured).

    7.  Feathers.  The best feathers for stuffing pillows are goose and duck feathers.  Chicken feathers aren’t very good so they’re usually ground down and used in textiles and plastics.  Flamingos – like geese and ducks – are water-birds so, presumably, their feathers also make good stuffing for pillows.  Their colourful down would enliven pillow-fights no end.  The abundance of pink feathers would make feather boas cheaper and more commonplace which may lead to a boom in the burlesque industry.  Sadly, it would also lead to an increase in gaudy hen nights.  You don’t have too much to fear from the greater incidence of gaggles of lascivious, portly, bingo-wing-sporting harridans drunkenly cruising your local high street draped in pink feather boas though, because with your new healthier diet of flamingo, you’ll be fitter and able to run away that much faster.