RICHARD ORD: In the Man v Duvet trial by combat there can be only one winner!

Okay, sleeping on the streets in a cardboard box because you haven’t got a home let alone a proper bed must be up there, but that bare bed taunting you when you just want to sleep is a killer.

It’s easily top of my ordinary living pet hates. The faff of getting that duvet cover on never ceases to raise the stress levels.

I’m not so much making a bed, as wrestling it! Man v Duvet. I mean, where are the corners? Where ARE they?

The more you hurry, the longer it takes. The only fun part is the giant flapping of the duvet to even out the distribution of the feather stuffing (I guess that’s why it’s done).

I say fun, but at the time, the stress of the bed wrestle has me crashing the duvet up and down screaming ‘die, die, die’.

Whether you have a button up duvet or press stud, you invariably end up getting to the end only to discover you’ve still got one button to go, but no button hole! Cue, undoing and then redoing of buttons to finish the job.

And I don’t know about you, but every time I go into the spare room to grab a bottom cover for my bed, I always get the double bed sheet by accident when I really need the king size one. So ensues a mammoth task of straining to make it fit (I don’t give in easily). Forcing the too-small bedsheet onto a too big mattress rather than just taking it off and getting the right size one. (Note to self, chuck that bedsheet. You don’t have a double mattress, so why keep the bedsheet?) Even the pillow cases are a problem. Sometimes the cases slip on the pillow no bother; other times they twist and bend forcing you to stuff your arm in there to yank it free.

Again, there’s some small satisfaction in bashing it on the bed until it unwinds itself.

Rather than being like an efficient hotel housekeeper, making my bed mostly feels like I’m a country vet with my arm up a cow’s rear end noisily trying to untangle entrails before a messy birth.

And every time I change my pillow cases, I am reminded of another ordinary living pet hate. Colours in a white wash!

Last week I chucked a yellow duster into a wash in what I thought was a move of clever efficiency. The sight of my unpleasantly mustard-tinged formerly-white pillow cases this morning is a reminder that it wasn't a good idea.

Anyway, how’s your day going?

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