The Gift of Fluffy Death

I love my Mum.

Really, I do. She’s brilliant. I owe much of who I am to her. She’s fab with the kids, and my garden would resemble a desolate wasteland if it were not for her nurturing touch with all things green.

My Mum is, however, a bit over-generous. Because she’s fab, she house-sits for us on those rare occasions that the stars and the budget align to allow my wife, two kids, and I to go on holiday. It’s not enough for my wonderful Mum to give us that freedom by looking after the pets and keeping the house safe. No, she has to buy us things too. 

The Hatter and Hare clearly lacked a decent
charity shop from which to purchase a device
with which to clean their dormouse.

Once we come home, and once Mum’s away, my wife and I stumble around the house, bleary-eyed from travelling, trying to work out what’s new. A lot of the time, the gifts are useful and it takes ages to figure out what Mum got for us because we tend to assume we’ve always had that particular bread bin or whatever because we never could have not had it as it’s so very useful. Other times, not so much. Subtle hints get packed into the loft to gather dust, like the full set of window cleaning implements. Other times, just plain weird. Something that looked like it might be used for cleaning aggressive dormice at arms’ length remained unidentified and unused for years before it went to a charity shop – likely the same one it came from.

(I’m convinced that there are small manufacturers up and down the UK who, thanks to the efforts of Far Eastern sweatshops, create a range of products of unidentifiable purpose that are only sold in charity shops for the express purpose of being returned to charity shops for later re-sale – but that’s another story for another day on a blog that isn’t mine.)

My much-missed former duvet.

Recently, there was a family trip. While we were away my mum, bless her for being wonderful and generous, bought new pillows and a duvet for my wife and I. Apparently, our old one smelled. Apparently, it smelled so bad it gave her a headache and she couldn’t sleep. So, our old duvet was stripped naked, dragged from the house and thrown over the washing line like the trophy corpse of an alcoholic vagrant who had been squatting in our loft, discovered and killed only when he tried to get fresh with my Mum. Put like that, fair enough. Don’t mess with my Mum, squatter vagrant duvets!

Still stunned from a nine hour drive from Luton, made three hours longer by our nation’s drivers’ inability to handle roadworks in any reasonable way (we either slow down to a snail-like pace or stamp the foot down so hard the car enters hyperspace shortly before smashing into a Little Chef), I staggered around on the Quest For New Things. I quickly figured out it was something to do with the bed as the top surface of the duvet was now four feet higher than it had been when we left. That and the fact that the suspicious lack of Eau de Vagrant wafting around the room made me feel the same sense of disconnected relief you get when you hear of the death of the slightly embarrassing uncle no-one liked to be behind in the wedding buffet line.



It's SO fluffy I could die!!
Literally...

Like a Tory politician’s head, the duvet was extremely very puffed up and oddly lacking in content. It was so fluffy light I expected my wife and I to spontaneously burst into a spirited rendition of “A Whole New World” if we sat on it together. We had new sheets too, and matching pillow cases. Four of them! Yeah, I know; I didn’t think it possible either. It seemed as though our application to join the Middle Classes had finally been accepted. My Mum – brilliant.

Unfortunately, the duvet and pillows were purchased from ACME's cartoon prop department outlet store, vicious killers section. Place your head on one of the Assassination Pillows (tm) and all the contents seem to rush for the sides. The pillow then wraps entirely around your head and endeavours to add you to its macabre score card. It’s like Alien: The Soft Furnishing Years.

The duvet is clearly The Cleaner (tm) for the pillows. It's made of heat and the distilled hatred of every failed 1980's WWF wrestler. It tries to smother and boil you to death while somehow managing to hover 2mm above your skin at all times. Left to its own devices, I'm convinced it would melt the flesh from your bones and then smash your teeth out to prevent identification of the skeleton.

Look at this and then look at the left hand
corner of the picture of Death's Duvet...

The sheets and pillow cases, meanwhile, are entirely friction-free. You can’t get a grip on them to wrestle them into a comfortable place, three falls to a submission. If you jumped into bed, you’d slide right off into the shame pile of books on the other side. Well, you would do save for the fact that the pillows would grab you by the head as you shot past, snapping your neck instantly. The duvet would then descend, laughing fluffily, to render the still twitching corpse down to its component parts.

Call me fussy, but I miss the old duvet. I knew where I was with a sexually deviant vagrant out of his tits on Peach Schnapps...