Sleeping Downhill

bed

When I was talking yesterday about the cruise holiday that I enjoyed with my friend just before I took my first hesitant steps towards this new healthier life, it put me in mind of an embarrassing incident from that same holiday that I’d buried somewhere at the back of my memory bank. I actually broke the bed.

Yes, seriously. I was mortified. My friend and I had twin beds in the same cabin, and a couple of days into the holiday, I fell out of mine. The actual incident itself was too funny…I can’t even pretend that the sea was rough, in fact we were in a fairly sheltered bit of the baltic at the time and the water was as calm as a millpond.

I was also relatively sober, having only had a couple of glasses of wine with dinner but somehow, in the middle of the night as I heaved my bulk and attempted to turn over I managed to forget that I wasn’t at home in my superking-sized bed…as my full weight neared the edge of the lightweight single bed, it tipped me off and I went over the side.  Not only that, I managed to grab hold of the mattress on the way down in an attempt to save myself from falling, and pulled it down on top of me as I went.

I ended up with my head wedged between the tipped-up bed base and the bedside cabinet, with the mattress and duvet on top of me, dazed and half asleep wondering what the fuck just happened. And then, obviously, I got a fit of the giggles. My friend, who’d been asleep in the other bed, woke up at that point to utter carnage.

It didn’t occur to me as I tipped everything the right way up again and reassembled the bedding that I might have broken it, but I had a vague feeling of disorientation as I went back to sleep, and for the next couple of nights…it was only when we called maintenance to change a lightbulb in the bedside lamp later in the week that it became apparent that I had in fact been laying downhill ever since, off to one side and with my head lower than my feet.

There was nothing wrong with the bulb, turns out it was the plug which had come adrift from the wall as the bed had knocked it. And it seemed that one of the legs at the top of the bed had obviously buckled under my weight as it tipped over. As the little Philippino maintenance man emerged from underneath the wonky bed in what felt like slow motion with the un-needed light bulb in one hand, and a bed leg in the other, I couldn’t quite meet his gaze. I couldn’t bear to see the fat lady broke the bed written all over his face. I was mortified.

They swapped out the base of course, and in their polite customer-orientated way they avoided any conversation about how or why it might have happened. But you don’t need me to tell you how many times the Asshole voice whispered to me about how the entire crew would be laughing at how the lady in cabin L201 was so fat she broke the bed…or how I didn’t get a proper night’s kip until I got home because I was too scared of it happening again.

This year is going to be so different 🙂

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8 thoughts on “Sleeping Downhill

  1. Dee,
    So this post is hillarious in a not funny, but still funny kinda way. I mean, you slept on a broken bed for a few days and your room attendant didn’t even notice the bed was broken. OMG I can imagine how embarrassed you must have felt / been. But here’s the good thing today…you are doing awesome! Look at you now! Not only are you well on the way to Skinny Town, you are blogging and encouraging others as well. Great job! Keep up the good work!!

  2. Oy. Girl….

    In the spirit of unflinching honesty. You wrote something so hard, it is unnerving to even read!

    My Sweetie & I played back-yard music at parties etc. whenever people had zero budget to get real musicians. Joked about being traditional “Tousand Pounds of Melody” singers. When we tipped a table-full of diners off of a trestle bench, it didn’t become part of our funny stories.

  3. That is a very painful story. I’ve never broken a bed, but I know what you mean about trying to heave yourself over in the night. It’s not just a simple matter of turning over, when you are big.

    1. You’e right, it’s not…I used to lay in bed summoning up the energy to turn over. God, I’d even forgotten that!

  4. What an adventure! From now on it will be very different. Although anyone used to a large bed can end up rolling out of a small one.

    What i don’t get is how the cabin staff that make the beds didn’t notice something was wrong sooner.

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