In My Shoes Or In My Dreams

I remember my grandmother giving me a good piece of advice when I was young: make sure you have a comfortable bed and comfortable shoes because if you aren’t in one, you’re in the other. I think I’ve come around to the advice on shoes. I’ve tried getting by on £10 trainers but they are a waste of money – uncomfortable, poor to walk in and wearing out in a hopelessly short time. That’s not to say I spend a fortune on shoes but I’m prepared to spend enough not to hobble myself.

I’ve also tried to spend a reasonable amount on beds over the years. The average bed has lasted me about 10 years – about twice as often as I tend to swap cars. Maybe beds don’t have as many moving parts but considering the amount of time I spend sleeping compared to driving it should be a bit more often. Our current bed was well past it’s sell-by date but I was loathe to swap it because it was pretty decent to begin with and wasn’t too cheap either. However, the mattress was really shot beyond redemption and the frame, which I bought when moving house, wasn’t one of my better ideas.

We tried a few beds out at various high-street retailers. The array of beds available is quite bewildering, as are the prices, but I couldn’t really make out what the differences were. Some were made out of foam and others sprung. There also seemed to be a difference depending on the number of springs but this didn’t seem to correlate to obvious differences in firmness or comfort. I also couldn’t determine why one bed could cost as little as £300 and another £3,000. I needed to do some research and actually found a huge amount of information on this website.

From what I gathered it is all about the materials used and, having looked around, the difference in bed construction is more obvious. I certainly worked out what to avoid but what I did realise is that following my grandmothers advice was not going to be cheap. What I have done is follow the same strategy as for my shoes – I’ve not gone for the most expensive but I have gone for something decent – in fact I ended up going with John Ryan themselves and the bed was delivered last weekend.

So far it is rather like having new shoes: I can tell it is a huge improvement over my old bed but the bed doesn’t quite feel like mine yet – rather like sleeping in a rather expensive hotel bed. However, the one thing I have noticed is that I have woken up feeling rested (and without back pain) which I haven’t really done for a while. If the bed lasts for a typical time, it will cost me less than £100 per year – about the same as I spend on shoes – and yet spending 10 times that much each year on a car seems reasonable?