YOUR parents’ house cannot accommodate you, your sister, your brother, his wife and their kids, so you’re sleeping on one of these:
Sofa bed
Not the fold-out bed part because the hinges are long since knackered. Instead you’re kipping on a sofa people have spent all day farting into. And it’s in the living room so you won’t get any privacy. Hope you don’t mind your dad waking you up at 7am putting on Good Morning Britain to ogle Susanna Reid.
Air mattress
A big mattress bloated with air sounds reasonably comfortable. But don’t forget you have to inflate the sodding thing first. You’ll tire yourself out blowing it up, then as you slump onto it you’ll realise it’s nowhere near as comfy as springs, then every night it goes down and you wind up on the floor surrounded by air mattress. An uncomfortable irony.
The floor
All carpeted areas are occupied with slumbering in-laws on air mattresses, so you’re relegated to the granite-tiled flooring of mum’s bespoke kitchen. The cold, hard flagstones could be refreshing in the summer, but on a December night you’re like chilled meat. At least you have good fridge access.
The bath
Pros: it’s long enough to lie down in. Cons: it’s made of porcelain-enameled cast iron so the stairs would be more forgiving to your spine. And it’s right next to the loo, and Dad goes for three pisses per night, and they take so long you now need to have a difficult conversation about his prostate.
Your childhood bed
Yes it’s an actual bed, but you’re two feet too big for it now. Plus you try to drift off in the throes of existential crisis. How have you ended up back here? Let’s just say your younger self would be depressed if they knew.
