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It’s well known that the humble bed can’t be beaten when it comes to getting some shut-eye. However, what’s less well known is that, like a penknife, they’re one of the most useful things in the universe. Don’t believe us? Well, how about these examples of insane bed usefulness…
Beds as a Revenge Mechanism
Another winner trotting out of our German friends’ stable of fun (and we thought Jeremy Beadle was bad):
Beds as a Bank-Beating Option
If you were asked to think of an alternative to an unreliable banking system, you might not immediately conclude that beds were the answer. However, it’s possible you’d be wrong. Back in 2002, a hotel manager foresaw the future we’re now living in, and decided to take action. Kara Kennedy slowly stole money from where she worked and hid it under her bed.
You might have thought people would have cottoned on pretty quickly and caught her, but it in fact took three years before she was found out, and was believed to have stolen almost £150,000, including over £4,000 in loose change. So there you go. Got problems with the banks? Use your bed instead. Apparently it’s the perfect place to hide your dosh.
Beds as Earthquake Protection
So you wake up in the middle of the night, and there’s an earthquake going on. What’s the first thing you do? Find something really sturdy to hide under, right? Well, apparently there might be a better idea. A 97-year old woman from Iran survived for 9 days buried under rubble from an earthquake, because she’d been wrapped up in bed after tucking into her breakfast.
So if you live in LA, take note. Next time an earthquake hits, don’t head for the cellar; go to bed instead!
Beds as an All-Terrain Vehicle
What do you need to traverse the harshest of terrain? A big 4×4? No, as Top Gear proved, what you need is a broken down wreck of a car. However, even that might have been overkill. Ladies and gentlemen, enter the Great Knaresborough Bed Race. This insane little race could only have been the brainchild of an Englishman.
The idea is that you take a bed, modify it any way you want, find some mates with nothing better to do and then race it against other people over land and water. We like.
Beds as an Escape Method
Finally, if you ever find yourself in jail, and need a way to break out, your bed may once again come to your rescue. Although probably of not much use by itself, as Mythbusters proved in season 6, you could in fact climb down a rope made of bedsheets.
So, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you’re in possession of a bed, but what you really need is a rope, now you know what to do. Knot that bedsheet.
Don’t get us wrong, we reckon all the beds we sell are fantastic. But the following beds, whilst they might not be as elegant as either our upholstered bed or Antoinette reproduction French bed, are surely right on the cutting edge of bed design. So please give it up for seven of the most over-the-top beds in the world…
Off Its Rocker – Private Cloud
From our German friends (more specifically, designer Manuel Kloker), we’ve got the Private Cloud. This uber-modern bed is “fun and relaxed”, although exactly how relaxing it would be to have someone sit on the end, and dump you on the floor isn’t entirely clear. That aside, there’s something rather elegant about its smooth, rounded design.
The bed does, of course, come with four chocks, allowing you to stop it from moving around. We’re not completely sold on whether we’d actually want one to sleep in, but you’ve got to give it its dues – it’d make a great talking point!
A Load of Balls – Animi Causa
What do you get if you cross molecular science and a bedroom? Well, possibly this bed, by Israeli design and manufacturing house Animi Causa. The Feel consists of a number of soft balls, held together by plastic connectors. These allow you to sculpt it into pretty much any shape you want, be it a recliner, bed or a kind of sofa type arrangement.
We can’t help thinking that as a bed, it would be pretty lumpy. It’s cooler than a bean bag though. Or is it?
The 80s Contender – Sumo Omni
To the casual observer, the Omni from Sumo is just a giant beanbag shaped like a pillow. However, it’s actually a genius piece of design. Made from rip-proof nylon, the Omni can be a bed, seat, armchair, body-pillow, and probably a dozen more things too.
It does however carry the inherent danger of making you want to acquire other 80’s related paraphernalia, so don’t be surprised if you find yourself whistling Phil Collins classics and hankering after a lava lamp.
…And From the 24th Century – Phi-Ton
Our award for ridiculously over-engineered brilliance goes to the Phi-Ton, the brainchild of designer Fried-Jan Unger. Part sculpture, part bed, it has no sub-frame, no accessible free-moving parts, doesn’t jam and, we’re told, can’t eat you alive.
The whole thing floats on two heavy metal stands, and includes an in-built massager. Oh, and it’s completely recyclable too, which should keep the little green person inside you happy.
The Space Saving Solution – BedUP
So, you’re in your loft-style apartment, and you’re pushed for space. The first thing to go has to be the bed. It just takes up so much room. Fortunately, innovation studio Decadrages has the answer. Called BedUP, this bed lives on your ceiling. No, really.
With the ability to raise or lower it as much as you want, this chic little puppy uses similar technology to ceiling-mounted project screens, except that it lowers a bed, instead of a screen. Which is nice.
If Apple Made Beds – Hi-Can
What do you get the couple who’ve got everything, and harbour a deep-seated love for all things Apple? Well, how about this? Called the Hi-Can, this modernist piece was designed by Edoardo Carlino, and looks like it should have been called the iBed.
It’s more advanced than your iPhone too. With a projector, surround sound system, projector screen, DVD player and probably a swimming pool somewhere built in, it’s fair to say you’d never leave your bed again. Ever.
Because Legs Are SOOO Last Century – Fluttua
The final bed in our little list comes to us from Lago. Called the Fluttua, this bed has only one leg. Yes, that’s right. One.
This bed somehow manages to get by with just one solitary leg in the exact centre of the bed, giving it the appearance of actually floating in thin air. Mind you, this is the same company that thinks that what you really want in life is a flooded bedroom, so maybe, as beds go, this one isn’t the best idea ever…
Over to you…
If you actually own any of these crazy contraptions, or any other bed that’s a bit out of the ordinary, we’d love to hear from you, so please leave a comment below.
Yesterday saw the biggest snowfall in nearly two decades, so we decided to take our work outside. We reckon our new hand-shovelled bed, as enjoyed here by Melissa, with its fashionable nod towards nature and its own temperature-controlled mattress, would make a delightful addition to any home – or allotment. Limited edition available for 24 hours only.
Ever feel like yawning to impress a date? Or falling asleep while balancing on your heels? What about sleeping with one eye open? All animals sleep, but not always in the ways you’d imagine.
Dolphins, Ducks and unilateral eye closure
Dolphins and ducks both keep one eye open and one half of the brain awake at all times. This is calledunilateral eye closure (UEC) and most birds as well as some other large sea mammals can do it. This unusual sleeping technique allows these animals to stay alert to predators.
Dolphins are particularly unusual in their lack of need for sleep; a calf and its mother will have ZERO sleep for the first few months of the baby’s life.
Migratory Thrush Nappers
While migrating, Swainson’s thrushes take hundreds of naps during the day, each of just a few seconds. Migratory birds tend to function well on ‘micro-naps’ and there is strong evidence to suggest that some species can sleep while flying. The albatross is probably the strongest contender for this impressive feat. They spend all of their time at sea and would be very open to attack if they slept while floating on water, so there’s little other way they could grab a bit of shut eye.
Birds that roost in groups will usually have a ring of ’sentries’ that keep one eye open while the rest of the group sleeps soundly. Mallards observed sleeping in a line will often post sentries on either end of the group, allowing those in the middle to sleep more soundly.
I wonder if his other eye is actually wide open…
Talon-ted Sleepers
Bats sleep upside down. Sounds daft, right? Well, have a look at some of the reasons why they do it and an inverted snooze might begin to sound a lot more attractive:
- bats’ wings aren’t really strong enough to launch them into the air from the ground; hanging from the roof means they can just drop into flight.
- because of the unique design of their talons, bats use very little energy while hanging. The talons lock into place and the force of gravity does the rest.
- there is no other competition for roosting spots.
- gravity is a fast accelerator, so bats can simply ‘drop’ out of trouble should the need arise.
Frogs Frozen Hibernation
Lots of animals hibernate. This is different from sleep and a hibernating animal can often take days to wake up properly. In hibernation, an animal’s heartbeat will slow down dramatically and its temperature will drop close to whatever the outside temperature is.
Hibernation is sleeping through cold and estivation is sleeping through heat.
Frogs are some of the best hibernators around. Some species can survive being frozen solid with no heart beat or breathing for weeks at a time!
It’s Not Yawning, It’s An Ecstatic Display
Most animals yawn, but it’s probably not because they’re bored or sleepy. Scientists are still on the case as to why, but there are lots of different theories. Baboons have been observed yawning to threaten their enemies. Similarly, Siamese Fighting Fish yawn only when they see another fighting fish (or their own mirror-image) and will often attack aggressively.
Penguins yawn while courting- it’s known as an ‘ecstatic display‘. Snakes meanwhile, usually yawn to realign their jaws after a meal.
The Deep-Sleeping But Deeply Stupid Duck-Billed Platypus
If you feel shortchanged in the sleep department, thank goodness you’re not a giraffe- they only sleep for about 2 hours out of every 24. The brown bat is at the other end of the spectrum and usually sleeps for 19 hours a day. Scientists seem to be in agreement that the larger you are, the less sleep you need. However, a more disputed theory argues that long periods of REM increase intelligence. This is mostly true in mammals, but for the exception of the deep-sleeping but deeply stupid duck-billed platypus. Another theory that makes more sense is that the amount of REM sleep an animal gets is related to its safety in its environment….
Ninja Style Sleeping Defenses
The more dangerous life an animal leads, the less likely it is to sleep deeply. According to the Sleep Foundation, a particular kind of baboon sleeps on its heels on top of a tree. This helps it stay alert while asleep. Similarly, the golden dormouse can spend a lot of time sleeping by carefully balancing itself on the branch of a tree safe in the knowledge that any quiver of the twig will wake it up immediately.
BBC Radio 6’s George Lamb called up our own Charlie Marshall yesterday having googled “bed expert” (he probably should have put in “bed obsessive” but who’s quibbling!).
Have a listen to Charlie talk about his 2 year quest for beautiful beds and bedding and George renaming our man “Charlie Murphy”.
1968 challenged the world on an idealistic level by forcing changes from the bottom up. Remembered now as ‘the year the world shook’, 1968 was a formative period that helped to carve out the world we know today. As we approach the end of 2008, The Sleep Room is honoured to pay its own particular kind of homage to the 40th anniversary of that momentous year, 1968. Your bed is used for a lot of fun stuff but one of the oft-forgotten joys is keeping stuff under it. We look back on 40 wonderful years of ‘stuff under the bed’.
It was the year of student demonstrations, sexual liberation, drugs and music- but your parents were busy with other things this year. Busy procreating. Under the bed in your first year you will have found an assortment of the usual suspects- a collection of cuddly toys (one of which you still have), a plane mobile, some cloth nappies and a couple of tubes of teething ointment.
Monsters
The rest of the world was looking at “photos” of “real” “monsters”, but you were only iccle, and there were far scarier beasts much closer to home…
From under the bed a growling you hear,
What is this noise that brings such fear?
An icky, nasty, boogey beast…
Who can’t wait for sleep so he can feast!”
Lego
The monsters are still there, but you’re not nearly so scared of them these days. Lego is the all-consuming passion. The Universal Building Set spends the first two weeks of its long life being painstakingly repacked after each outing. Then pieces start to go missing and the lid gets sat on. However, if challenged to a Lego fight to the death, you could build each of the models on the box in record time. To be honest, since you pretty much resemble one of these guys, you’d do it blindfolded just for the hell of it.
Comic Books
Of course you read DC Comics, but were you also a fan of the short-lived but marvellous Devil Dinosaur? A 1978 exclusive. Devil Dinosaur (dyed red by a near-death encounter with some nasty Neanderthals and a fire) battles with giant ants, carnivorous herbivores and alien invaders. Piled up and dusty, there’s no way you would’ve thrown these masterpieces out if your mum hadn’t insisted. And now you’d be a millionaire, dammit.
Sci-fi
The real initiation into geekhood begins. Science fiction/fantasy makes its deadly move. You develop a life-long obsession with H2G2, as it broadcasts on BBC Radio 4 in January and the second book in the series is published. Books by Gregory Benford, Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven and John Varley are stored under the bed because the shelf space is used up by Star Trek volumes. 1980 is the year you learn to differentiate between the four races of Klingon.
Retro Erotica
You still have a few of those Marvel comics from your youth and hide your latest obsession amongst them. Of course, back then, even the most extreme mags featured content you could legitimately read at the dinner table.
Dodgy VHS videos
Your mum doesn’t look under your bed anymore and those mags have been replaced by an impressive collection of broken VHS. Candie Evans – oh the memories. Legs to die for and an impressive range of enterprises, from her unforgettable debut in ‘Carnal Balls’ to the memorable romping in ‘Slippery When Wet’. Retro.
Mix Tapes
The Summer of Love. Acid House. You kept your stash and a spare hookah under the bed and were wont to carry a well thumbed copy of The Trial or Lady Chatterly’s Lover around with you. Your music collection has also reached absurd levels. As well as George Michael and Guns ‘N Roses, 1988 was also a pretty special year for this guy.
Cables
The last few years of upgrades to computers, hi-fis and games consoles have left you with a tangled mess of cables. Although you don’t even remember what is in that dusty spaghetti, you insist that it’s all worth keeping because some of them may come in handy at any time, especially when you get around to building that homemade media server. (Just as soon as you have a free weekend.) Your partner eventually persuades you that five-pin DIN connectors aren’t ever going to make a comeback.
Gadgets
Times are good. You’ve got a real job and with it, a disposable income. What does that translate into? Gadgets ahoy. First on our list for 2003 would be this Treo 600, a unit that combines “a Palm-based organizer, a cell phone, a keyboard, and a camera in a sleek, silvery 5.9-ounce package that isn’t much bulkier than less capable competitors”. Of course, that’s only the beginning…
Cash & Liquor
Welcome to the future. I wonder if 2008 will be remembered for much? The election of the first black US President? The reality of a credit crunch? The Olympics in China? Under your bed this year you will find a bottle of whisky to steady the nerves, and, if you’re really smart, all your cash.
Yesterday, we launched our latest feature- a quiz that works out how many dust mites are living in your bed right now, most people’s reactions have been horror, disgust and a peculiar inability to get to sleep.
A few thousand people have taken the quiz and we thought it’d be interesting to share a few initial stats.
Do you ever worry that your geek-hood doesn’t extend into the bedroom? Read on for our top 5 Extreme-Geek Pillows, guaranteed to take your geek-on to the next level. When your developer says ‘he’ll sleep on it’, this is what he’s talking about folks.
5. The Most Intergalactic Pillow
Designed to comfort Wookies and stormtroopers alike, these Star Wars pillows come in at number 5 in our Geek Pillow charts. (Extra geek points if you get the Star Wars teddy as well). Sleep soundly you will.
These three, Darth Vader, C-3PO and a Stormtrooper, will set you back around £2.50 ($4.99) each. Why bother? They’ll blow the socks off any Princess Leia you happen to bring them into contact with.
Because you SO do.
Hey, not that it’s anything to be ashamed of- we all do it, often more than once a day… although it’s still damn embarrassing when you get caught ‘in the act‘, so to speak. Don’t worry though, you’re in good company- Colin Farrell is apparently a serial self-googler. This stylish number will cost you around £10 ($20).
Could you live in the Matrix? Can you pull off shades and a long black leather coat? If so, this is definitely the pillow for you. I don’t need to tell you what the code says now do I? If you click on this translator you forfeit at least 10 geek points. You can get the pillow for about £10 ($20) and a matching blankie for another £20 ($40). A small price to pay for such extreme coding comfort.
The most practical of our entries today- this gets extra Apple Cool points with ease. Just imagine how much more satisfying it would be to set the ’sleep’ function. ZZZZZzzzzzz….. You can pick one up from Amazon for the bargainous price of £7.50 ($15). And here, for your convenience, is a Great List of Music To Fall Asleep To.
In at Numero Uno for its unadulterated geekness, we have the Wiimote Plushie Pillow. Fun from all angles, use this 26 inch long cuddly remote to take out all your wii-related rage on, or, if the Wii’s been good to you today, to sing sweet lullabyes to. That’ll be another £10 ($20) thank you very much. <insert innuendo-laden joke about pushing all the right buttons>. You can see some more pics here. Word on the street is that they’ve sold out, but will restock if the demand is strong enough.
Some days suck.
Scratched the car? Missed a deadline? Had a pointless row with your girlfriend? The world would be a better place if you had just stayed in bed, right?
That, my friend, is nothing! This is a (Brit-heavy) list of people who showed us all how to fail in style. Should they’ve had a duvet day? That depends on whether you share our British fetish for failure… So, grab a cuppa, arrange your stiff upper lip and get stuck in:
Number 10: Prince Philip and some old-school racism
Philip of the Princely Gaffe kicks off the list with an infamous comment to a group of British students studying in China: “if you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed”. All in favour of Prince Philip taking a day off next time he’s feeling foolish, step forward. (Unless of course, you’re in a wheelchair in which case watch out because, as Philip warns, people might “trip over you”). Still love ‘im tho’.
Number 9: Paul Robinson- Goal!
Own goals: you’re not just hindering your team, you’re actively harming its success. If Paul Robinson, the England football team’s goalie in the Euro 2008 qualifiers, had not gone into work then someone less implausibly uncoordinated would have been in goal. And England wouldn’t have lost to Croatia (Croatia!), and failed to qualify for the competition. Technically, it wasn’t Paul’s ‘own goal’, it was Gary Neville’s… but he still gets the majority of the numpty points. Watch it- it’s just ridiculous and, like a true Englishman, he quite rightly blames the grass for his mistake:
Number 8: Gerald Ratner’s “Total Crap”
Ratner was the Chief Exec. of Ratners Group- a major British jewellery company that nearly went bust after Ratner made a speech at the Institute of Director’s in 1991. He described how, when asked how Ratners could afford their low prices, he would often reply, “because it’s total crap”. The comment was reported and the company’s profits plummeted- and the phrase ‘Doing a Ratner’ was coined.
Turns out we Brits don’t like to be told we’re buying crap, even if we are.
Number 7: Kaiser Wilhelm II- “You English are mad, mad, mad as March hares”
In 1908, Wilhelm gave an interview to The Daily Telegraph to bolster the Anglo-German relationship. During it, he managed to insult the British, annoy the French, irritate the Russians and threaten the Japanese. Those four countries were all on the opposite side to the Germans in World War I. Sure, there were lots of other (more important) origins of the war, but there would have been one less if Kaiser Bill had sneaked a cheeky lie-in that fateful day.
We may be mad as March hares, but in this case, the tortoise didn’t win the race.
Number 6: Lucan and The Charge Of The Light Brigade
A tragic but infamously heroic military mistake that resulted in the death of 118 soldiers. In 1854, during the Crimean War, The Light Brigade was given the order to “advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy, and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns”. The order was misunderstood and the Brigade charged the wrong section of the Russian army:
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d.”
A blunder indeed: the Light Brigade was basically charging into a heavily armoured 3-sided trap. To this day, the blame for this miscommunication is debated, but Lucan is the forerunner and received a lot of stick for following instructions that made no sense. Maybe a better rested Lieutenant-General wouldn’t have ordered his men “Into the valley of Death”.
Number 5: Angus Deayton
Angus was ripped to shreds on the show Have I Got News For You, after the news broke that he cheated on his pregnant girlfriend by having prolific drug-fuelled sex with prostitutes. After the story broke, Deayton soon lost his job with the BBC and was made a national mockery of on HIGNFY. The episode below has gone down in history; I certainly wouldn’t have got out of bed to host it:
I can’t work out who is the most British of the bunch: Hislop with his rigourously stringent moral disapproval, Merton with his merciless mocking or Deayton with his lordly philandering.
Number 4: Max Mosley
Oh dear, oh dear. More blunders of a sexual nature- this one’s even more outrageous than Deayton’s. Mr Mosley is/was the boss of Formula One’s governing body and is/was a British hero because of it. He’s in court at the moment for allegations of anti-Semitism after he was exposed having a Nazi-style orgy with five prostitutes. And guess what. His father was Sir Oswald, leader of the British Union of Fascists and a friend of Adolf Hitler.
Really now Mr Mosely, can you think of anything more inappropriate?
Number 3: Nelson and his star-studded coat.
Our great British hero was shot by a French sniper after striding boldly onto deck in his naval coat, a garment plastered with medals and, apparently, very easy to spot. He was advised to remove the medals or the coat beforehand, but thought the risk of being shot was worth the benefit of rallying his troops with the impressive regalia. Courageous to the point of stupidity I’m afraid. Still…we won.
Number 2: Mystery bungler loses data records for 25m people
This was pretty damn stupid. Britain’s biggest data security breach was caused by a 20-something junior who put 2 unencrypted CDs containing the country’s entire child benefit records in the post. It went missing and still hasn’t been found. Can I hear a d’oh! An excellent example of when staying in bed would have saved the entire country a whole heap of hassle.
Number 1: Bill Clinton- “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”
Apparently, it wasn’t the ‘affair’ that annoyed everyone, it was the bit where he took time out of his busy day serving the people of America… to lie to them. What on earth induced him to get out of bed that morning and lie to 300,000,000 people- maybe he’d used up all his duvet days already (*lewd wink*).
(I realise there are countless jokes about how Bill should have got out of bed instead of staying in it- feel free to run with that).
So there we have it. I didn’t want to award the number one FAIL slot to a non-Brit, but getting impeached for lying to 300 million people you’ve sworn to serve about a sordid affair with an intern is really very hard to beat.
Welcome to the comfiest blog about town. Our objective (in the most laid-back, relaxed way possible) is to keep you updated, informed and amused about what’s what in the world of comfort.
We found a load of definitions for comfort, but none quite captured what we want this blog to achieve. We want it to exude comfort from every pore- the luxury, the ease, the softness and grace of a truly comfortable time and place. We all pursue comfort in one way or another- whether it’s through matters of the mind, body or spirit. And we want to help you find it.
So what’s in store? You’ll have noticed this is the blog for thesleeproom.com. That’s our shop. This isn’t. So don’t worry, we won’t be hassling you with sales pitches every other post. If there’s something to do with the shop that’s relevant, pertinent and we think you’ll be interested, then we’ll put it in, but that’s it.
We’re much more interested in creating a space that’s interesting, amusing, light-hearted and (I think I mentioned this) comfortable.
