Optimum Happiness

You would have thought that after seven years in our present home I would know whereabouts in our bedroom the bed is, wouldn’t you?. Yet when I went to bed last night I walked straight into it. I hadn’t switched on the bedroom light of course as I am under strict instructions from The Trouble not to do this whenever I go to bed after her, as it wakes her up and she can’t get back to sleep, but that shouldn’t have presented a problem as I’ve been finding my way to bed without the assistance of the North West Electricity Board or whatever it is calling itself these days for quite some time now. Another factor that may have influenced matters was that I’d had one of my rare nights out at the pub with Atkins Down The Road and at first this had led me to believe that maybe I’d had a little more to drink than was good for me, and that this was the reason I’d been unable to successfully navigate the three yards between the bedroom door and the bed. The truth is that I did know where the bed was, and I did successfully navigate the three yards between the bedroom door and the bed correctly, or at least I would have done if the bed hadn’t been rotated sixty degrees to the left. “Feng Shui, and there’s no need to swear,” said The Trouble, after I’d picked myself up off the floor and asked her what the fuck the bed was doing there. “Having the bed facing East to West will ensure optimum happiness for the occupants,” she blithely went on.
“Not if they can’t find the bloody way to it,” I said, rubbing my shin where I had barked it on the bedpost.
I might have known. In the two days since The Trouble had allowed herself to become influenced by the oriental claptrap that is Feng Shui she has already moved the three-piece suite so that it’s  impossible to see the television set without getting a rick in your neck no matter where you sit, and moved a standard lamp from a perfectly good position in the corner to a perfectly crap position just by the door where I keep walking into it. Normally The Trouble is one of the most level-headed and practical of people, who views the latest fads and fashions with a healthy degree of scepticism, but recently a Chinese acupuncturist cured her of a long-standing back problem so now all Chinese beliefs, no matter how outlandish, are the bees knees. I’m just glad that Mao Tse-Tung is no longer with us otherwise she might be quoting passages of his little red book at me every five minutes.
“You’ll soon get used to it,” she said. “Think of the optimum happiness you’ll soon be getting. Now turn off the light and get into bed and try not to snore too much.”
I sighed and did as she bade me. She was right I suppose, I would get used to it. But these things take time and I’d forgotten all about it an hour later when I got up to go to the bathroom for my first pee of the night. Consequently, and only half awake, I took the route to the bedroom door consistent with the bed’s previous position. “Jesus Christ!” I screamed, as my big toe hit the wardrobe. My scream would have awakened the dead, never mind a light sleeper like The Trouble, and she promptly woke up and switched on her bedside lamp. “Going for a pee,” I explained. “Forgot our bedroom was a bloody assault course.”
“You’ll soon get used to it,” she said for the second time that night, but with a little less conviction in her voice than the previous time she’d said it. She was right though, because when I woke up about an hour later for my second pee of the night I clearly remembered that there was a new route to the bedroom door, but that may have been because my big toe was still throbbing. However by the time I’d had my pee and made my way back to the bedroom I’d forgotten all about it again. This time when I collided with the bed I didn’t fall on the floor I fell on top of The Trouble, in the process waking her up again of course. She snapped on the bedroom light and looked up at me. I said the only thing it was possible to say in such a position: “Well since we find ourselves like this, about making love?” And we did. And it ensured optimum happiness for me, but I don’t think it had anything to do with the position of the bed.