Sleeping through the night and waking up fully refreshed
Take yourself back to those fabled times, when you went to bed, fell asleep immediately and woke up the next morning feeling enthused for the day ahead. No peeing 75 times in the night. No staring at the ceiling for 6 hours, wide awake and insane. No getting up 40 minutes after you’d gone to bed so you could tidy a cupboard for no reason. Was any of it actually real?
Back not hurting
A splendid, bendy back that liked hanging over the side of the bed backwards to retrieve something from under it. A back that let you do handstands and scuttle along like a crab. A back that did not demand your attention 24/7 with its complaints and aches and weird spikes of ‘Arrgh!’ and ‘OUCH’ and ‘OMG, I can’t move’ and ‘PAINKILLERS.’
Playing with pretend money
Haven’t entirely snapped out of this way of thinking about money – except now it’s less fun and there’s no till, or pretend vegetables to sell and you have to spend it on things like accountants and car batteries, which is considerably less of a lark. Plus, these days, they won’t give it back after you’ve spent it.
Sharing your bed with beloved toys
Your lovely toys did not take up more than half of the bed. They did not breathe loudly or talk in their sleep and wake you up or get annoyed when you turned the light on at 3.30am. They were not volcanically hot, quite sweaty and bad tempered in the morning. They also did not read amorous intent into a friendly hug in the middle of the night because they knew better.
Being allowed to wear a lot of stretchy clothes
Permission to be extremely comfortable for most of the time is granted.
Being told to go to bed early
Would actually pay someone to say that now.
Not worrying about blow-drying your hair
Imagine rushing out of a swimming pool now and not panicking that within 15 minutes you will look like Sir Simon Rattle? Excellent hair that behaves well in all circumstances is so wasted on the young.
