Pampering required

I do like my comfort as I get older. Gone are the days when I would put up with spartan, rough-and-ready conditions, telling myself it was much more fun and much more "real" than pampered luxury.

It's a very long time since I went to rock festivals in fields swimming in mud and litter, shivering in a leaky tent and joining endless queues for food, drink and toilets. Nowadays I'll only go to a gig in a warm indoor venue with proper seating and toilets that don't mean a wait of 20 minutes. Or alternatively I'll stay at home in even greater comfort and listen to a few CDs.

Likewise I've never been camping since a disastrous experience at the age of 13 when I went to a two-week Boy Scout camp in Yorkshire and it rained solidly for the whole fortnight. I was soaked and miserable from start to finish and couldn't wait to return home. Any suggestion of camping since then has filled me with horror and met with a prompt and unshakable refusal.

For several years I lived in a damp, dismal, under-heated bedsit lacking any mod cons and so dispiriting I hesitated to invite anyone round. I spent as much time as I could in more appealing places like museums and art galleries. What a relief it is now to be in a warm, cosy house where visitors are welcome.

I used to cycle everywhere as a teenager, but I'm no longer prepared to be freezing cold, deluged with rain, splashed by passing cars or insulted by angry motorists. Not to mention the time it takes to get anywhere. I prefer to be in a car with a roof over my head, cocooned in warmth and moving at a steady clip.

I'll leave others with greater resilience to enjoy rugged lifestyles. A bit of pampering is more to my taste.

And so to bed

The meaning of the bed has changed drastically over the centuries. Nowadays beds are just something for sleeping, having sex or recov-ering from illness. But during the Middle Ages they were mainly a sign of social status.

While the poor had tiny beds made of canvas and straw, often slept in by an entire family, the rich had large and elaborate beds with canopies and curtains and lots of pillows. Some of them were so luxurious and worth so much they would be bequeathed in a person's will.

When bedside tables were invented, they too became a symbol of wealth and social status. As did the number of beds in the household, Louis the 14th having more than 400.

A rich person's bed was so impressive that they would often receive guests or preside over meetings while in bed. A big contrast to today, when receiving guests in your bed is seen as totally disreputable and degenerate.

The poor of course would justify their spartan bedding by saying that anything more extravagant was just a sign of self-indulgent pampering. Pillows, they insisted, were only necessary for sick women and invalids.

It was only in the 19th century that beds started to lose their social status to other possessions, and comfort became more important than how fancy your bed was. All people want to know today is whether they will sleep soundly or toss and turn all night. Or whether the bed springs will squeak embarrassingly as they pleasure a new lover. Or whether the bed's so narrow you and your loved one will be rather too intimately entwined.

In a hotel bedroom, I also want to know that the bed is clean and bug-free and not bearing traces of the previous occupant's frolics or nausea or greasy takeaway. And that the bed linen isn't threadbare from a thousand washes. And that the bed won't collapse in the middle of the night.

If I could also have a bed that guaranteed blissful and beautiful dreams, instead of the anxious and scary ones I usually have, that would be an added bonus. But I don't think the neuroscientists have cracked that one yet.

Comfort-seeking

Just when did it get to be a faux-pas to make people "uncomfortable"? I keep reading about unfortunate people who've been made "uncomfortable" by some seemingly routine occurrence and I wonder why this fleeting squeamishness is taken so seriously.

Why is it suddenly so necessary to feel "comfortable", to be spared any sense of embarrassment, of awkwardness, of bewilderment? Why are such quite natural reactions seen as unthinkable?

Feeling uncomfortable is a normal everyday experience, a way of adjusting to new situations. If you never feel uncomfortable, you're never going to learn anything about yourself or about the world. You'll be stuck forever in an over-protected bubble.

A Michigan mother has complained that passages in Anne Frank's diary made her daughter feel "uncomfortable" because they were "pornographic" and "inappropriate". The passages in question were simply descriptions of a young girl's body.

If her daughter didn't know much about her body, then yes, what Anne Frank wrote probably did make her uncomfortable. But the result was that she learnt things and was better informed.

There's nothing wrong with feeling uncomfortable. If on the other hand you're feeling offended, or belittled, or mocked, that's different. That's a genuine attack on your self-esteem and your dignity that needs challenging.

But let's not elevate a bit of functional awkwardness into a major psychic trauma that calls for kid gloves in all directions. In fact we should encourage a daily diet of occasional discomfort just as we encourage the regular consumption of high-fibre foods.

It's good for you, dammit, just stop making such a fuss!