George and Martha
were married; they had been married for three years to the very day, when
George finally admitted that he had had enough. Now don’t get me
wrong, George loved his wife, he loved her dearly, in fact he adored the
very ground that she walked upon. However, there was a problem, a most
definite problem with their marriage, the marriage that he had hoped to
be the perfect uniting of their bodies and souls. This problem, that many
of you will almost certainly consider rather inconsequential, and by no
mean serious enough to worry about, was the simple fact that Martha, George’s
beloved wife – snored.
George had tried
to ignore this one small flaw in his wife’s otherwise perfect state
of health and being, and for three long years he had struggled so hard
to overcome his own weakness, in allowing it bother him so. You see the
problem, George’s problem, was the unfortunate fact that he was
an incredibly light sleeper.
Every night, and
without exception, after the happy couple had retired and kissed the other
goodnight, George would lie in bed awake, waiting, listening, fearing
and, more worryingly, wondering when the ‘performance’ was
to begin. Sometimes it started straight away, the very moment his wife’s
sweet head touched her soft pillow, but on other occasions it began much
later, well into the wee small hours, after George, tired of waiting for
it to begin, had drifted off to sleep. But the one thing that each and
every night had in common was the undeniable fact that his wife –
Martha – snored with as much force and ferocity as a Storm Trooper
invading Poland.
After struggling for three long years, without getting even one night
of uninterrupted sleep throughout this entire time, George had come to
the inevitable conclusion that something had to be done about it. He wanted,
he longed, he craved for the sensation of awakening each morning, feeling
rested, relaxed and refreshed after having a good nights sleep, not feeling
tired, weary and worn-out from twisting and turning the entire night,
while bashing the pillow over and over again in utter frustration.
No, the days or,
rather the nights for listening to the sounds of unwelcome snoring were
gone. They had to be gone, done and dusted, or George would go absolutely
mad – nuts. To stop this snoring once and for all, George knew that
needed a plan. The following is what came about…
“Martha,” said George, calling his wife one bright summer’s
morning, as she began preparing their breakfast in the kitchen. “Martha,
can I have a word with you?” he asked.
“What is it,
dear?” she answered.
He was sitting quietly,
patiently on the settee in their lounge. “Can
we have a little talk?” he asked politely.
“That sounds
ominous,” she said, removing her apron and drying her hands upon
it, before hanging it on the radiator although it was stony cold.
Entering the lounge,
she said, “I was making the breakfast, your favourite, a nice big
fry-up.”
This comment made
George feel even shadier than he was already feeling. Patting the cushion
beside him, he said, “Sit down, my dear, this will only take a few
moments.”
Martha obediently
sat beside her beloved husband who, being so close, saw the sun’s
rays shining, glistering on her radiant red hair, reminding him why he
had married her in the first place – her dazzling beauty.
“Martha,”
he said slowly.
“Are you all
right,” she asked, interrupting.
“Me? Yes, why
do you ask that?” he said, his planned speech momentarily knocked
out of kilter.
“Oh, it’s nothing really,” she replied. “I just
thought you have been acting a little out of sorts, since you got out
of bed this morning.”
She had said it,
the dreaded word – bed – reminding her husband just why he
wanted to have this talk with her in the first place. Beginning again,
he said, “Darling, I have something to say to you.”
Yet again, his poor wife felt threatened by the ominous tone. “Yes?”
she said, her eyes flashing green.
“I have loved those green eyes of yours,” he whispered, “from
the moment we first met.”
“”Why,
that’s lovely, it’s so sweet,” she said, wondering if
that was all this was about – a little bit of love talk. But when
he next spoke, when her husband began the talk proper, Martha was left
in no doubts whatsoever that the nature of the talk was far different
from a simple love chitchat.
For the third time,
George said, “Martha.”
“Yes?”
Swallowing hard,
he continued, “We have a problem with out marriage…”
On hearing this Martha
burst out crying, sobbing her heart out, so shocked to have heard such
a thing, the last thing in the world she had imagined her husband to say.
“It’s
that woman at church,” she said, still sobbing deeply, “I
always thought she was after you.”
“No, no, it’s
nothing like that,” said George, taken aback by his wife’s
unexpected interpretation of his somewhat limited statement about their
marriage.
“Sobbing, but
slower, she asked, “Then what is it? Who is it?”
“It’s
no one,” he explained. “I only have eyes for you, and that
will always be so,” he promised.
She was confused, his wife was confused, because if he did still love
her, then what could the problem with their marriage possibly be? All
this time she had been sure they were both blissfully happy.”
“So you do
love me?” she asked.
“Yes, I do,
and you must never doubt that for one moment,” he insisted. “Now
please hear me out, it’s by no means as bad as you are imagining.”
After his wife’s
outburst, thinking that he had been unfaithful, that he wanted out from
their marriage, George felt a bit more comfortable at the prospect of
telling her the real reason for the little talk. He said, “Martha,
the problem, the only problem that we have, that I have with our marriage
is that you snore.”
She laughed. Martha
began laughing; in fact she laughed so much tears of joy ran freely down
from her eyes.
He watched. George
watched his wife, at first in puzzlement, then in amusement and finally
in merriment before joining her in the laughter.
It took them a whole
while to regain their composure, and when they had both calmed down sufficiently
enough to begin speaking again, Martha, stroking her husband’s slightly
greying hair, said, “My dear, how long have you been feeling this
way? Why have you never said anything about my snoring before?”
A rat. George felt
like a rat, a dirty rat trying to escape from a sinking ship. “I
dunno,” he said, raising his hands contritely, unable to offer any
more reasonable an explanation.
Martha began laughing
again.
“Please, no
more laughing,” he begged. “My sides are still aching.”
“Okay,”
said his wife, “if there’s a problem, let’s talk about
it, knock our heads together and see what we can come up with. Do you
agree?”
George nodded his
agreement.
“But only after
breakfast,” she warned, “all this talking has given me one
enormous appetite.”
“Smiling, happy that it was all out in the open, George said, “Put
on a couple of extra eggs, they’re good for the energy, you know.”
After breakfast, the
most wonderful fried meal, George sat, leaning back in his chair, admiring
the love of his life – his dearest darling Martha.
After clearing away
the breakfast paraphernalia and stowing it safety inside the dishwasher,
Martha poured out two cups of nice hot tea, and she asked, “Are
we beginning here or inside, in the lounge?”
“I guess in
here might be best,” George replied, beginning to feel awkward and
fingering his teaspoon with nervousness.
“Do you think
a biro and notepad will come in handy?”
“Yes,”
he replied, happy to have been distracted from his unexpected nervousness,
“and if we have any useful ideas we can keep a record of them, for
later.”
Sifting her way through
the contents of the first of the two drawers in the kitchen cabinet, Martha
soon found a notepad, then continuing she searched for the elusive biro.
When she had finished on the first drawer, without finding the biro, she
turned her attention to its comrade, the second, and immediately spotted
one. Taking it out, waving it in front of his eyes, she said, “I’ve
got one – but it’s green. Will that be okay?”
“It will be
perfect,” George, replied, with a kind smile, “It matches
your beautiful eyes.”
Sitting next to her
husband, quite close, closer than she would normally sit, she said, “Well,
how do we start?”
That question, that
one little question stumped poor George, because up to that moment he
thought that he had all the answers, but now that he had actually been
asked to make a suggestion, his brain froze, it stopped, it just sat there
inside his skull like one big soft walnut.
“George, can you hear me?” Martha asked, waving a hand in
front of his face.
George, his eyes
glazed over, never saw it.
“George, snap
out of it,” she said, beginning to get worried. “GEORGE, I
AM TALKING TO YOU.”
As quickly as it
had seized, George’s brain began working again, and cranking into
action it supplied him with all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas that
might be of help in stopping his wife’s bothersome snoring. Lifting
a finger, he whispered, “I do actually have a few suggestions…
Would you like to hear them?”
Giving her husband
a strange look (even when you love someone it is still possible to think
them a bit weird), she replied, “Yes, go on…”
With the same finger
still raised, he said, “To be honest I have an awful lot of ideas
– some good and some, perhaps, a wee bit bad. But here goes with
the first one and, mind you, the jury’s still out as to which category
it best fits into…” Then he stopped talking again.
“What is it?”
she asked, tapping the biro on the notepad.
“Ah, sorry,”
he said, “Got a bit carried away, distracted with other thoughts.”
Coughing, clearing his throat, he calmly said, “My first idea, is
that I blindfold you each night.”
“What?”
she asked, thinking her husband had finally flipped his lid. “How
can that possibly be of any assistance in helping me to stop snoring?”
“Your brain,”
he replied. “The way I figure it, is that if we put the blindfold
over your eyes, at least an hour before you go to bed, your brain will
be so confused it won’t realize that it’s already night, and,
thus, so bamboozled you will be incapable of snoring.”
“Bad,”
she said. “It’s definitely in the bad category, way down at
the very bottom.”
“As bad as
all that?” he asked, disappointed that his first suggestion had
gone down so dismally.
“Yes,” she replied. “Now what’s the next one?”
After having his
first suggestion shot down in flames, and in so ruthless a manner, George
was a tad reluctant to continue.
“Come on,”
she urged. “Don’t take it personal – I haven’t.”
It was true; his
wife might have taken an altogether more hard-line approach to the snoring
situation and its ‘perceived’ problem, if she had been of
a different character. So raising a finger again, George said, “Okay,
I see your point, here’s my next suggestion… We arrange the
sheets and blankets in such a way they allow your feet to stick out beneath
them, at the end of the bed.”
Although Martha thought
this as another candidate for the bad category, and, like the first suggestion,
also close to the bottom, for politeness’ sake, she said, “Go
on.”
“You mean it?”
“Yes, please
continue.”
“Okay,”
he said, beginning to feel confident, “We buy an ostrich feather,
a big one, like the ladies in Victorian times had stuck in their hats.”
Although she was
trying her very best to hear her husband out, Martha, raising an eyebrow,
asked, “A feather?”
“Yes, a big
one mind you, the biggest we can possibly find.”
“A feather?”
she asked again.
“Yes,”
he replied, “and with a little help from my expert ‘know how’,
I will attach it to the end of the bed, where it will rest against your
feet and tickle them just enough to stop you from snoring, but not enough
to keep you awake.”
“Bin it, “said
Martha, trying her best not to laugh at so ridiculous a suggestion, “in
the bad category. It’s ludicrous.”
His confidence on
the wane, George said, “Are you sure that you want me to continue,
because they’re all rather fanciful?”
Feeling, knowing
that she was being too hard on her doting husband, Martha said, “Sorry,
please do continue, and I promise not to laugh. And who knows what fantastic
idea, might be lurking somewhere within that wonderful brain of yours.”
Happier, George continued.
“My third idea is actually a bit boring, he explained, “All
that it consists of is leaving the window open, allowing plenty of fresh
air into the room.”
“That’s
a great idea,” she said. “The fresher the air the easier it
will be for me to breath.” Then pouting, she added, “But it’s
a slight bit impractical during the winter months. It does get frightfully
cold this far inland!”
“The bad bin?”
he asked.
“Smiling, she
said, “Bad bin for the winter and good bin for the summer.”
Cheering up a bit
more, George said, “Ah well, halfway there.” Feeling that
he was on a roll, George wasted no time before getting stuck in with the
next suggestion, an idea that was simplicity in itself – they slept
in different rooms. During the most difficult patches, when her snoring
was at it most unbearable, he offered to sleep in the spare room.
Martha, however, refused
to consider this as an option, saying she wanted absolutely nothing to
do with it. To think that he didn’t want to sleep with her, even
if it were only on a very temporary basis, was totally unacceptable. There
had to be another solution without the need for separate bedrooms. So
casting yet another suggestion into the rejections bin, she said, “Next
idea, please.”
During the following
minutes, George presented several more ideas that his ingenious mind had
produced, like tilting the bed at an angle, so that his wife, even when
she was lying on her back (that being the worst or best position for snoring,
depending on how you look at it), was never lying completely horizontally,
all the way through to suggesting that she wear her bra back to front
with tennis balls stuck inside it, also intended to stop her lying on
her back. But none of these ideas impressed his dear wife, and she even
began laughing again at the bra suggestion.
Finally, and in sheer desperation, George said, “I have only the
one idea left, and I have deliberately held it back because it’s
the most peculiar and bizarre of them all.”
“I’m
still here and I’m still listening, said Martha, “so let’s
be hearing it…”
Feeling more nervous
than when he had actually begun, George coughed to clear his throat, and
then he said, “My idea, my last idea is as follows…
When he had come to
the end and finally finished explaining his suggestion, George stood back
from his darling wife to see what her initial reaction might be.
At first Martha showed
no reaction, no emotion, no encouragement or disencouragement, whatsoever,
to what he had been saying, but as the seconds ticked slowly away, and
she digested the full details, a hint of a smile began to appear on her
beautiful face.
“Hmm,” she said, “I see what you mean about it being
the most peculiar and bizarre of them all.”
“But you like
it?”
“I haven’t
said that, yet.”
“But you think
it has a chance, you know, of working?”
“I haven’t
said that either.”
“But?”
he asked, trying his utter best to tease out her feelings.
“What I will
say,” she said, “and despite it being so weird, is that I
am prepared to give it a go.”
“Hurray,”
George shouted, quite flabbergasted that she was going for it.
“But I must
warn you,” she added, trying to curb her husband’s growing
zeal, “I must warn you that I am still uncertain as to whether or
not I can go through with it.”
“You will,
you will,” he replied, feeling more certain of his wife’s
sentiments than she was.
Because it was so
strange and complicated an idea, it took George a couple of days to gather
together all the necessary bits and pieces for the contraption he had
envisaged in that soft walnut he called a brain, to stop his beloved wife’s
snoring once and for all. However, imagining something, especially something
as odd and peculiar as this was, and crafting it are two entirely different
things, two different bedfellow altogether. George soon found this out.
“Is it finished?”
Martha asked, poking her head round the door and into the garage, where
her husband was busy at his little workbench tucked in the corner, behind
his classic car, a nineteen sixty-eight Vauxhall VX4/90.
“No, not yet,”
he replied grumpily. George, being a stickler for detail, kept his head
down, struggling to finish his problematic creation. He knew only too
well how odd a contraption it happened to be, and he had no intention
of it or, indeed, him being on the receiving end of any unwanted ‘jollity’
when he finally unveiled it. No, it had to be perfect.
“A cup of tea?”
Martha asked, pointing to the kitchen, despite that fact that he was not
looking at her.
“Yes, that
would be nice,” he replied, “thanks, I’ll be in for
it in a few minutes.”
Twenty minutes later,
George wandered into the kitchen, groaning and mumbling unhappily.
Ignoring his mood, Martha said, “Sit down, I’ll have your
cuppa ready in a jiff.” And she did, in little more than a minute
his wife had placed a cup of steaming hot tea in front of him.
“Thanks,”
he said, “and sorry for being so grumpy.” She
smiled. “Sometimes I don’t know how you put up with me,”
he said, taking a sip of the wonderful imbibe.
“I thought
you might need a bit of sustenance,” she said, as she placed a plate
of hot buttered crumpets next to the cup. Without saying a word George
set about the crumpets with gusto.
“And you’re no bother,” she said, “I’d never
part with you, even for a younger model.”
The tea and crumpets
having been finished, George stood up from the table feeling refreshed,
rested and relaxed in both mind and body as he set off for the garage
and his little workbench with a renewed determination…
Finally the big day
arrived. After struggling for seven long days at his little workbench,
George was ready to unveil the thing, the apparatus that all of his hopes
of ever getting a good nights sleep rested on. “Dear,” he
said, tapping on the kitchen windowpane, trying to catch his wife’s
attention. She was washing the dishes.
“Yes?”
“It’s
finished!”
Abandoning the cups
and saucers, Martha dashed out from the house and, giving him a big hug
and a kiss, congratulated him on the achievement. “I was beginning
to think it might never be finished,” she said jokingly.
“And so was
I”
“Linking his
arm, she said, “Let’s be seeing it, then.”
The happy couple
made their way to the garage; Martha so proud of her wonderful creative
husband, and George, while proud of the fact that he had actually finished
the contraption, looking forward to restful sleep from here on.
Turning the corner, passing through the doorway and into the garage, Martha
let out a shriek. “What’s that?” she gasped in abject
horror.
“You know very
well what it is,” he said, hurt by his wife’s reaction upon
seeing it.
“But,”
she said, still a gasp, at a loss for words at what she was seeing.
“It’s
not that bad, is it?”
“It’,
it’s just so – different!” she explained, still in shock
at what he had created.
“I did explain
it to you, I even drew you a picture,” he said, “Don’t
you remember?”
“I know, and
I do, but – this?” she asked, raising her upturned and open
hands, to emphasise just how shocked she was feeling.
“Come on,”
said George, pulling his wife’s arm, “I’ll explain how
it works.”
He did, George went
over every aspect of this most unusual of creations, but although he went
over its workings again and again, poor Martha found it so difficult to
move on from her state of shock. In the end, he said, “”Wait
until I have it installed in the bedroom, in situ as they say. I’m
sure you’ll see it in a different light, then.”
Raising an eyebrow,
Martha made no reply.
Over the next few
hours as George set about installing the device, there was the sound of
drilling, hammering and moving of furniture, also shouting and even a
wee bit of swearing as he tried to complete the job.
Taking no part whatsoever
in its installation, Martha began to wonder if she had made the right
decision in allowing her husband to create such a thing. Perhaps, she
thought, sleeping in different rooms, on the worst occasions of her snoring,
had not been so bad an idea after all. However, things had moved on since
that suggestion, and inside their bedroom her husband was now drilling
the ceiling like his life depended on it.
“Shan’t
be too long now,” he shouted above the noise of the drill. “Then
you’ll see that it’s not that bad, you’ll see.”
The sound of the drill went on and on and on.
Silence; when the
hammering, drilling and general clattering about from within the confines
of their bedroom came to an abrupt end, Martha was hurled into her own
personal quandary. Was she to be happy now that it had stopped and, thus,
the device installed, or was she to be worried, that things might never
be the same again? She unfortunately had no answer.
“Dear,”
George called from within the incumbent silence of the room, “you
can come in now…”
She hesitated; standing
outside her bedroom door, Martha felt like she was stepping into the unknown,
into what she could only imagine to be a frighteningly new change to her
life, to her sleeping experience, which, despite the interruption it had
obviously caused to her beloved husband, had always been so restful to
her. Then turning the door handle, Martha pushed the door open and looked
in. Grinning
from ear to ear, like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, George,
proudly waving an arm, presented the finished article to his somewhat
sceptical wife.
“Well?” he asked, still grinning. “What do you think
of it?”
She had no words.
Martha had no words to describe how she felt, staring into the room, at
the abomination of a contraption that was now hanging from the ceiling,
over her part of the bed.
When she was eventually able to speak, to bring herself round to say something
– anything – about the ‘snore reducer’, as George
had come to call it, she whispered, “It’s, it’s –
so big…”
“That’s
because of the added ceiling height in here, compared to the garage,”
he explained. “I forgot all about it. That’s why it took me
so long to install. Modifications are always difficult, you know.”
Feeling braver (or perhaps foolhardy?), Martha entered the room and dared
to approach the bed.
She studied her side,
which now had some rather unusual mounds, in the area where her head rested.
“What are they for?” she asked.
“They are to
keep your head in place,” he explained, lifting the bed sheets to
show her the new foam pad inserts that were now an integral part of the
mattress. “So these,” he took hold of a number of long rubber
tubes hanging from a bracket screwed into the ceiling, “will always
be perfectly aligned with your head.”
“I, I don’t
know…” Martha mumbled. “ It’s all so scary, so
different from how I envisaged it, when you first told me.”
His face fell; George
could see his plan was in trouble. He had to think fast. “Look,”
he said, “close the curtains, and we’ll pretend that it’s
bedtime. Let me be the guinea pig, taking your place. Then you’ll
see there is nothing to be afraid of.”
“Okay,”
she replied, pulling the curtains and getting out her nightie.
“”What
are you doing, woman?” he asked, eying her actions with suspicion.
“Getting ready
for bed, of course,” she told him. “”We want this simulation
to be as real as possible, don’t we?”
“Hmm, I suppose
so” he mumbled. “Have you any idea where my pyjamas are?”
George was always losing his pyjamas. For some peculiar reason his missing
pyjamas might turn up anywhere in the house. Like missing socks they were
a mystery.
Pulling open a drawer
in the tallboy, Martha threw him a pair. “Here’s a clean pair,”
she said.
When they were both dressed suitably for bed, Martha lay down on her husband’s
side.
George, however,
stood staring at the other side of the bed with almost as much trepidation
as his wife had so recently displayed.
Seeing this, Martha
teased, “Afraid?”
“He said nothing,
George would newer admit s to so foolish a thing.”
“Go on,”
she said, “get into bed.”
He got into bed.
Martha’s husband – the inventor – got into bed, settling
his head into the foam pads, directly beneath the long rubber tubes hanging
down from the ceiling.
She laughed; Martha
laughed at the silly man, lying there on his back, with ten rubber tubes
dangling annoyingly into his face, trying his best to avoid them, but
unable.
“I thought
you were supposed to lie on your side, for it to work?” she said.
“I do,”
he replied, “But I was just thinking…”
“You were?
I’m impressed,” she said, “that you were able to do
anything with those silly things dangling in your face. What were you
thinking about?”
“I was thinking,
if this is a success,” he took hold of the tubes and jiggled them
about, “I could go into business manufacturing it as my patented
cure for snoring. What do you think?” he asked.”
“I think,”
she said lovingly, “that we should find out if it actually works,
before getting carried away with such fanciful ideas.”
“I suppose
you’re right,” he said, closing his eyes and settling down
for a sleep. “Then sitting up again, he cried out in alarm, “But
I don’t snore. So this won’t prove anything!”
“Never?”
“No, at least
I don’t think I do.”
“Go to sleep,
and let me decide on that,” she ordered.
Turning on his side,
allowing the dangling rubber tubes to rest over the left-hand side of
his head, George settled himself down for a trial run. Opening her Mills
and Boon, Martha settled down for a nice read.
Having something so
annoying as ten rubber tubes resting on the side of your heard is a far
from an ideal way of trying to get to sleep. But George had full faith
in his invention; he was certain that despite the presence of this distraction,
this annoyance, the brain was fully capable of cancelling out such a thing.
That being said, he was almost driven mad by these annoying hangings tickling
his face and ear. He persisted, though, and like his other idea –
the ostrich feather – he was convinced of its soundness.
“Are you all
right, dear?” Martha asked, as her husband brushed away the annoying
tentacle like tubes for the umpteenth time. The tubes swinging to and
fro soon returned to their original position.
“Yes, let me
go to sleep, will you?” he replied, grumpily. “I need some
peace!” Martha turned the page of her book and continued reading.
Twisting and turning,
George struggled with the demons in his head, the imps that were doing
their utmost to keep him awake. Half awake and half asleep, he rolled
over and onto his back. The ends of the tubes, having a new target –
his face, covered his nose and mouth with their annoyance.
Coughing and spluttering,
George awoke with a start, and sitting stock upright, with the tubes fanning
around him, he asked, “What happened?”
Martha made no reply; she only turned the page of her book.
Remembering that he had told her to leave him in peace, George lay down
on his side again, trying to get back to sleep and to continue with the
experiment.
Martha, shooting him a quick glance, smiled mischievously.
This same action,
George rolling over and onto his back (and actually snoring some of the
times), repeated itself over and over again, so many times Martha began
to doubt that his slumbering brain might ever come to accept the presence
of the tubes, and so stop him from choosing this position. It was only
when she had reached the end of a particularly long chapter did she realise
that her husband was sleeping quite contentedly on his side, showing no
signs whatsoever that he wished to roll onto his back. “It’s
a success,” she whispered, “a success.”
So that’s it,
that’s how George finally got a good nights sleep. And Martha? Yes,
of course it took her a while to get used to sleeping under the dangling
rubbertubed contraption, but she did in the end, and they both lived (and
slept) happily ever after.
