Home Comforts

Home Comforts ©

By Michael Casey

Home comforts and being comfortable are very important things, I noticed Harry and his girl seemed so comfortable together tonight, so rather than write about them I’ll write or rather talk about comfort. A girl a boy is a very comforting thing, to listen to you, or pretend to, to give you physical comfort too, after a very difficult day.

But what other things are a comfort? Soft toilet paper and plenty of it, nice warm towels straight from the airing cupboard. Hot water in the tank so you can have a bath, your antidandruff shampoo so you don’t look as if you have just come in from a snow storm, or from a wedding or from a carpentry shop. Providing that your children haven’t used your shampoo  to wash Totoro the cat,  so you have to use the dregs of shampoo and even a bar of carbolic soap on what’s left of your hair. All these are the comforts of home, any home.

Milk, your milk left in the fridge so that you can make a cup of coffee the  British way, with milk, but no sugar. Or just have milk to go with your cereals. Though as often as not, Totoro the cat purrs “milk” so she has the last of the milk so you cannot even have a final cup of coffee. Your girls love the cat much much more than they love you , their dad.

Dry clothes that have been brought in off the washing line, and left to air on the radiators, providing your girls were not WhatsApping their friends, whatever that’s supposed to mean. So when you the leader of the family need dry clean clothes they are there ready for you, on the radiator.  There’s no space in the family wardrobes as you live with 3 girls, so your clothes are squashed into a small corner, where the cat loves to sit, but thankfully not spray.

Up a corner of the living room is your bare wooden chair that you sit on.  You bought new furniture 3 years ago, by coincidence when you had your unplanned quadruple heart attack, but it was too low and hurt when you sat on it post op. So you perch on a bare wooden chair, made comfortable  with the addition of some horrid stripy cushions, while your girls stretch out on the brand new trendy but low sofas. Home is comfortable for them but not for you as you all watch tv.

You decide to buy a single arm chair to squeeze up a corner so you are comfortable as you watch tv. Only they are too big to fit in the space. Until finally you find one, only you cannot find the legs, which are hidden under the seat, in a secret zip up section, something never ever before invented. So you lose face, but are saved and helped by a nice Polish guy, to find and attach your chair legs. Then finally you can squeeze an armchair into a corner, and like Little Jack Horner you sit there and watch tv, you bum is no longer sore after 3 years.

All these are simple little things that are my home comforts. A cat does make a house turn into a home, even if Totoro wakes me up in the middle of the night so that I can let her out a window. Then if in the middle of the night I get up for pain or for a drink Totoro will suddenly appear on the kitchen window wanting to be let in at 3am or 6am. Her job is to purr as I stroke her fur, she is a home comfort too, whatever your point of view.

Fruit in the fruit bowl  is always nice so long as  your pigs don’t eat it first, Royal Gala apples and bananas are great. Our new supermarket does have nicer food than the old one, though you do have to pay a bit more, but judging by the family happiness level, it was a good decision to switch when my daughter was revising for her GCSEs. Nicer bread, we have switched to brown bread all the time now, one brand is so much better than the others now we have made the switch. These simple simple things really DO make a difference to home comfort.

Underpants make a difference too, so long as they don’t shrink in the wash, I replaced a load of my flags and  guess what when I put them in the wash a load of the new ones shrunk. Tight pants that strangle your bits are no good to any man, a home comfort is a body that is comfortable, and not squeezed and squashed by tight shrunken underpants.

If you add all the things up that make up Home Comforts, they can be varied and many and don’t have to cost a pretty penny. You just want to feel relaxed and comfortable, like a pair of old slippers, and a tatty dressing gown which keeps you warm while you write your next talk for all your readers. Then your life will Sparkle, so good luck to Harry and Markle, for she is your home comfort from abroad.