Squidgy little British beds

Somehow the feeling of being small and cramped pervades every area of life.



This is a double bed. Yeah, right! It's four foot wide. They do admit it's a 'small double', but in Australia it would be a 'King Single'.



This is our sofa. It's low, and hard, and converts into a bed.



This is the bed upstairs - under the doona (they call it a duvet) is one of those sofas like the one downstairs, only they have stuck a cheap sprung mattress on it because that thin futon mattress thingy really is hard. But it is all only 4'6 wide.

In Australia almost no one uses 4'6 wide 'double' beds any more. Most people have a 'Queensize', which is 5' wide. Quite a lot of people have 6' wide Kingsize beds.



We bought this lovely "sleigh bed" in Torquay and were very sad that we couldn't fit it into the car to bring it here. In Australia people commonly have 6x4 car trailers that you can carry all sorts of stuff around in. Some people here have trailers, but they are tiny little box things.

So, now that we have reached our first pay day, we are getting a new bed. One with a headboard and a tailboard. A British 'Kingsize', Aussie 'Queensize'.



Everything has to be dragged up these steep, tight stairs, of course, no matter how big the bedroom actually is.