My bedroom behaviour is clearly in need of review.  I am generally the first in bed at night and often up before the crack of dawn.  Generally, I  and watch with increasing bewilderment my wife’s routines before she joins me in bed at night.  Last night was fairly typical as her search for missing things became even more frantic.  Drawers were opened and banged shut as the search for her toothpaste  intensified.  Nothing surfaced and I stayed under the covers for fear of making matters worse.  Various announcements were made including thieves stealing her belongings yet again.

The search went on for over half an hour and the frustration became more evident.  Eventually M announced that she would sleep in another room, away from the thieving B’s that keep nicking her stuff.  At that stage I decided that I could take it no longer and went down stairs to see the closing half hour of Match of the Day.

When I returned upstairs my wife was standing looking out of the window in floods of tears.  I eventually managed to coax her into bed and console her somewhat with a cuddle.  I reassured her that I would sort things out in the morning and we could easily buy some more toothpaste.

Just for a change this morning I managed to stay in bed beyond the crack of dawn.  Therefore, I saw with my own eyes the difference it makes when I am beside M when she wakes up.  Her fears of being left alone are gone and if I play my cards right she knows she is safe with me beside her in bed.  We indulged in matter of a fact chat for a while then I got up and began my morning tidy up of the bedroom.

As I opened the top drawer of M’s dressing table I found two tubes of her toothpaste.  If only I had joined in the search last night I would have saved us both an hour of anguish.  Why on earth I stayed in bed last night rather than help the search I will never know.  It’s not surprising she couldn’t see her toothpaste wit her loss of vision.  The white tubes were on a white background in the half light of a table lamp.

I need to change my behaviour in the bedroom and work towards last in last out.  The former is slightly easier to accomplish than the latter: M continues to sleep for England.