And so to bed

The mattress was tied to the roof, and assorted wooden slats, legs and so on were slotted inside the car. The front seat was tipped forward and the passenger accommodated in a tiny corner of the back seat. The little black car wove its way through the traffic with its mattress roof and cargo of numbered bed parts.

We still use the bed now, more than two decades on. It was first assembled at our flat in London, only to be taken apart again a year or so later for the journey north. Since then it has stayed put in the same house in York for nigh on 20 years, although it has moved between bedrooms.

Our bed has a story to tell, but only the same creaky story as other beds. There are moments of excitement and intimacy, and plenty more of sleep. Or moments of turning the light on and off, of reading, or squinting at the crossword, and eventually trudging off elsewhere in blank-eyed search of sleep, if you are me or share my occasional complaint.

And moments, too, for those of us who live in York student-land, of being awoken by girl students shrieking in the small hours. Or waking to hear a neighbour hauling up their sash window to shout: "Shut the **** up!" at caterwauling students debating away a particularly tricky philosophical conundrum ("Is he hot or what?"), or maybe loudly feeling the effects of too many alcopops or vodkas-and-something-horrible concoctions.

Anyway, that's our bed and it cost, well, I've no idea. Who remembers things like that? Whatever it cost, it wasn't £25,000. The small black car was only a fraction of that, and it was second-hand.

Last week a hi-tech bed costing such an astronomical sum was put on show in Las Vegas at the International Consumer Electronics Show. This bed is computer-controlled, rather than, say, wife-controlled.

With a touch of sci-fi drama, this bed claims to monitor your sleeping patterns, regulate your temperature and will even intervene to stop you snoring (although a wife will do that too).

The Starry Night Bed has a digital brain which is connected to movement sensors. If it hears you snoring, it will gradually elevate at the head by seven degrees to unblock the airways. If this doesn't work, the bed will rise again, until the snoring stops, when it will flatten out again. Which is a technological improvement on an elbow in the ribs.

The hi-tech bed also monitors movement during sleep and, after a particularly restless night, will use its internet connection to offer sleeping hints.

Or as the sales representative, quoted in my Sunday newspaper, put it, the bed will "give you advice, such as don't eat spicy foods, drink less caffeine and so on".

Ah, isn't technology wonderful? This bed has an in-built media centre, you say, capable of storing 400,000 songs or 2,000 hours of video (that's a few sleepless nights filled). Then again, what an interfering and painful nuisance technology can be. You pay all that money to own a bed that comes with a built-in, internet-linked nagging machine "Is it any wonder you can't sleep after having that second espresso and that late-night snack of blue cheese really wasn't a good idea, was it? and what do you expect if you will stay up too late watching rubbish on television, and"

Do you think this thing has an off-switch?

* I KNEW it was a risk calling Jeremy Clarkson a "ranting, attention-seeking twerp". A response on our website reproduced those words from last week's column, alongside the observation: "Pretty much like you then, Julian."

Oh well, if you write a column, you ask for it. Head above the parapet and all that. The usual suspects will usually take aim, in this case from Strensall.

As for the young women overheard by a friend at one of York's museums observing that I was jealous of Clarkson, well, not really. Some of his money and prominence would be nice, but all that pointless acceleration would wear me down eventually.