A story about looking gift horses in the mouth...

A few weeks ago I was approached by Dormeo and asked if I'd like to review one of their mattresses. A new mattress! Who would say no?

Well dear readers, I very nearly did! This is because I suffer from some rather old-fashioned (and I now realise entirely misplaced) prejudice about foam mattresses. I read up on the mattress saw it had no springs and then dismissed their offer of a superking for us and instead said I would take a single for our spare room, more out of curiosity than anything...

On the day of delivery I loitered around the front door waiting for the two burly delivery men who would presumably arrive carrying this weighty mattress over their heads to my front door. Instead what happened is one man arrived with a parcel the size of Theo. I took a photo on my phone and sent it to Jim absolutely incredulous that this tiny box could contain a mattress worth sleeping on.

Then we unboxed it, cut the tight plastic that was wrapped round it and watched as a full size single mattress leapt out of a the tiny wrapping. We lay it on the bed frame and allowed it to come back to life for the required length of time and then very slowly and very cynically I lay down on it, ready at any moment to say "Ha! I told you so foam mattresses are rubbish!"

But then I had a horrible sinking feeling, no not that feeling you get on a memory foam mattress that's a little too soft and swallows you up. The feeling you get when you realise you have just turned away a superking mattress for your own bed and are now lying on its incredibly comfortable smaller sibling.

I admit it, I was wrong! Completely totally damn-this-bed-is-comfortable wrong! Previously the spare room had been occupied by a sprung mattress from a well known national store which wasn't a patch on the Dormeo one. The Memory Deluxe is both firm and soft. The memory foam top gives way just the right amount and the firm core supports it.

My father-in-law was the first to test it out this week when he stayed in the spare room and he was immensely impressed. I don't think he liked to say it, but the one we had before was pretty uncomfortable. Not only did he spend seven very comfortable nights on it last week, but he's coming back for Theo's birthday at the weekend and I have just been told he's coming a day earlier than originally planned. Either that's to sample more of my cooking or it's because the bed is so comfortable. I know what my money is on...