Julie Jay: Forget ‘Love Island’ — the real test for any marriage is bunk beds

When I uttered the words no husband wants to hear ‘should I get a man in?’ I knew I was pushing the limits

I have made do with testing our marriage through the mechanism of bunk beds. Specifically, bunk bed assembly. Picture: iStock

A big part of Love Island’s appeal is that couples are constantly being tested, so much so that it must feel like the Leaving Cert only with less invigilating and more hip-gyrating. Although if you did music to higher level, it was probably a bit of both.

I have been following this show avidly this year — purely for professional research purposes — particularly the journey of my fellow social media icon and múinteoir Seán Fitzgerald, aka Fitzy.

Himself and English police officer Lola have been in an exclusive relationship since the first week, ‘closing it off’ to other people. I am not quite sure what this means within the context of Love Island, but I am fairly certain it essentially forbids him from making coffee for anyone else in the villa.

In my own life, the odds of sending my husband off to a villa in Mallorca surrounded by beautiful women for a relationship challenge are slim, not because he wouldn’t love it, but more because his passport is out of date. As a result, I have made do with testing our marriage through the mechanism of bunk beds. Specifically, bunk bed assembly, which will push even the most closed off, exclusive, loved-up couple to their limits.

When we moved into our new house there were just too many beds in here, which would be great if I ever planned to moonlight as a Bean an Tí and farm duvets out to Mary Immaculate College students, but given that I’d never get the garda vetting over the line in time, I felt we needed to downsize — particularly as a unit we are currently numbering the same amount of members as One Direction after Zayn left the band (for those of you who didn’t do popstar maths for Leaving Cert, this translates as four).

The assembly of the bunk beds was traumatising from the get go. When the flat pack arrived from a well-known global brand who I won’t name here but I will say bears a flag strikingly similar to the Swedish flag in terms of their colour scheme, there was an unnerving amount of extra boxes.

Immediately I gulped and said the words no husband wants to hear “will I get a man in”, which my husband took as nothing short of a personal challenge. It took as many days as there were band members in the original line-up of Little Mix (for those of you still not familiar with popstar maths, the answer to these questions is always four), and a lot of threats of marital separation before the final product could be revealed.

If this was a Casa Amor situation, the husband would have passed with flying colours.

Number One was thrilled with his bunk bed initially, particularly because of the downstairs situation — which, instead of another bed, provides a space to play and hide mammy’s car keys. Sadly though, the bunk bed itself has yet to be associated with actual sleeping, as Number One has rejected a mattress in favour of a Jackson Pollock spotted carpet — it turns out I’m not as good at painting walls as I thought.

Since completing the bunk beds our five-year-old has decided he much prefers sleeping on floors, much to my husband’s devastation. Despite a lot of cajoling and dangling of carrots — the main carrot currently being perching his Dog Man book collection in the shelf above his bed — Number One is not for moving. Every night he insists on moving his pillows, sleeping bag, and blankets to the basement of his bunk bed and lying on the mat like a child you might see on a Barnardos advert at a bus shelter.

One night, in an attempt to make the bunk bed appealing, I climbed up there myself, finding myself dizzied by the heights of the penthouse view and clinging to the wall as if I was on a Blasket Ferry cruise. “Were bunk beds always this high?” I asked my husband, in the same way you might find yourself asking if Marks and Spencer has changed its designers, because the store you previously considered ‘just for aul wans’ now has multiple items you would happily don on your way to the credit union.

The truth is, neither bunk beds nor Marks and Spencer have changed, it is we who have lost our nerve when it comes to climbing up ladders to get to bed and it is we who now live for an elasticated waistline and a sensible long-sleeved top.

As I lay in the top bunk, Number One insisted he would not be budging, but it was hard to hear him over the sound of his brother, still two years of age, as he catapulted himself off the bed beside me and onto a beanbag he had placed on the ground below. His level of giggling suggests this was less a cry for help and more a cry for extra stimulation, so if all else fails, we might need to move the baby up to the top bunk sooner than anticipated, having originally pencilling that in for sometime around 2035 when he was starting secondary school.

Tonight, my husband suggested watching the World Cup over Love Island’s movie challenge, which can only mean one thing: Somebody will most certainly be sleeping in the bunk bed tonight, and it’s not the five-year-old.