Theo was eight, and Theo had done a sum.
He did it on the back of a cereal box. Making his bed took two minutes. Two minutes a day, every day, until he was one hundred years old.
“Forty-six days,” he said, and put down his pencil. “Forty-six whole days of my life, Pip. Making a bed.”
Pip, the very small star who lived on his headboard, agreed that it was a lot of days.
“So I’m not doing it any more,” said Theo. “I’m going to invent something.”
He started straight after breakfast. He used four cardboard boxes, a ball of string, a fishing rod, a wooden spoon and his sister’s skateboard. He drew plans. He wore goggles, because inventors do. By lunchtime he had built the Bed-O-Matic 3000.
“How long did that take?” asked Pip.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Theo. “It’s an investment.”
He pulled the lever.
The fishing rod swung round and hooked the duvet. The string went tight. The skateboard shot across the room with the wooden spoon waving on top, and the duvet went with it, and the whole thing hit the wardrobe and stopped.
The pillow flew out of the window.
From the garden came one surprised woof.
Theo fetched the pillow. He untangled the duvet, which took twenty minutes. And on Sunday he built the Bed-O-Matic 4000, which had a second fishing rod.
The Bed-O-Matic 4000 tied the duvet in a knot. Mum came up to look at it. “That’s a very good knot,” she said, and went away again.
On Monday morning Theo got up early. He was just starting on the Bed-O-Matic 5000 when his big sister Nell came in to get her skateboard back.
She looked at the machine. She looked at the bed. Then, because the duvet was on top of her skateboard, she grabbed it by two corners, shook it once, let it fall on the bed, and dropped the pillow on top.
“There,” said Nell, and left.
It was very quiet.
“Pip,” said Theo slowly. “How long did that take?”
Pip had been counting. “Eleven seconds,” said Pip.
Theo pulled the duvet off and tried it himself. His first go took a whole minute, because he was being careful. His second took thirty seconds. His third took nineteen.
He got out the cereal box and did the sum again. It came to about a week. Then he added up how long he had spent on the Bed-O-Matics, and decided not to do any more sums that day.
That night he got into a made bed for the first time in a long while. It was smooth and cool, and the pillow was at the right end.
“Oh,” said Theo. Nobody had told him about this part.
The Bed-O-Matic 3000 is still in his room. It’s where he hangs his dressing gown. It’s very good at that.