A dream solution for navigating the bedroom battlefield at night

CONFESSIONS of RICHARD FARLEIGH - SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR  

YOU wake in the middle of the night wanting to visit the bathroom. Tired, you regret having a few glasses of water hours earlier before hitting the sack. For a few moments you ponder rolling over and returning to sleep, but you know the need isn’t going to go away. So you slowly arise in the darkness, not disturbing your partner, and start your journey. You’re still very drowsy, and in the back of your mind you hope that the interruption won’t prevent you from returning to a blissful night’s rest.

The darkness doesn’t bother you, as your eyes have assumed night vision, and you navigate past the bedroom’s obstacles easily. Entering the bathroom, you switch on the light, and…torture! Despite your emergency squint, your eyes sting as they try to adjust but the angry light penetrates like salt into an open wound. You empty yourself, which seems to take forever and for men requires concentration: they are well aware that night shooting carries the highest risk of missing a blurry bowl.

Then you start your return journey. But a new problem emerges. As you switch off the bathroom light, you're blinded like a bewildered bat and you bang into everything in the bedroom. Not only are you now wide-awake and possibly injured, you’ve disturbed your partner who now feels the same urge and is destined to the same journey, dicing with the darkness.

Sound familiar? Worry thee not! I have the solution.

Now, by reading any further you implicitly agree to a “non-disclosure agreement” and to various “terms and conditions” that no one ever reads but may be one day be used by a large multinational to sue a 12 year old for file sharing.

Here is the technique.

When you arrive at the bathroom and switch on the light, you must remember one all-important thing. Do not forget. This is so important, I am banging the table with one hand as I write (okay, now you know, I write with one finger). As the light goes on, you... close one eye. You keep that eye closed and do everything using the open “light-eye”.

You’ve halved the pain of the piercing light, but the real benefit of my technique becomes apparent when you exit the bathroom. At the same moment as you switch off the light, you switch eyes. Your “night eye” now jumps into action, iris still happily wide-open, giving you a cat-like ability to silently steer through the bedroom battlefield. You return to bed relaxed, and you and your partner sleep happily ever after.

Now, how do I make any money out of my brilliant idea?

Not easy, but I might have a way. I will sell eye-patches and convince customers that wearing one in the bathroom is simpler than keeping one eye closed. It’s a marketing challenge, for sure, but I’ll let the advertising gurus lose sleep over that one.

Richard Farleigh has operated as a business angel for many years, backing more early-stage companies than anyone else in the UK. www.farleigh.com 

Reprinted with kind permission from City AM, the brilliant business and financial website at http://www.cityam.com.