Staying in bed.

Now, it's probably not what you think, from the title (though I have to confess I've had two lie-ins this week - didn't get up until 7.15 two days running!).
The question actually is, 'how long can you play 'house' in a bed with a two-year-old before it begins to wear a little thin?' (the game - not the bed or the two-year-old...). I managed a good few minutes this morning, and in the process discovered a number of very important things.
1) Duvets don't make very good roofing material: they don't quite stretch far enough from the head to the foot of the bed; they don't tie to the bed very easily, and they're too heavy to stay up in the middle.
2) Large flat sheets don't quite stretch far enough either - they're too wide and not quite long enough to tie.
3) Feather pillows are rubbish when it comes to needing 'props' in the centre of the bed to hold the roof up. What you need are some reasonably new pillows that will stand on their end and retain their shape.
4) The perfect roof is made using a fitted sheet pulled tight (very tight!) over the head and foot of the bed, with 'props' as mentioned above to hold it up. Linked to this, the ideal bed is ...
5) a bed with a reasonably high headboard and footboard. Our headboard reaches about a foot above the mattress, while the footboard is about 7 or 8 inches. This is enough to provide sufficient space, assuming the use of props.
6) The aforementioned fitted sheet, if your bed is anything like ours, will occasionally ping off the footboard (obvious, when you take into account the laws of physics, and the relative heights of the head and foot) but this is a far-from-catastrophic roof collapse. Fixable in seconds (and good fun to roll around 'trapped' under for a while - all adds to the amusement value).
7) You can consume an astonishing number of (pretend) cups of tea and coffee in a very short space of time. I think we were up to about eight before the final roof collapse.
8) If you're sharing a pillow in the 'sleeping' section of the 'house', you're liable to get headbutted fairly frequently, with varying degrees of ensuing pain.
9) If you want an excuse to leave the 'house' for a bit, tell your playmate that you're going to water the 'garden' outside, and wander around the room making splashy noises and tipping an imaginary watering can up. (Be careful though - I made the basic error of watering a patch he'd apparently already done)
10) The two-year-old wants the game to go on for longer than I can muster energy for.
Other points that may be worth mentioning:
11) If you're the sort of person who likes their sheets ironed (personally, I'm not fussed) you may want to play this game before the ironing.
12) Probably not an ideal game to play if you're at the start of the 'potty training' stage. (No, we didn't have any accidents, I just think it's a game to save for when they're 'trained')
13) Having written a 12 point guide on this subject, I could probably be considered something of an authority...