So what is a futon again?

Don’t know that I’ve ever been sure what a futon is. Had a suspicion it was either one of those things you cooked cheesy mixes in and then dipped your bread into – onto a tiddly little fork – or else it was more like a crouton.
However, it turns out a futon is a day bed: something that looks more like a settee in the day time. I was looking at the home furniture on one site and came across their futon section. Man, futons are cool! They’re elegant, they’re stylish. None of your crumpled up old bed pretending to be settee type of thing; these are models of chic.
When we built another storey onto our house for my mother to live in, the architect provided what he thought would be a long walk-in storage area above the stairs. The only trouble was it was in the lounge and it seemed unnecessary to have something like that there. So my mother put her grandfather’s old settee in the space, loaded it up with pillows and spent some years of her life using it as a day bed. She watched tv from it, she entertained grandchildren and great-grandchildren on it, various people would sit on it and cuddle her and so on. It became a place of serenity in the midst of chaos.
I don’t know that she would have wanted to exchange her grandfather’s old woodeen settee for a futon, but it would have been kind of classy in that spot, all the same.