I have long slept badly and so was intrigued when a close friend asked if I had tried a bone pillow. I’d never heard of such a thing but he assured me that there are many who swear by them.

To make a bone pillow you must first catch mice. Voles will do at a push and it is rumoured that some of the cheaper outlets make do with moles, stoats and other such vermin.

Once caught, the mice must be processed. Their flesh is removed by an ingenious machine and what little of them still adheres to the bone is simply boiled off in an enormous copper vat.

After this a team of workers pour the clean white bones into soft cotton pillowcases.

Each time you turn in your bed the comforting crunch of fibula, mandibles and the like will surely lull you into the deepest of sleeps: that’s…