Truly a Love/Hate relationship

On carpets.

On 26th January 2007 we moved into this house with an almost-two year old and a sizeable baby bump. Since we’d first looked at the place, in the summer 2006, I’d been saying “First thing I’m going to do when I move in: I’m going to get rid of those carpets.”

Boring, beige, already stained. I hated those carpets.

In the event, thanks to the vagaries of UK conveyancing law, the house move was delayed until I was too pregnant to do anything but unpack and prepare for new baby.

Two months later, on the 27th March at 4am, I woke up having contractions. I gave birth in just 90 minutes, on that carpet. It was a planned home birth so I had covered it with a Cath Kidston oilcloth - YES, I am middle class actually.

Suddenly I had two small kids. No way I was replacing carpets with two small kids.

So the carpets stayed, and I continued to hate them. But they made me a relaxed person. Trailing mud through the house? No bother. Spillage? Not a problem. Party? Mulled wine! Potty training? Incontinent cat? Not to worry, lovely, it’s just a bit of wee.

Those ugly carpets allowed my kids to conduct all kinds of experiments. Hypothesis: 500ml of white PVA glue will, in time, dry to a clear, solid, peelable mat that will be easily and satisfyingly removed from the carpet. Equipment: 500ml PVA glue; 1 ugly carpet. Method: knock over PVA glue container; ignore; wait. Conclusion: 500ml of white PVA glue will NOT dry to a clear, solid peelable mat that will be satisfying to peel from carpet. It will in fact take a great many minutes of scraping to clear up and completely fuck the carpet.

But no matter. I hate that carpet.

Well, big news. Finally, now that the baby that was born on the carpet is 6’2” and enjoys mulled wine in his own right, we’re getting new carpets!

We’ve done the hall-stairs-landing, the sitting room and the kids’ bedrooms. There’s just the spare room and our own room to go.

It’s a mighty faff, so we’ve been doing it in stages, but let me tell you, I LOVE the new carpets and they must be protected at all costs.

We hand out single-use plastic overshoes to visitors. (Screw the planet, we’ve got a carpet to protect.) We forbid teenage cocktail experiments. We rinse the dog’s feet by the back door after walks. I hoover, lovingly. In some places we protect the carpet with a second layer of carpet.

I would take a bullet for that carpet. Although, obviously, not anywhere near the carpet.

The old carpet looks particularly shabby next to the glorious new one, and the most threadbare and appalling bit of it, is at the corner of my bed: the spot where I get out of bed and turn to walk towards the door. There, where I turn. It’s so, so bare.

Of course it is.

It’s worn down by years of me getting up to soothe crying babies; of a million midnight journeys returning toddlers to their own beds; of taking the croupy one out to the front doorstep, bundled in my arms and a giant duvet, to look at the stars and breathe properly; it’s been defeated by 3am doses of calpol and sore tummies and puking off bunk beds.

It’s worn thin by years of me leaping out of bed to the unmistakeable sound of a cat bringing in prey, or bringing up a furball. It’s ground down by getting up to let the puppy out in the night, or to tell him it’s not morning yet in spite of the light.

It’s been destroyed by my own wakefulness. By my night reflux (a peri-menopause symptom, as it turns out) that repeatedly woke me suddenly, convinced I was about to throw up. It has bare patches from em getting up because of the full moon, the snoring husband, the empty stomach, the full bladder. That patch of carpet has borne witness to everything. It’s evidence of all those nights where I’ve prowled the night in restless walks (to borrow from Simon and Garfunkel), just … awake… for no good reason.

More than that, it tells of getting up in the morning and going to bed at night. Of sunrise and sunset, of living for almost exactly seventeen years of my life. From the 26th January 2007 to the 16th January 2024, when the fitters will come and take away the last of the crappy old carpet. That testament of my life.

But not that square. Not the worn patch. Yesterday, I knelt on the floor, naked but for a towel and cut it out with a Stanley knife (because I’m a risk-taker).

I’m keeping it to remind me how much I’ve loved living with that carpet I hate

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The Carpet: Showing the position in the bedroom at the corner of my bed

State of that carpet.