Some time later, after her bungalow with the avocado bathroom suite and geometric tiles (she was bang on trend was my Nan) was sold there was some money to be divided between the sisters. Dad had insisted that it was Mum’s money and told her that she needed to spend it in a way that made her happy. At the time I couldn’t understand how a shower (she was also bang on trend) and a new bedroom carpet would be what she would choose to spend her money on. Obviously, Dad fitted the shower himself, which did mean it always leaked a bit but Mum loved it.
“How can that make her happy?” I asked Dad, as we walked to plumbers shop at the parade of shops at end of the road.
It was a unusual shop, wedged between a post office and a butcher’s that was an Aladdin’s cave of pipe and smelled of solder.
“Two half inch compression elbow joints, please,” he said to the man behind the counter before turning to me and saying, “It’s about making home nice and safe.”
I didn’t really understand then, but once the new carpet was fitted something must have stuck in the back of my filing cabinet of a brain.
Mum and Dad had a huge bedroom and so Mum was thrilled to be able to choose a carpet that was exactly what she wanted. It was going to be expensive. She picked a soft bright cornflower blue, that was almost purple.
“Take your shoes off!” she shouted down the stairs as I came in from school, “And come and see this!”
She was standing in the middle of her room, squishing her toes into the carpet with a smile on her face that I hadn’t seen in months.
“Yeah right! I still don’t understand,” I muttered, as I sloped off to my room to listen to the Top 40 I’d taped from the radio and read my Jackie magazine.
What did I do with the money I inherited? Obviously, I got a new shower and bedroom carpet. I wanted to feel safe at home. I wanted my bedroom to be cosy and I wanted to be able to choose whatever I wanted without worrying.
Our renovations, however, were interrupted by the pandemic.
Yesterday, the carpet was fitted and I stood in the middle of my room squishing my toes into the long soft pile with a smile on my face that no one has seen for months.
There is only one problem.
This is a carpet of contradictions. The fitting of it has made me notice even more awful confusions about how this pandemic is being handled in this country.
I’m going to make a list because I like a list.
1. A strange and slightly dirty looking man can come into my house to fit a carpet, without washing his hands once but my children can’t have a single friend round and I can’t teach small children to play the flute in my almost separate room.
2. Pubs are going to open because people in pubs are well behaved but because people in theatres sit on each other’s laps, snog strangers in the interval and are generally rowdy you can’t go and watch Shakespeare at the Globe.
3. We’re all in this together. Except Leicester. Sorry Leicester, you’re on your own.
4. We are only going to take the next steps to ease lockdown if we can be sure we are going to avoid a second spike. What about Leicester? Oh don’t worry about Leicester, we can make that another country. There’s lots of foreigners there anyway.
5. When teachers questioned whether it was safe to go back to school Matt Hancock told them not to be silly, children don’t get coronavirus and if they do it’s mild and perfectly safe. However, when he was explaining how Leicester was going into lockdown he said that all schools would be closed there because children had been very badly affected.
6. Although we know that this virus targets certain ethnicities we are still not recording ethnic data when people have a test.
I do love my carpet of contradiction, though and so does the dog.
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