Carpet Day, also traditionally, normally falls on a Sunday, when Varne and I have terrific hangover headaches, so it is customary to fortify ourselves with alcoholic beverages before we start wrestling with the large unwieldy roll of carpet.
There is no traditional place to purchase the carpet- We have purchased carpets from the catalogue, from Mayes World of Carpets, from a lovely carpet shop on the Cowley Road, long since closed, and once, in-advisably, from the back of a lorry in the car park. The Carpet from the back of the lorry was the one that caused Varne and I the most distress as unfortunately we had chosen our rolls in the dark and had picked 3 different shades by accident.
Sometimes the carpet we have bought is too small, so after we have moved all the furniture into the garden and have got a proper sweat on, we unroll it and stare at it in abject disbelief, then try moving it around to see if it will fit if its length ways instead of sideways. Of course, this never works, so those types of carpet day are very unfulfilling.
Sometimes, and more usually, the carpet is too big and Varne and I become drunk in charge of Stanley knifes, so the edges of the carpet do not bear close scrutiny. After all these years it is a small miracle that Varne and I have not seriously injured ourselves, given the drunkenness and all.
I didn't know yesterday was to be a Carpet Day until Fly arrived in a state of nervous exhaustion.
Varne was on the turn, he advised, and was refusing to listen to reason regarding laying of carpets.
I went down to see Varne who was smoking and unamused. 'Fuck it' she said.
I told Varne that she was being terribly naughty and so Fly and I wrestled the long, thin, piece of carpet up the stairs and started to cut off the edges and staple it into place.
Varne watched from the bottom of the stairs for a while and then realised that Carpet Day was officially here, opened the wine and started marking out the next piece of carpet.
After several hours of Stanley knifes, pincers, Phillips screwdrivers, glasses of wine and staple guns the carpet was in place.
I decided to celebrate by baking a cake. I went to town and purchased all the ingredients and then spent some time whipping together all of the ingredients in the mixer. Trotter barked at me while I was grating the chocolate for the filling and decided that he needed a different view of the kitchen so inspected my progress from the back of the sofa through the hatchway.
The cake went into the oven and I waited. The promised half an hour came and went as I watched the cake get bigger, and bigger and bigger, yet refusing to set in the middle. So I carried on waiting and watching until an hour had passed and the dome of the cake was crunchy and crispy and a dark brown.
Unfortunately tragedy struck.
I carefully removed the cake from the cake tin and left it to cool.
I came back to cut it into slices and discovered that the inside hadn't cooked and was all gloopy. Disheartened, but not yet beaten, I sliced it into 4 slices. The bottom one was fine, the next looked like a donut where I had to scoop out the gloopy insides, as with the 3rd. The 4th, the peak of the cake suddenly made a dash for freedom and smashed into a million crumbly pieces on the kitchen floor.
Trotter got down from the back of the sofa and Lulu ran and hid. Fing sat on the side and pretended he hasn't noticed as I stared at the crumbs and cried. I really couldn't take it, it took so long to bake it.
I decided to make the best of a bad job and threw it all together anyway.
The only person who had a slice was Martha. I think everyone else was too scared.
All in all it was a disappointing end to Carpet Day, well, perhaps not for Varne, who found my blow up Pecker and was enourmously excited. I would of added the picture, but we've already been accused of pornography and I wouldnt want to proove them right.
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