Shopping for a bargain off cut in carpet emporiums is a daunting proposition. Firstly you have oodles of options, colour, pattern, short pile, shag, nylon, wool, the list is endless and secondly you have to enter through a door way that is festooned with balloons and garlands like you are going there for a party. There was so much celebratory material outside I half expected to be met by Coco the carpet clown and shown the recently carpeted bouncy castle whilst children run excitedly through tubes of carpet caves eating carpet cakes.
OK, that was a bit over the top I'll admit but really why are carpet places always festooned in such gaiety? I checked, there was not a sale on, it was not a anniversary for anything at the store and it wasn't anybody's birthday. It is and will forever remain a mystery.
Grippers, that's what I want to talk about. How lethal are they? Taking up our old carpet revealed a multitude of sins as it became apparent it should have been replaced many, many years before. Part of the carpet was wedged under the door way on a particularly gripping bit of floor. Extracting carpet from the jaws of these booby traps requires a deft touch, a touch I fail to have and inexplicably at some point I know I will catch a part of my anatomy on them. Strips of wood nailed to the floor, each with fifty small angled spikes is like something from the middle ages to stop mounted troops, why on earth are they there for carpets?, surely carpets don't have a habit of running away when your not looking so have to be pinned down. I know, I know, they stop the carpet moving, still don't like them.
As usual the carpet wouldn't budge from under the door frame, cutting it out wasn't an option as we needed the new carpet to fit perfectly and not have a tuft of green between that and the hallway. Tug. Tug. No movement. Maybe a new tactic, a forty five degree tug.
It worked, I say worked in its loosest terms as the carpet tore away from the strip with a ripping sound catapulting me backwards bottom first into the corner. That is where I found the gripper as it tore into my cheeks like a fish hook. If you have ever tried to get up from a gripper injury you will find how hard it is. The spikes point towards the wall so you are left with two choices, either retreat more towards the wall to ease them off which in my case was going to be difficult seeing as my backside was already pinned there or secondly grit your teeth and stand rather quickly ignoring any ripping sounds and sharp pain.
I chose the latter and I now have a nice row of 'teeth' marks in my bottom.
Try explaining that one at the swimming baths.
No comments:
Post a Comment