Why I Am Going to Install a Lift in Our House

I have come to the conclusion that what my house really needs is a lift. Yes, this will be ever so handy when my legs go the same way as my shoulder (basically dysfunctional) but this is not my main reason. The real reason is that there is a big problem with our stairs. Anyone who has visited my home might suspect that I am referring to their unlikely angle and the fact that at the top the steps become so thin that even a cat wearing stilettos is challenged to get a foothold on them (must issue snot-cat with some high heels to test this theory). Or you may think that the headroom issue, the fact that anyone over the height of two foot has to crawl up the middle section in order to avoid a possibly fatal head injury, might cause me some disturbance. (I would like to add here that all fatally injured persons have been given decent burials under the kiwi fruit just by the shed). No, it is the carpet that is the criminal.

This carpet haunts my every waking journey twixt ground and first floor, twixt upstairs and down. The carpet offends my every sense of what is right and correct in the world. Yet, unlikely as it seems I am responsible, or at least partly responsible for this offending floor-covering.

This is what happened. After years of building work, or should I say DIY, or rather DIM (Did It Myself) that, as usual, was achieved to that high and exacting standard of crap so prevalent in my home, we decided that the final piece de resistance was going to be the stairs. And the piece de resistance of the piece do resistance was to buy an expensive and brand new carpet. We had a plan. We had a sensible plan. We had a sensible plan that involved buying a speckled sort of beige and brown and grey sort of carpet that would not show the dirt. Fantastic. Only, when we got to the shop no such clever floor covering seemed to exist. So, rather than lobby the government for more intelligent floor design, or write to Jim’ll Fix It, or weave one ourselves out of bits of stray wool from fields, fluff from the tumble dryer and our children’s hair what did we do? We bought a blue carpet. At the time, and in the shop, we thought – ‘heavens, that’s a beautiful shade of blue!’ A shade of blue that reminded us of azure summer skies, Mediterranean oceans, Chelsea football strips (that was the beloved, not me), and Microsoft. You probably have just this colour at the top of your screen right now.

And that blue is the problem. Every last iota and speck of dirt glares from this cerulean wall-to-wall wonder as if it was a beacon on a very dark night. You can see white dirt, yellow muck, green crap, brown crud, black dreck, grey dust and multicoloured filth. There is no such thing as blue dirt and therefore NOTHING is camouflaged.

And yes, I have hoovered. I do hoover. But even before the snazzy device that reels in the chord has finished reeling, the carpet is somehow dirty again. So short of a nasty case of Obsessive Compulsive Vacuuming there seems little I can do. The only practical solution is installing a lift and therefore bypassing the whole stair trauma altogether. This, therefore, is what I am going to do. The stairs will be officially closed to traffic and all travellers must use the lift. The only question that remains is – what sort of carpet shall I have in this life-saving elevator?