Carpe[t] Diem...

...Do you watch 'Grand Designs' on the television?

H does as if religiously compelled, and even I have sat down with a certain fascination as couples - mostly - embark on hare-brained schemes to convert some derelict building into a castle of their dreams generally with insufficient money, skill, nous or time to complete the task.

The dour presenter positively delights in continually pointing out their manifest failings on all counts: remarking in asides to the camera his grave reservations about their budgetary deficits, their lack of understanding of the limitations of non-load-bearing walls or even their very sanity.

There are common threads - apart from the stark unreality of it all - that run throughout the programmes. One such is that whilst oft it is the man who proposes ["Let's go live in a barn and re-create the feel of an RAF encampment during the Battle of Britain"] it is the woman who disposes ["Terrific idea my darling, though perhaps the look of a villa in Provence would be more the thing"].

You can guess who inevitably prevails in this atavistic struggle of the sexes. Last week we had some poor fellow all bent on making of a grand dome his great library, only to find on completion that it had metamorphosed into a cute galleria with not a book in sight. He wimped to camera how some shelving would eventually emerge, though it took but a side-ways look from the woman at this vestigial assertion of manly control to understand that even that last fading dream was futile.

Thus it was in the Palladas household some years back when mutual agreement was readily reached that some investment in the upkeep of the place would be required; resulting though in a complete overhaul, with an entire new kitchen, the building of a pleasing yet unneeded conservatory and enough granite surfacing or rare stone flooring to enable half a dozen quarrymen to retire at once to Marbella.

One moment one had a more than decent, if faded, house with perhaps too much of a 1970s feel about it than strictly tasteful - floral carpeting throughout - the next a showpiece residence destined to appear in the 'Hello' equivalent of property.

An item that particularly irked me was the prevalent use of 'distressed' wood throughout the bedrooms. 'Distressed' is merely code for 'second-hand' goods given a hugely expensive make-over and a cute title to hide the cost behind some false notion of styling.

Something though that did please at the time - and largely still does - was the conversion of an unused double garage ['Life is too short to...park cars in garages overnight'] into a study/den/office/sanctuary for the parson of the place.

Safely removed from the rest of the law-abiding, quiet household I am unleashed to rant at Gordon Brown, smoke my cigars and generally conduct my business in peace without disturbing H or frightening the horses.

To call it my 'home from home' would be too much to imply a wide degree of domestic separation. Nonetheless the place is replete with most if not all necessities of manly living - sofa for 'power naps', books for browsing, CDs and DVDs for one day intending to play/watch, the wherewithal for studio photography if only one had the time, a dartboard even to show one has not lost contact with the common man...etc., etc.

One factor though that was not 'designed into' the whole process was taking account of the more than unfair wear and tear on the carpet; it being necessary for access to leg it from the kitchen door over the patio, round the path and into the 'office', bringing with it far too much muck, damp and odd bits of the garden than is strictly for the good of something intended purely for indoor usage.

Over time, therefore, the once faultless beige has taken on a darker hue of mud, highlighted with occasional spots of some more solid detritus. The resulting speckled effect is not unpleasing, it is however not sustainable.

Something must be done. And that something has been the purchase of an not entirely cheap machine designed for the very purpose of restoring such carpets to a condition approaching pristine.

Trouble is, now that one looks closely at the thing, one can hardly see the thing. The floor is strewn with not only copious amounts of necessary furniture - said sofa for power napping et al. - but also accumulated oddments such as suitcases once used and never properly restored to the attic, spare saddles for E, putative studio equipment largely unpacked, chairs that were not wanted in the house yet too good to throw away, the last generation of computing equipment and - most strange of all - more wine and beer bottles than one can strictly account for from personal consumption.

Very odd that last one, and something not to left on view should the Bishop pass by. ['Been a bit too much on the sauce' would be his unspoken remark were that to happen and not a mental note any parson would be wishing his ecclesial superior to make.]

Reminds me of my dear monasteric brethren who - for reasons that remain hidden - never disposed of any of the bottles used for communion wine (at fifty plus communicants a day over seventy odd years simply vast in number) but stored them all in one of the vast cellars beneath the place.

Stumbling on them all one day - a vast acreage of dusty glass stretching beyond sight into the gloom of that cellar - it was wonderful to wonder just what a passing stranger would have made of what would have appeared to be irrefutable evidence of global, sustained monastic inebriation.

Leaving though that aside to one side, the task of the day is to get to grips with this whole matter of the dirty carpet. The day has even been properly entered into the diary - 'Friday - clean carpet. Forget weekly sermon preparation and fix the carpet!'

A small voice of doom, though is heard as one begins to begin. Among all of the manifold and manifest failings of the above mentioned 'grand designers' was an almost universal failing properly to allow sufficient time for the whole thing, thereby giving the sad presenter the chance to announce with great glee: "It's November and already the work is two months behind schedule. Now that winter is just around the corner, unless they can secure the roofing by next week the whole project seems doomed."

So Carpe[t] Diem and fingers-crossed a day is sufficient time for the grand sub-design!