A carpet in the cluttered Little Darwin office has been progressively looking as if a herd of elephants , after rolling about in the Limpopo River, has regularly stampeded through the premises , leaving behind a muddy-looking trail. My wife declared it repulsive , wanted to known what was going on in there to cause the unsightly patches.
I told her not to be such a fusspot , that I was happy, like a pig in mud, as long as I could belt out the blog , store more books , papers, magazines , oddities , ephemera somewhere in the untidy den , which I threaten to sort out neatly one day .
It has to be admitted that stumbling into the office just after dawn , wading through the elephant wallow , did not inspire one . With the computer playing up , ants coming out of the keyboard , assorted aches and pains in various parts of the body , I often feel as if I have been bitten by a tsetse fly brought in on the mud waxed rump of an elephant which got through Australian Customs and Border Security , intent on surfing and drinking with Irish packpackers at Bondi .
Then , while my attention was diverted elsewhere (possibly inspecting a box of wormed books ), without permission , my wife slipped into the den with a vacuum cleaner and closely examined the grotty cotton carpet . She shifted a heavy hairdresser's pump up chair I bought at a garage sale and discovered a circular pattern formed by the base covered in mould .
It confirmed our joint suspicion that , somehow , moisture was responsible for the carpet looking so blotchy . The floor was actually part of the brick driveway which had been covered in to provide me with more room , storage space . Up the carpet must come , I was ordered , because the exploding mould was a health hazard .
Easier said than done. Filing cabinets , a bookcase , a heavy desk were on top of the life threatening covering . Thoughts of a Rotorua, New Zealand , hernia operation came to mind as I surveyed the mouldy scene . Grunt, groan , heave . The carpet did not want to come away without a fight .
As the hairdressing chair was temporarily being used to hold a pile of Indonesian and Northern Territory newspapers , several old American tourist magazines , political scrapbooks and part of the unexpurgated Queen of the Jungle's diary , it had to be slowly walked off the carpet , care being taken not to crush toes in the process .
Yank , tug . The carpet still did not want to come out from under the filing cabinets , the contents in no proper order , but will be one day . Armed with a Stanley knife, slashed at the killer carpet . No good , broke the blade . A long handled tree branch lopper was of little use . Ditto scissors . A cheap pair of unused secateurs , however, helped . Able to make surgical incisions like a cardiologist , I then ripped away large sections of the offending carpet , threw them outside. Happiness has returned as a result of the uncovered now mellow brick road .
