Like any busy, busy modern multitasking woman (can one say housewife?) I find it difficult to get around to the less important, less pressing chores - the ones you certainly intend to do, but never find the time for. One of these is shampooing the small beige carpet in my caravan. It really is only a small carpet, about five feet by two and a half feet, representing about half the walking-area inside the caravan. I do regularly brush it while on holiday, to get out the grit; and a couple of times a year I remove it entirely from the caravan, and give it a jolly good thrashing. Brushing and beating do much to keep any carpet looking nice, but inevitably a time comes when you feel that only a shampooing will freshen it up properly. But this means buying some shampoo, and carefully applying it, and drying it just so - and so on - all for a small carpet that doesn't actually have any stains in it, nor any animal smells. So it seems like a mission, and the job has therefore been left. And left. And left.
But during the very warm weather I enjoyed for the last ten days of my recent caravanning holiday I thought that this carpet was getting a bit niffy close-up, and I resolved to shampoo it before I went away again.
It so happened that I wanted to drive into Burgess Hill today, to get a variety of little items, including proper cleaner for Fiona's beige leather steering wheel, which was looking a thought grimy again. Exactly the right occasion to buy some carpet shampoo too.
But from where? I'd already checked out the odd supermarket, and found them ill-stocked in the carpet shampoo department. What about a DIY store then - like B&Q? (Burgess Hill has a large B&Q, opened not very long ago) Well, I went there, but had to ask, and was directed to various types of carpet and floor cleaner in Aisle 12 - though not before I'd first been offered the rental of a carpet cleaning kit. Indeed, the youngish girl I spoke to pushed that offer quite hard. I explained that the carpet in question was in a caravan, and only the size of a small rug, and that I proposed to use a scrubbing brush. But she seemed not to understand the concept of kneeling on a carpet with a scrubbing brush. She probably thought I was mad, and had best be humoured. Clearly nobody in the modern world cleans a carpet unless they use a special device. And pays a rent for it. Well sod that.
And guess what, Aisle 12 only had cleaning items you could use with machines. Ha.
'But,' I said to myself (with eyes shifting cunningly from side to side like a cartoon cat), 'The 'machine' formulation probably means nothing much. There will be an anti-foaming agent in the liquid - nothing more. I can still scrub with the 'machine' version of whatever cleaning product I select.' So I had no hesitation buying this...
...even though it was no surprise (when I checked 1001's website later) that I could have bought this:
So far as I can see from 1001's website (http://www.1001carpetcare.co.uk/index.php/1001-products) there is no important difference between these two versions of their flagship product.
Anyway, I'm now ready to go. I'll get Theresa (my cleaner) to vacuum the caravan carpet for me tomorrow afternoon (she'll have to do it, because how Henry, my vacuum cleaner, works is a bit of a mystery to me), and then I'll set to outside, with bucket and scrubbing brush (I'm a natural scrubber). I expect the carpet will dry out nicely in the July sunshine.
And it should come up looking as good as new. I'm afraid I haven't got an excellent photo of it as it was at first acquaintance in November 2006, only this, when it was still on display at the dealer's:
I expect it will now come up a few shades lighter, and rather more fragrant!
Getting back to those TV ads, are you old enough to remember this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3wacuIsdug. It's not as good as some others I recall, and I can't find them on YouTube, but then they appeared long before the home-video era began.
