The carpet crawlers heed their callers... Sofa Carpet Specialists

One of the abiding memories of my youth are endless Saturday mornings in tow behind my parents as they seemingly explored every carpet store in a 50 mile radius of our hone. This interminable search for new carpets was an inevitability which came with the purchase of a new house.

It was actually quite fun. The wonderful smell of new carpets almost overpowering as you entered the warehouse or local shop- a nascent aroma that, on reflection, I have fond memories of. The giant rolls of carpet suspended horizontally on poles from ceiling to floor made for adventurous games for my brother and I, as we left the parents to debate underlay and fibres, patterns and costs, square footage and shag piles. 

Had I retained some of that information instead of playing hide and seek while inhaling the blissful carpet newness, then I may have been better equipped when it came to carpet decision making for my own home, decades later. All I can recall from childhood carpet expeditions is that we had a psychedelic carpet in hall and landing, deep browns and black with swirls of orange and yellow fire emanating from it. Great for playing on. 

So these days, I am completely in the hands of experts, be they local independents or the large out of town superstores that advertise on television. SCS (Sofa Carpet Specialists) are up there with the most familiar brands and have been trading for over 100 years. 

The style these days (I think) is for muted, neutral, plain carpets, with which I concur. You can then accessorise your rooms with splashes of colour from artwork that you choose rather than, as in my childhood, having to choose items that fit in with the technicolour nightmare which stalks every inch of your living room, forever reminding all and sundry of your foolhardy and outrageous choice in the carpet showroom.

Carpets unsurprisingly do not occur in song lyrics very often. A beautiful exception is a track called the Carpet Crawlers but, before carpet advertising executives get too excited, the song has more to do with nature and the creating of a new life than a paean to flooring… Sheer poetry. 

There’s a 2009 jazz cover version Fragile’s Carpet Crawlers or there is this 2012 live performance, preceded by a marriage proposal, Ray Wilson’s Carpet Crawlers . Justice was done with this version back in 1993 by Human Drama which is the most moving of the cover versions I've heard. The original version is probably the best and is from that very same era of the psychedelic carpets of my early years and tears...