I WONDER whether any readers recognise this scenario?

After much umming and aahing and several reconnaissance trips, you’ve bought that new hall carpet you’ve been promising yourself once the kids grew up.

Obviously, it wasn’t worth splashing out while they were still charging in with muddy trainers several times a day, strewing coats and school bags in their wake.

Now it looks so lovely you could stroke it, so perfect you hardly dare walk on it.

You make everyone take their shoes off when they come in so they don’t mar its pristine beauty.

For weeks you lovingly vacuum twice as often as you might have done previously.

And then the inevitable happens.

In our case, it was an elderly border collie. She couldn’t help it, she couldn’t wait till we woke up, and she had an ‘accident’ on the Indian rug we’d just bought to protect the area most subject to wear and tear.

And dark red dye ran, irretrievably, into the straw-coloured investment buy beneath.

Perhaps I need hardly say that after three-quarters of an hour on my hands and knees, scrubbing vainly with stain remover before I’d even had breakfast, that carpet no longer interested me.

And next time I won’t be swayed by anyone else’s opinion (I wonder who that might be?), I’ll buy a dark colour to start with! Or tiles.

So I do sympathise with the reluctance of our authorities, once they’d forked out £3million or so on Chinese granite for our Market Place, to allow vehicles to sully its perfection.

The chewing gum that blots every surface in the city is bad enough without tyre marks, oil spills, etc.

Brave, then, of the city council to change its mind and turn it into Salisbury’s poshest car boot venue. And sensible, because many browsers will have gone on to buy coffees in our cafes.

Anything that breathes life into that empty expanse and increases trade must be good.

I couldn’t get to the first sale this Sunday, but I did drive past en route to my mum’s, and business looked brisk.

Comments on the Journal website from bargain-hunters were very favourable. A great start.

But what is it about me and flooring?

You may recall that we recently redecorated our spare room. Within three days of the new carpet going down, the dog (a different one nowadays) must have started nibbling a loose thread because she’s pulled out a narrow strip about a foot long right in the middle of it.

We’ve had to cover it up with a rug.

The rug is red. Will history repeat itself? Please, no.

anneriddle36@gmail.com