New life
Bit of fluff
Zenga Longmore
You are no longer a baby, you are a little girl!' I said proudly to Omalara as she sat perched high on Olumba's shoulders. `Little girl,' repeated Omalara medita- tively, as if chewing the words and then rejecting them. 'Big girl!' she suddenly announced, in a flash of inspiration.
Olumba was taking Omalara to enjoy a burst of sunshine which had managed to pierce the Brixton smog. I had uncharac- teristically offered to catch up on some late spring-cleaning, the heat evidently having gone to my head.
`I want to know if I'm doing it correctly.' Half an hour later, a loud rap at the door disturbed my nap. 'Want to buy a pretty rug, lady?' enquired a slim young man with one earring and sundry tattoos. So saying, he stepped deftly into the hallway and unrolled the long tube he had been holding under his arm.
I have always maintained that the delight of a door-to-door salesman is that you can check the quality of the goods in the com- fort of your own home, thereby resting assured that no skulduggery, or skulruggery in this case, can take place. Besides, you can also be quite certain that the style of the merchandise will suit your decor. The rug which lay upon my hall floor was indeed a fine example of unknown crafts- manship. Ablaze with flame-like orange fibres, its thick pile was criss-crossed with black and violet bands. The colour scheme, I felt, set off the patterns of my Lambeth Council wallpaper to a T.
`Thirty quid on the nose,' remarked the young man, noting my look of admiration. On an impulse, I asked him, since he was already inside the flat, to have a look at my old rug. Once a handsome Nigerian work of art, the rug had been sadly stained over the last two years by everything a child can spill.
`I must get it cleaned,' I had often sighed, contemplating the cost. Now, I thought I had a good idea.
`Why don't you trade this rug for your rug?' I suggested. 'Get this rug cleaned and you could sell it anywhere.'
Six or seven emotions flitted over the youth's face in rapid succession, as he per- formed intricate mental calculations. Final- ly he gave me the new rug, and took away the old, plus eight pounds which he stuffed into his back pocket.
Now I don't know if you feel the same, but I find a new rug possesses a certain inspirational quality. The owner of a new rug cannot concede to the idea of lying around in a slothful stupor. No, when a rug fresh from the salesman's van lies resplen- dent on the living-room floor its owner becomes overwhelmed by an uncanny desire to sit upon it and ponder on the complexities of life, or even, as in my case, to begin a crossword puzzle.
While I was in mid-flow, grappling with 3 across, I suddenly noticed my slacks were covered from knee to ankle in a thick mat- ting of orange fibre. With a sinking feeling, I took first a clothes-brush to my trousers, then a carpet brush to the rug. Orange, fluffy dust filled the air. Ten minutes of brushing later, my brush hit rock bottom. A gaping hole revealed bare, lino-like materi- al. By the time Olumba and Omalara returned home, it was apparent that the rug was all fluff-dust.
`Na. home buy always be bad palava,' announced Olumba, when he had finished bewailing the loss of his Nigerian hand- woven carpet. 'Next time, remember gold- en rule-o: never buy anything unless you see it in a shop first!'
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