The references to the poets' heartening salutes to Spring in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations run neck and neck, in number, with those to Star(s); Passion; Lady; Hell and other staples of the poetic diet. Some indication, it seems, of the place that the season holds in the minds of those living north of latitude 40°. (Do Arabic Dictionaries of Quotations, one wonders, carry quite so many references to spring?)
As every Latin or Iberian knows, the impact of spring upon most Northerners is emphatic enough to cause us to sit up and take fresh stock of ourselves and our surroundings. This isn't as neurotic as it sounds. An annual (and secret) personal stocktaking hurts nobody. After the reappraisal–not always agonizing, one hopes–we feel fit for new ventures and routines. Perhaps that's why so many people arrange to fall in love at this time of wild elation. Perhaps that's why almost all of us take a fresh look at the place in which we live, whether farmhouse or mansion, cottage or room, or even, perhaps, palace.
This usually means a reappraisal of the results of our winter hibernation. In Britain that invariably means a sharp and critical glance at the floor-coverings. Muddy shoes and muddier paws have left their mark, despite daily cleaning and dusting. Filling the basket or the coal scuttle may have sparked off many cosy evenings of fireside relaxation and conversation, but has also added its share to the winter's accumulation of microscopic particles, which, when the curtains are finally flung back and the sun rushes in, are seen to be far-from-microscopic in their cumulative effect. A time for action, no less.
First, then, the floors, for this is where we can not only repair and expel the winter's ravages, but can also prove to ourselves whether or not we have the quality of up-ending at least some of conventional ideas about the house. Do we need quite such a superfluity of rugs around the house during summer months? Why not let the floors have a sight of the sun? Why not let the wall-to-wall carpeting have the cleaning it so richly deserves? The cleaning will give it freshness for the autumn, bring back suppressed colour and prolong its life.
And whilst the carpeting is away, why not take courage and see the room looks with bare boards ? These can often be given an unexpected new lease of life by stripping. The hire of a power-sander for floors can work wonders. You will be astonished by the new look given to your living room during the summer months before returning to carpeted comfort in October. Even the poorest softwood planking acquires a new splendour and, with waxing, gets a true Scandinavian feeling. And you will be doubly fortunate if your builder used narrow planking, for this, cleaned-up, will give exciting new patterns and perspectives to your room.
Perhaps your spring notions include the possibility of extending the living-room into the garden by the addition of a glazed garden room or loggia. Certainly these additions, now being offered by a score or more of the larger firms specializing in timber buildings, are almost as appealing to the house-proud as a swimming pool and with a rather more rational appeal on the score of domestic usefulness in the British climate. If you decide on such a structure as your personal salute to the spring, why not think seriously of flooring your new toy with tiles? When we holiday in Italy or Spain, most of us approve the practicality of such floors, watching the maid mop them free of dust in five minutes flat. How pleasant to have them back home, we say; adding swiftly, but how chilly underfoot come next February. There is some truth in this amendment, but less when you reflect on the increasing practice of installing underfloor heating in new houses.
Yet even without underfloor heating the annual life of your loggia can be lengthened and its visual gaiety enhanced if you choose one of the red-brown tawny-coloured floor tiles. These warm-toned tiles will give your glazed addition a sense of warmth on the coldest, mistiest November days, and the addition of a portable stove ought not to be beyond the scope of the most embryonic handyman. You may be making your garden room for spring and summer days but within its shelter, you will also be able to enjoy the particular pleasures of your garden through the winter months. As one who is fortunate enough to be able to do much of her work facing the garden all the year round, I can vouch for the visual delights which too many English householders ignore. The tracery of trees in the misty morning, the sheer busyness of birds seeking sustenance, the changing colours of garden walls after rain... these and a hundred other vignettes are there for the taking. So go ahead with your garden room for the spring, but consider carefully the extra days of autumn and winter use vouchsafed by tiling the floor.
An alternative to tiling is the use, during summer months, of rush, reed and coconut mattings. The range is wide and they will provide a pleasant change from the necessarily heavier floor-coverings of the colder months.
After doleful reflections upon floor-coverings, the mistress of the house is likely to turn, somewhat ruefully, to consideration of armchairs and sofa(s). If they are close-covered, the winter's legacy from a family's deep relaxation can be very depressing. If loose-covered, a little cheerfulness can break in. Only the cleaning bill need be faced. Yet why not different sets of covers for spring and summer use? This practice is widespread in the United States and is beginning to catch on in Northern and Western Europe. The cost of a summer set need not be too intimidating: a surprisingly high number of stores seem only too keen to make your loose-covers at what seem to me uncommonly cut-throat prices-even without Mr Brown's lowered-prices prodding. Allied with this is the opportunity to use unconventional and inexpensive materials. In the United States, in what they so grandly call 'vacation houses', the cheapest of cottons are frequently used with considerable élan. Our gardening editor, when resident in India, used ordinary mattress ticking for loose-covering large settees, with, I understand on the soundest authority, enormous flair and effect.
Another means of bringing the outdoors indoors is to think twice before having any interior brickwork in a new house or an extension plastered, boarded or papered over. Try the experiment of painting the brickwork white. This can prove a brilliant and exciting background ground to pictures and greatly enlarge the apparent size of your room.
And as a final footnote to these thoughts, I do suggest that you also bear in mind that spring is also a time for fancies and fancifulness. You may not think that all of the fanciful ideas I have suggested are for you. Fine. It's a free world. But why not try your own hand at what is for you?
