Longing for cheap parquet

I've always liked the colour green in most of its incarnations. I wear a lot of green, I decorate with lots of green, I like landscapes that are green. My blog is green! But all of this may change.

The new flat has a lot going for it. Anyone familiar with our old apartment knows that we will sacrifice a fair bit in the way of comfort and attractiveness in order to be able to walk or bike anywhere we need to go. Well, there's a local pub around the corner, and a gym, grocery stores, pharmacies, a post office and health food store within a few minutes' walk. The flat is also clean and spacious, has good water pressure (yay!), a modern white kitchen area with a washing machine (yay!), and a friendly, professional building owner/landlord (bonus!). It's a furnished flat, but the 1980s upholstery on the barely-used sofa and armchairs is the only real unpleasantness.

But.

What do the British have against a nice hardwood floor? Or an imitation lacquered floor? Or even ill-fitted parquet flooring? Why did every single flat we looked at have nasty wall-to-wall carpeting in obtrusive colours? (One flat smelled of hamster chips, and since it was empty it must have been the astroturf-textured carpeting.) These are not cheap properties, by the way. While our flat was the best of the bunch by far, we have not escaped the carpet curse. Tell me, how does a person rationalize carpeting a BATHROOM? And, uh, it's all green. All of it. Every room (except, mercifully, the little kitchen area). Even better, in the living room the green carpet merges into monochromatic heavy green floor-to ceiling drapery over the front window. We had to replace nice sage-green towels (which I would normally love) because they elicited a violent reaction when hung on a towel bar above the carpet.


Argh!


Cute kitchen, but note the green "accent" mat.

I shouldn't complain. We were lucky to get a decent flat given that we still feel a bit like illegal aliens. Our experiences setting up bank accounts, even with the university's "help", is a funny story. Or would be, if it were happening to someone else. My sense of humour around bureacratic redundancies and administrative inefficiency is ebbing away.

Loving:
Season 3 of "Shameless", sitting on pub patios in February, the walk into town from the flat, how they use the coolest music even on lame family tv shows here (Aphex Twin, Ladytron, etc.).

Missing:
North American banks (never thought I'd say that), Olympic coverage and the Canadian media's obsession with medal counts (how are we doing?), Second Cup, those crisp sunny winter days.

Puzzled by:
The Kaiser Chiefs' sweep of the Brit Awards. They're okay, but, wha?