There are muddy paw prints on our duvet, there’s tortoise pee on the kitchen floor and moth holes in the carpet: we have no business owning nice things

My wife asked for a new stair carpet for Christmas, which made things easy for me: all I had to do was print out a picture of some stairs with carpet on them, put it in an envelope and stick a bow on it. Basically I was saying: order some carpet in January, and I will pay.

But with the arrival of the new year I discover a problem with this plan: we simply aren’t done ruining the old stair carpet. Yes, the cat has sharpened its claws on it, and the old dog has peed on it, and the new dog has peed on it in imitation of the old dog, and moths have attacked its upper reaches. But it could be worse, and as yet we have no practical strategy that would stop the same things happening to a new stair carpet.