Tuesday morning and I'm in bed with the mumps. Not too sick but forbidden from any activities until the end of the week. No school. Hooray! Miss Marney's Year 4 Class will have to cope without me. The only special treat is a comic, normally banned from this fairly literary household. Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows, Anne of Green Gables, Black Beauty and Famous Five books are the standard fare creating imaginary worlds of hazy green fields, wildflower meadows, ancient oaks, picnics in woods and a jolly mother who bakes in a warm kitchen.

None of these images match the reality of family life in the sunburnt Western Australia I inhabit. Coastal scrubby bush and bare white sand-hills simmer under a mid-summer blaze. A few tall eucalypts stick up out of the dry sticks and grass. Picnics are annual affairs and require a long, hot drive to a dry bushy setting where a rug temporarily covers ants, spiders and other bitey insects. Dad stomps loudly warning off snakes and scaring the wits out of us kids. Curried egg sandwiches followed by a slice of watermelon is about as good as it gets. Once home again, my mother inhabits a hot kitchen along with our slow combustion wood stove and is not jolly.

Particularly on Tuesdays as this is floor-polishing day. Our house is modest in size but the floor area seems vast once down on your hands and knees with a rag and a tin of Relax floor polish. The floor is of jarrah boards. A beautiful burnished red but still just boards.

Only a few weeks after my mumps episode my mother has a lottery ticket win (well second prize actually). After a more jolly mother receives her winnings, our family is the first in the neighbourhood to have wall-to-wall carpet fitted. Disappointedly for my mother it does not offer magical transport to freedom but for us kids it is luxury to drag your bare feet through the soft dove-grey pile. Then roll over and over on the vast expanse of cloud-like flooring. Bliss. But then come the rules. When, who and how this wonderful new sensation can be explored is strictly managed. As it happens, kids and dogs are mostly banned. Cats are allowed as well as admiring adult-sized visitors. Plastic strips are laid over the high traffic areas so bare feet cannot come in contact with the velvety grey stuff. My mother's brief euphoria and dreams of escaping her domestic drudgery have evaporated.

After the initial excitement it is clear that polishing boards seemed a much less stressful Tuesday event than the seven day a week anxiety of getting from one room to another without a scream coming from the overheated kitchen.

‘For God's sake. How many times do I have to tell you not to walk on the carpet!'

Any jolliness has vanished along with the beautiful, friendly old boards.