There are difficult days, like today, when I awake in the grip of the fever. My ablutions are performed hurriedly, as if there is no time to waste, even though it is still before dawn. If I can face breakfast, I bolt it, like a half-starved squirrel alighting upon a single discarded nut on the lawn of a municipal park. I pace up and down, disconsolate, muttering, eyes popping, my hair dishevelled and with beetles falling from it. I wander through the chartered streets and see in every face I meet signs of the same restlessness, signs of the same phrenzy. Aimless and distracted I return home. My limbs are aquiver but I snap them to stillness and manage to make a pot of tea. I turn on the kitchen radio and tune in to Tugboat Crew Playtime, hoping the tunes will soothe my brain. I feel as if there is a nest of vipers squirming in my vitals, but eventually I gather. I gather. And I walk as boldly as I can across the hall and push open the living room door and I look down…

And of course, it is fine. It is perfectly serviceable. A tad worn in places, a faded stain here or there, but nothing I cannot cope with. And thus does my carpet madness evaporate, and I am human again, no longer a demented thing.

I had resigned myself to these periodic attacks, but now it seems help is at hand. If my carpet madness gets worse, there is a remedy. According to the North Korean Central News Agency,

Products of the Pyongyang Carpet Factory are drawing interests of many people at home and abroad.

The factory, with a long history of carpet production, is producing various kinds of hand-woven carpet, machine-woven carpet and others to suit the world trend.

It is located in Sosong District of Pyongyang.

Pak Won Chol, director of the factory, said in an interview with KCNA to the following effect: The factory is making silk carpet good for health and longevity which the Korean ancestors had long used and wool carpet giving comfortable feeling.

A doctor once told me he thought my own “episodes” of carpet madness were brought on by a neurotic terror that my carpet did not suit the world trend. If that is indeed the cause, then I now know how to conquer the bonkersness once and for all.

Thanks to Mick Hartley for the link.