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.