Sucking up

I'm a traditional sort of fellow. You know, white weddings in Churches, politics that mean something, a hoover that actually inhales the dirt.

I was mulling this over as I was pacing the kitchen on my short little legs pushing the hoover to and fro, considering its unfeasible weight. Or how I am finding that age is diminishing what little strength I had by the moment.
As I hoovered I glimpsed the video machine that the 18 yr old has finally set up for us a mere 10 months after we moved because doing so meant getting down on one knee and, further, required a basic understanding of Scart technology. When I last set-up a video all you did was plug in the aerial and there was one more lead to deal with and, er, that was it. Now it seems to have three cables, two Scarts and something else. When I first did it, a couple of weeks ago, it switched itself off every 3 minutes: terribly frustrating when you want to see who it was what did what to whom in Five Days.

So I was having these warm comfy slippers and a pipe traditional moments while hoovering away, when a real thought interrupted me: I've already done those bits of crap on the kitchen floor. They should now be revolving around the hoover cylinder on their way to the dump via the black bin bag, the dustbin men and probably some great lorry to a port where they will be shipped out to sea to be dumped over the heads of some innocent fish who will graze their way through the detritus and then get caught up in a great trawler net, landed, gutted and delivered on some great lorry to the local supermarket, where I shall buy them and end up eating my own garden mud. Much quicker to just ingest the garden direct. And much more efficient than trying to pick it up using a Dyson.

They don't work terribly well. Well, hold the Front Page.

This is the third Dyson I've been exposed to. And none of them have worked very well. They just sort of nibble a bit at the dirt, but never actually picking up anything serious. I've never fallen so low as to buying one, but the OH has this enormous great yellow Dyson thing* that weighs approaching four tonnes and has a ball joint, and the most useless sort of wand affair for reaching, ha! if only, into nooks and crannies. Utterly hopeless, but she swears by it. I simply swear at it. Great big useless piece of crap. At least it's safe in the knowledge that, as a piece of crap, it will never get hoovered up. Not in this house; because we have Dyson.

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Footnote: I've just redone the floor with the Miele vacuum cleaner, complete with apparently hopeless bag. And now, only now, does it look clean.


*Perhaps I should tell you one day how it came to pass that she has it, pressed into her hands by none other than James himself.