This revelation about my lifestyle will make you drop your jaw in disbelief.
It doesn’t involve illicit substances, peculiar costumery or any activity that would contravene my stern moral code.
It involves a brush and pan. That’s right. You heard right. I abjure – it is not too strong a word – vacuum cleaners, and sweep my floors with a long-handled broom.
Conspiracy of things
I can see you are upset. “But, in the name of all that is sacred, why?” you wail.
I will tell you why, madam. It’s because vacuum cleaners just don’t work for me. Over the years, I’ve tried all the swanky ones but, after an initial month or so of success, none does the job that it’s paid for: picking up dust, fluff and detritus.
It’s just one of those things. Vacuum cleaners don’t like me. It’s like that with technology.
Sometimes, I have runs of bad luck with objects. Recently, a series of kitchen drawers started going doolally. One after the other, they went agley.
They were picking on me
Light bulbs, too, started going oot in quick succession. Then a series of batteries failed at the same time. It was disgraceful. I felt picked upon.
As to floors, I should explain I don’t have carpets. Indeed, I disapprove of them cordially.
You know I’ve a thing about wood anyway, but a particular reason for my carpet-phobia is that, in my last house, they were infested with moths. Seriously: hundreds of them.
Obviously, not being very regular with housework, I’d let this situation develop. But also I remember its genesis: one moth that used to hover about my computer.
Harold and his moth friends
I called him Harold, taught him to fetch sticks, and so on. But the little swine went away and started breeding, as wildlife is wont to do, and next thing the joint was infested.
All that said, I don’t even have wooden floor surfaces in my house. The living room has something called “engineered” wood, basically fake material with a veneer of real stuff on top.
But all the others are cheap vinyl, which I ought to replace, but can’t till I win the Lottery, which I won’t as I never buy a ticket. Why can’t they just give us the money?
Recently, seeing adverts for swanky new space-age vacuum cleaners, specially designed for hard floors, I must say I was tempted. Brushing by hand, so to say, is harder work.
Am I the last person like this….?
But I declined, knowing that after a couple of months, no matter how much I emptied the bags or container, the machine would decline to pick anything up and I’d be running wheels over the floors to no purpose.
I’m sure some of you must be thinking this cannot be correct. A man cannot be persecuted by vacuum cleaners. But I am.
Possibly, I’m the last person in the free world using a brush and pan, and you picture me stopping for a pinch of snuff and adjusting my top hat.
Powered lawnmowers: they never work for me either. I use hand mowers, though that’s partly from disliking the racket of petrol, electric and nuclear-powered ones.
It’s not as if I’m some sort of Luddite. In the meantime, I have to stop this column here as I’ve run out of ink for my quill.
