The Christmas Hoover
I think that, round ours, we're cursed with hoovers. We're doomed with them. We seem to buy at least one a year. In comes the new one, full of promise. Its ailing elders sit around the house and they've seen it all before. They're looped in tubing and festooned with leads. What are they hoping for? That we'll plug them in and we'll give them another go? Maybe a rest will have restored them to maximum suck?
J.'s just destroyed our most recent model. No, it's the one before the one before last. The one that languished in the over-crowded cellar for a while. We should have known it couldn't be relied upon. But we pressganged the poor thing back into service. Sure enough, Christmas Eve lunchtime - getting the house prepared for the fun to come - there's a terrible scene. J. loses his temper and hoys the hoover out the front door. Now he's out there smashing it into splinters, on the very spot he chops up firewood.
Now the hoover's shattered and lying in pieces on the drive. Its dusty, fluffy, cat-hairy innards lie exposed in the snow. The brown paper bag of its heart has collapsed.
Out went the Dyson, several months ago. The orange thing that's supposed to swoosh hot soapy water about - that's even less cop. What it did really well was produced gallons of fermented, gunky soup.
In a wild and wonderful Christmas story the hoover would lie outside now on the ice and slush of our front path. It would lie there all day as the light faded. It would leak some lint and bits of fluff and try not to despair too much. At midnight tonight there would be a visitation by some kind of household appliance fairy. The whole thing would be observed by the various snowmen, Santas and Christmas ducks on our tree in the dining room. They had witnessed the whole atrocity that followed when the hoover had coughed and choked and sucked his last.
The Christmas toys and baubles would watch the Appliance Fairy bringing the hoover back to life. The hoover would be like Cinderella submitting to the ministrations of her Godmother. He'd gaze down at himself. He'd pull himself together with hardly any effort. Pulsating and glowing. His various panels would click into place around his fully-functioning and now decongested parts. His cables and tubing flash out like lasoos. Easily, with no snarling or tangling for the first time ever. Now it's time to set off and fly about the rooftops of Manchester. The snow's been bad. He could suck up the excessive drifting and leave just enough snow to keep the place decorative.
I told J: 'That's what I'll write. My Christmas Story this year will be about our hoover and how you knacked it. I *was* going to write a proper ghost story. I was going to write about that story my Mam told me on the phone the other night. About the guitar she and her twin were given by my Big Nanna when they were thirteen. The guitar that had mysteriously played itself in the night. But I'll hold that over for now and write the Christmas Hoover story instead and you'll be the big bad villain who reduced it to smithereens on Christmas Eve...'
He shrugged like he couldn't care less about the hoover. He was thinking about new hoovers. Thinking about the Sales to come on Boxing Day and everyone going bonkers in the Trafford Centre. The new appliances nervously waiting in showrooms and the pushing and shoving of the queues. Well, I can't stand sales these days, personally, so maybe I'll stay home in the half-vacuumed house.
Tonight I reckon that the Christmas Hoover will sweep up over Levenshume and Fallowfield and up Victoria Park. It'll soar over the towers of the Palace Hotel and the Town Hall and across the dome of the Central Library. It'll swing about the Arndale Centre, now miraculously empty of shoppers and then it'll swoosh up the frozen canals. Startling geese and - what was it Alicia saw by the canal yesterday? - the ocasional heron. Then up and down the neon bunting of the Curry Mile and the crisp blankness of Platt Fields park. Chugging along on its tiny motor. Not clapped out yet. Through the wintry clouds: our hoover moonlighting far away from home. Longer than any lead would stretch. He'll be turning end over end. No one to push him around. Deciding where he wants to go for himself.
I'm not sure where he'll end up in the early hours. Snowmen melt, don't they? Reindeer return to their stables in the far north. Fairies dissipate in a shower of tinsel. I reckon our hoover will come shuffling back up the gravel of our front garden in the dark hours before dawn. He'll know the house has loads of broken things that might yet get mended. He'll sit by the door on Christmas morning and cough politely and hopefully.
J.'s just destroyed our most recent model. No, it's the one before the one before last. The one that languished in the over-crowded cellar for a while. We should have known it couldn't be relied upon. But we pressganged the poor thing back into service. Sure enough, Christmas Eve lunchtime - getting the house prepared for the fun to come - there's a terrible scene. J. loses his temper and hoys the hoover out the front door. Now he's out there smashing it into splinters, on the very spot he chops up firewood.
Now the hoover's shattered and lying in pieces on the drive. Its dusty, fluffy, cat-hairy innards lie exposed in the snow. The brown paper bag of its heart has collapsed.
Out went the Dyson, several months ago. The orange thing that's supposed to swoosh hot soapy water about - that's even less cop. What it did really well was produced gallons of fermented, gunky soup.
In a wild and wonderful Christmas story the hoover would lie outside now on the ice and slush of our front path. It would lie there all day as the light faded. It would leak some lint and bits of fluff and try not to despair too much. At midnight tonight there would be a visitation by some kind of household appliance fairy. The whole thing would be observed by the various snowmen, Santas and Christmas ducks on our tree in the dining room. They had witnessed the whole atrocity that followed when the hoover had coughed and choked and sucked his last.
The Christmas toys and baubles would watch the Appliance Fairy bringing the hoover back to life. The hoover would be like Cinderella submitting to the ministrations of her Godmother. He'd gaze down at himself. He'd pull himself together with hardly any effort. Pulsating and glowing. His various panels would click into place around his fully-functioning and now decongested parts. His cables and tubing flash out like lasoos. Easily, with no snarling or tangling for the first time ever. Now it's time to set off and fly about the rooftops of Manchester. The snow's been bad. He could suck up the excessive drifting and leave just enough snow to keep the place decorative.
I told J: 'That's what I'll write. My Christmas Story this year will be about our hoover and how you knacked it. I *was* going to write a proper ghost story. I was going to write about that story my Mam told me on the phone the other night. About the guitar she and her twin were given by my Big Nanna when they were thirteen. The guitar that had mysteriously played itself in the night. But I'll hold that over for now and write the Christmas Hoover story instead and you'll be the big bad villain who reduced it to smithereens on Christmas Eve...'
He shrugged like he couldn't care less about the hoover. He was thinking about new hoovers. Thinking about the Sales to come on Boxing Day and everyone going bonkers in the Trafford Centre. The new appliances nervously waiting in showrooms and the pushing and shoving of the queues. Well, I can't stand sales these days, personally, so maybe I'll stay home in the half-vacuumed house.
Tonight I reckon that the Christmas Hoover will sweep up over Levenshume and Fallowfield and up Victoria Park. It'll soar over the towers of the Palace Hotel and the Town Hall and across the dome of the Central Library. It'll swing about the Arndale Centre, now miraculously empty of shoppers and then it'll swoosh up the frozen canals. Startling geese and - what was it Alicia saw by the canal yesterday? - the ocasional heron. Then up and down the neon bunting of the Curry Mile and the crisp blankness of Platt Fields park. Chugging along on its tiny motor. Not clapped out yet. Through the wintry clouds: our hoover moonlighting far away from home. Longer than any lead would stretch. He'll be turning end over end. No one to push him around. Deciding where he wants to go for himself.
I'm not sure where he'll end up in the early hours. Snowmen melt, don't they? Reindeer return to their stables in the far north. Fairies dissipate in a shower of tinsel. I reckon our hoover will come shuffling back up the gravel of our front garden in the dark hours before dawn. He'll know the house has loads of broken things that might yet get mended. He'll sit by the door on Christmas morning and cough politely and hopefully.
1 Comments:
Try a Miele! My missus swears by them and at Dysons.
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