Monday 20 November 2017

Diary of a skinflint


I have done my 1.5 hours work for today, and it was hard. I only had 5 hours sleep last night.

I went to check on the two young chaps who are carving my designs in two massive lumps of stone. Once I had reassured both them and myself that they had not made any massive and irretrievable mistakes so far, I went to my workshop 15 miles away to clean my cleaner.

Not many people know that you have to blow out all components of vacuum cleaners with a powerful air-line on a regular basis to maintain maximum performance, but I suppose not many people have powerful air-lines. I bought my current one from a woman who falls into both categories. It cost me £3.

My previous cleaner had sort of packed up, so when I saw this one in the charity shop I immediately bought it, intending to ultimately use it on the car. The woman in the shop said that it had just been dropped off by a mutual friend of ours, only a few minutes before I walked in.

I took it to the workshop and discovered that aside from emptying it, our friend had not carried out any maintenance on it whatsoever. She had not even washed the strawberry jam from the inside of the transparent collecting box.

I got a whole bagful of fine dust out of it (half of which I breathed in - you don't use powerful air-lines at home for this reason) and tested it. It worked better than my previous Dyson had before it broke down. It is a Bex Bissell shameless rip-off of the Dyson design. You could literally pick up a bowling-ball with it. The noise it makes breaks all the rules about decibel levels in the environment. When I start to use it I am usually in a fairly good mood, but by the time I finish I am an irritable nervous wreck that makes children cry.

I never bothered to spend the £70 it costs to get a technician around to service the Dyson, because although that price includes all replacement parts so you end up with optimum performance, the little blue thing only cost me £3 and I don't need two cleaners at home.

Just now I was walking down the street with the freshly cleaned vacuum-cleaner when I bumped into the original owner.

"Recognise this?" I asked.

She looked at it, blinked, then asked me where the hell I had got it from. It was about four years since she dropped it into the charity shop, and I don't think she believed it would ever be seen again, let alone used.

I should have asked her why she had sucked up a whole jam sandwich with it before she gave it away, but that might have brought back painful memories.

28 comments:

  1. You see? I do sometimes treat you to a lifestyle post. The next one will be cooking. I don't do ironing.

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  2. I had a Dyson once. I hated it after a few uses and gave it away. It was messy to empty, never did anything that other vacuums couldn't do and was a gimmicky cult thing and the only time men ever took any interest in vacuuming

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    1. It doesn't work like that in this house. I use the things, and if I don't like them I never buy them again. Dyson as a company is, generally, very good. The battery operated vacuums leave a bit to be desired in my experience.

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  3. I recently bought a new cleaner (€70) which was so good that I bought another, for upstairs. So far so good.

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  4. It's all about tools! My sister is a fabulous quilter because she is a talented artist, who buys good tools. One such tool is her "powerful air line," a compressor she uses to blow the lint from every crack and crevice of her incredible expensive sewing machine, before she even turns it on in the morning.
    I agree with Rachel on the Dyson. Highly overrated.

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    1. They are over-priced, not necessarily over-rated.

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  5. Well I like both my Dysons, one upstairs one down. But best of all is that the DP is the operator.

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    1. I am the main operator of most of the machinery around here, but I take no pride in that. Well, not much. I do all the cooking as well.

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    2. If DP is a man it sort of follows the male love of Dysons and a sudden interest in vacuuming which used to do the round of dinner parties when they first came out, Jill.

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    3. You are 20 years behind current trends, Rachel. I haven't been invited to a dinner party for longer than that, but I still do most of the cleaning with vacuums.

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    4. I know. But it reminded me of when the Dyson came out and all the female columnists were writing about the hot topic at dinner parties, the Dyson, and men previously never taking an interest in cleaning. I bought one on the recommendation of a man and thought immediately that my old Electrolux had been much better and went out a bought a new one and chucked the Dyson in the shed. I decided never again to take advice from a man about domestic appliances.

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    5. Oh yes. I remember that too. It was a bit like Apple computers. To be fair, Dyson is trying to encourage more women to become engineers. They have recently had parties of schoolgirls around to their headquarters and conditionally offered them jobs at the company.

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  6. I always vacuum with little rubber earplugs in my ears. Otherwise I would have a nervous breakdown at the end of it all.

    How do you know it was strawberry jam?

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  7. Strawberry jam or the remains of a lost hamster?

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  8. Jam sandwiches in your cleaner, an old Scotch egg behind John's kitchen units - really what is the world coming to?

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    Replies
    1. The world is coming to Worthers Originals stuck inside your bloomers, Weave.

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