Isn’t this little chap just the sweetest thing?

I have to confess to not having done any vacuuming for many years before moving to Cornwall – it was all done by Jo the Naked Housekeeper! Why is this important other than to show that I’m spoilt? Well, when my old vacuum broke down I bought a Dyson. Well, come on, it was British and you know how passionate I am about supporting ‘locally produced’ stuff. It also had a great reputation and had won design awards. So I bought one – a swanky, top of the range Dyson animal. It didn’t worry me that they were twice the price of most other vacuum cleaners because I do believe you get what you pay for and David Alstead’s law of gadgets is buy the best you can afford.

I didn’t take any notice when Jo complained about it – after all, she chunnered on about so much stuff that I spent ages filtering what I felt I needed to know and the fact that she thought the Dyson was crap didn’t worry me overly. Then DM started to moan about it too as he was always being asked to unblock it when it kept blocking up.

When it died after only eighteen months of use, I ignored both of their pleas and bought another one. Not only that but I bought two – one for Sandhurst and one for Cornwall. So now you can add stupid and stubborn to my spoilt-ness!

Now I do my own vacuuming (well, I share this hated chore in a frenzied way with DM), I started to get what they were on about. You see, they are (and I now know this to be fact because I have owned three of the wretched things) completely useless. Yep, absolutely shocking.

You see all that old rubbish about ‘no loss of suction, ever’ simply isn’t true. On average, I’d say we lost suction about once a month because they just keel over when their ‘lifetime filters’ get clogged. The design (awards or no) is so poor that once this event happens, you are stuck with an unusable vacuum cleaner for 24 hours while you wash and dry the bloody things. Oh and quite frequently in the meantime you also have to stick an unbent coat hanger up the plastic tubes to poke out the dog hair and other muck too – it’s absolutely revolting. Not to mention the rest of its bad design, like the fact that you can’t use the pokey thing without unfurling all of the flex that you then trip over ad infinitum and the fact that it’s all too easy to accidentally undo the catch of the bowl thingy on the way to the bin and dump the entire contents on the floor.

So, when we were trying to clear up after the fireplace was opened up last weekend and both Dyson’s were rendered unusable because the filters were clogged, we decided that it was either not be able to clear up for 24 hours or do something sensible and go buy a new one.

Ha. No more crappy Dysons in this house. We’ve got Henry Hound, who does a smashing job, with better suction than the Dyson, has a fabulous cord rewind thingy, bags that you can get out without putting the rubbish back all over the floor and to top the lot, he follows you around with a cheery little smile on his face, making the chore of vacuuming seem much less horrid.

Interestingly when we took one of the two Dysons to the dump and went to put it in the 'reuse' pile (our council is very keen on reusing - hurrah for them), the chap running the place asked me if it was still working and I replied 'yes, the only reason we're dumping it is because it is, er well, quite frankly completely crap'. The guy smiled a broad smile and said 'you'll not believe how many people say that.....and it's only ever Dysons we get in that work but people don't want them anymore!'

When I got home from work, after another marathon day, I saw Henry’s face and decided that I could describe his photo as a ‘lack of time/inspiration’ or I could tell the truth – Henry is a jolly little thing and a pleasure to use and Dysons suck – or more to the point, they ‘don’t suck, ever’!

BTW - now I can't make up my mind if I've plumbed the depths totally by spending half an hour writing about my vacuum cleaner or if I've 'done good' - I reckon if there is anyone out there who's put off a Dyson by my remarks I'll have done good because they are truly a waste of money.

I was showing signs of pyromania last year!