I have no idea when the last time I vacuumed a floor was. That is, until today.
Today, my shiny new Dyson arrived. It’s a bit of an animal, but it needs to be to get a certain long-haired cat’s fur off the floor. Its being moulting season doesn’t help.
I took delivery of it and heaved it into the living room. Getting it out of the box proved a challenge. They’d trapped the bottom end inside with cardboard, so I couldn’t just pull it out of the top of the box. Nor could I pull it out of the bottom of the box. I had to open the whole length of the box. This seemed excessive to me.
Once it was freed, I looked at all the pieces and assumed they must all fit together somehow. I looked at the instructions. There were lots of pictures of putting things into place with a satisfying click sound. The reality was slightly less satisfying — partly because I was scared of breaking it and partly because the instructions weren’t overly detailed — but I eventually got the all the things in the right places.
Instead of the usual castors, it has a big ball, maybe about the size of a basketball. It has a couple of castors to stabilise it when it’s standing upright, too. These castors move up out of the way when you pull the handle back to start using the Dyson. The first time I did this, I thought I’d broken it.
I tested it out on the living room carpet. The carpet is tabby fur on cream, decorated with dark speckles and blobs of cat hair. The hoover sucked up the fur — all of it, leaving only a cream carpet with dark speckles. What a difference.
The vacuum cleaner was quite heavy, but the ball makes it more manoeuvrable than normal ones. It was also a tad loud, but aren’t they all?
Then I hoovered the kitchen floor. You have to turn the rotating brush off for hard floors. There’s a button and everything.
You never know: I might even use the Dyson again.
