The east coast wind calmed yesterday and this morning was replaced with torrential rain but its still been a pleasant weekend all in all. Looking out this morning, after the rain, I caught sight of confirmation that, despite views to the contrary, I have grown up. The sight of a child, no more than seven years of age, building a somewhat extravagant sand castle was that of a true child at work. The little lad was dressed up in winter clothes and had thick woollen gloves on but did it stop him? did it hell! Not for him the warmth of a café or a pub, he wasn’t going to simply observe he was a bold explorer and this empty beach was his.
He toiled against the wind, quickly working out that letting go of sand was a bad idea unless you faced downwind. The result was quite impressive, reasonable architectural merit and good proportions. It was all the more impressive for being the work of a seven year old in October! I for one salute the young man for his stoic refusal to bow to nature, it will serve him well.
Because I am grown up I didn’t spend the day building sandcastles, somehow I think I missed out. I chose to shampoo the hallway carpet, hey why not? I have no idea of the etiquette of carpet shampooing, I vacuum regularly but the concept of washing carpet has always been a battle except, of course, for when you move in. Having set up the monstrous carpet washer and pre vacuuming the carpet, why does it have to be clean first?, I was away. Now I am not a carpet engineer but there is nothing in this top of the line cleaner that makes me think that it does anything other than spray water on top of the carpet and then vacuum it off.
If, as they would have us believe, our carpets are hideous greasy objects then how does this clean them? The machine that I have has rotating brushes but they don’t force themselves into the carpet they float along the top tickling it. There is no concept of scrubbing so, as far as I can make out, it simply lays the solution on top. But, and here’s the rub, the vacuumed solution is filthy. I believe that there is a filter in the machine that colours the water to make us feel better, make us believe that we have cleaned something.
To further support my theory the carpet washer collected sand. Now I know that there is sand in the flat, it is a consequence of living so close to the beach, but I had just vacuumed! Somebody is lying to me, either the Dyson super cyclone monster is missing something or the Vax carpet scrubber is making up the residue. My money is on them both lying and I think that it all started when the world went clear. What was the reason that all vacuum cleaners started getting clear bins? Why was it that the manufacturers thought we wanted to look at the dirt, like our own miniature ant farm? They didn’t but they knew that if we had clear bins we would see the ‘dirt’ and convince ourselves of the need to clean more often, its all a fix!
Mark my words sooner or later there will be an expose in the Sunday newspapers about carpet cleaners that sell us a solution that goes grey on contact with water and vacuum cleaners that come pre loaded with dirt to make it look like they are working.
For those following the other project the current number is 11,488
