Many happy returns

Happy New Vac!

“Dad, can we have one?”

Last week, just before Christmas, I was working in the shop where I work. As one does. And we were expressly asked by the Shop Manager to wish all customers a Merry Christmas. Which we did. One customer replied in a joyful strain, “Many happy returns.” He can’t, of course, have known that it wasn’t my birthday, but it would soon be Jesus’s birthday, so I reckon it was appropriate enough. However, my own wishes were always conditioned upon when it comes. For we should never wish our lives away for nothing. Christmas starts on the evening of the 24th December and ends on the evening of the 6th January. And before then or after then is not Christmas.

Yesterday, I was greeted by cheery customers all wishing me a happy new year, and, just as the millennium could arguably have begun in 2000, even though it mathematically only began in 2001 (Ronald Bolt, who wrote my maths books at school, and then taught me out of them, always said, “It depends on when you start counting from”), so a new year can technically begin from whenever it is you choose to start counting. Many of us start counting from our birthdays, so why not wish people Happy New Year every day?

My house mate wants to buy a new vacuum cleaner. My Dyson is 25 years old and he considers that it doesn’t owe us anything. Twenty euros a year it has cost me, says he. I argued with him that if it does another year, that will be a free year, therefore. And the year after that, until the replacement motor he fitted three years ago gives up the ghost. Problem is there is a hole in the tube connecting the head to the lance. So, it only half sucks. And the other half sucks.

“I emptied the container and used it and now it’s half full again, so it works,” said he, who, as a former repairman for domestic appliances vaunts his skills as If there’s a wire in it, I can fix it. He hoovers his room twice a year whether it needs it or not. It is almost physically impossible for even a sharp intake of breath in his room not to suck up a considerable quantity of dust, let alone a half-knackered vacuum cleaner.

I dismissed that counterargument before even mouthing it and asked him, if it still works, even half as well as it should, why the blazes do we need to buy a new one? The discussion seemed to be going around in circles, like the vortex that the Dyson generates when half-cleaning the floors.

So, because half the village was waiting at the sub-post office today, I abandoned the idea of sending a New Year’s card to Italy (it can go in the new year, when it won’t any longer be happy new year but the recipient will hopefully have understanding for the sentiment nonetheless), I popped across the road to the electrical appliances shop and started browsing the vacuum cleaners, because if my house mate is to expend his hard-earned cash on a new device, he can at least expend it in the village and not at some mail order company. Or other.

They have Samsungs, which are battery powered, and I’m not keen on batteries. Pollution, y’see. They have Henrys, which is what we use at the shop where I work. “Ah, yes,” said Mrs Rochette, “Lots of commercial firms use Henrys.” Then my eyes turned to the star of their show: the Mieles, which conceal their attachments like some latter-day Marvel Transformer. You could barely see them. Tucked away like some baby in its cot.

“Three hundred and seventy euros,” I mused. “For that kind of money—not my money you must understand, Mrs Rochette—I expect it to last for 20 years and more,” which was not even the Abrahamic period that my Dyson had limped along.

Mrs Rochette had an answer for me. “Nothing lasts that kind of time these days.” “Except,” I interjected, “you and me, Mrs Rochette! We soldier on, whilst the vacuum cleaners of this world fall forlorn by the wayside!”

And, as I said it, a shroud of cynicism enveloped me: is that what extending our lifespans is all about? So that we, the wealthy, with tons of disposable income, can live longer to buy more vacuum cleaners? And the poor, who sweep up with a brush and dustpan, are left to perish at an early age, for the simple reason that they will never buy so much as one vacuum cleaner, let alone a replacement after a replacement after a replacement? Surely, extending the life expectancy of the population is all about rewarding people for healthy life choices and imparting to them a sense of national community? Surely it cannot all be predicated on flogging them more tat as they advance into the autumn of their years?

Many, many happy returns I send to you this new year. And to domestic appliance shops the world over.