Dust to dust...

CHRIS BENNETT has been buying appliances for his cottage and its idyllic lifestyle in Palm Beach.

A SIMPLE, or so I would have thought, task like buying a hoover or a washing machine has taken on new meaning in recent years.

These fairly rare events (how often do we have to get a new one?) are now made hard by the handbook that comes with the thing.

In my new house I have very little space, and so the old hoover was donated to a worthy cause and the washing machine and tumbler were sold.

The old vacuum cleaner had been a symphony of pipes, cords and fiddly little devices for cleaning curtains, books, soft furnishings, mats, especially the black mat that came with a cat, tiled floors, carpeted floors, ceilings and just about everything. However, you needed a train of bearers to carry the thing around the house.

So it was with no small air of triumph that I arrived home with the new device. The box bore the legend, in large letters, ‘Made in Korea’. It didn’t say which one, but I have since worked out that it must be the south.

Inside I found what at first appeared to be a large plastic rabbit, in crouched repose as only rabbits and cats can be. It was instantly named ‘Harvey’.

On closer inspection I noticed that it had two very big wheels at the back and two very small wheels at the front. So far so good.

The handbook looked at me and I looked at the handbook. I braced myself for something that had been written in Korean by a committee, and then translated into English by another committee. Usually brochures of this sort carry questions such as, “Or what this are?”

I settled myself down for an enlightening break in routine. The cleaner, which is decorated with flowers as though it were Meissen porcelain, is rather fragile looking. I had visions of my trusty Zulu friend dragging this lot around the house. We both had a surprise in store. He found it very effective, and treated this rather superior device with the respect I am sure it would have received in the Orient, and I found it was almost silent.

Few things are as numbing as the sound of a vacuum cleaner, with the exception maybe of a chain saw, and one of those over-revved and blighted devices with which what appear to be inhabitants of Tattooine progress through the village and de-weed the place.

So here was peace. A nearly silent vacuum cleaner and a nice clean house.

The instruction book, by the way, posed little problem.