Since living on my own during the last four years or so, I have found that the Holy Grail in my life is the discovery of a vacuum cleaner that actually carries out the task its elaborate brand name gives it. Of course, I know as well as anyone that the simple solution to vacuum cleaning is to go out and spend over three hundred pounds on a Dyson, but because I live in a modest two bedroom house, it would feel a bit like buying a Ferrari and moving to Isle of Skye. What I have required is a vacuum cleaner that is more like a Volkswagen or an Audi, solid and reliable. However until today, I have failed miserably in a quest to find anything better than a Robin Reliant.

My first vacuum cleaner was a Sainsbury’s home branded piece of wank that I wheeled around my living room for fifteen minutes only to discover that it had the lung power of a seventy five year old who had spent the last fifty years working in an asbestos factory smoking Capstan non filters. The minuscule particles of dust it did pick up were soon coughed up thus making this thing so nondescript as a vacuum cleaner it beggared belief. I suppose at thirty odd quid I shouldn’t have expected much more and I can only guess it was initially a kids toy and after it didn’t sell too well, someone in the marketing department said “Sod it, stick in the cleaning section, there’s bound to be some sad twat who has just got divorced and will think it is a good deal.” I was that sad twat, in fact I was so ashamed that I had bought it, I never did take it back, I think it eventually went for sixteen pence at the October 2008 Broughton jumble sale.

Next up for me was a rather slick number called a Dirt Devil. With it’s slender curves and high gloss deep red and silver bodywork this little baby looked like it meant business with it’s numerous attachments designed for cleaning fuck knows what.  At a rather more eye catching eighty pounds, I expected a little more from this than the Sainsbury’s home branded effort, but no, once again I was graced with a piece of complete an utter wank. Hoovering with this thing was at best uninspiring, it reminded me of driving up Ashford Hill in an Austin Maxi and changing up to fifth gear three quarters of the way up, it was totally gutless. Maybe it was me, maybe I just didn’t know how to handle a vacuum cleaner? Was there some secret vacuum cleaning method out there I was yet to discover? Whatever the case was, I was now effectively a 1950’s housewife, on my hands and knees cleaning my house with a dustpan and stiff brush, which, if nothing else, is a pretty good calorie burner. All I needed now was a mangle to do the laundry with, an outside toilet, a tin bath in the kitchen and a cloth capped man to give me a clip around the ear if dinner was five minutes late.

My manual cleaning was briefly interrupted when my girlfriend/lady friend/partner Diane, handed down to me a vacuum cleaner she had never used. It ought to have been called a Megawank Non Suction 2000 but it had some other preposterously ambitious name that would make you believe that it actually inhaled dust and dirt from your floor. It was similar to the Dirt Devil, but was silver and blue this time, all pompous and full of bullshit, a bit like the Conservative front bench. It is now sat redundant in my cupboard next to the Dirt Devil. If hoovers could talk they would no doubt be engaging in conversations about my bitter rejection, how impatient I was, or what on earth did I expect for eighty quid? Something that inhales dirt would be my answer. I kept thinking Dyson, after all, I had already written off one hundred and ten pounds, if I carried on like this I would have a cupboard full of discarded vacuum cleaners and an wallet emptier than if I bought a decent one, this was getting that ridiculous.

So today, I bit the bullet, I decided that after a semi pleasurable experience with a Henry at our cricket club,  I was going to buy one  for a mere one hundred and ten pounds, taking my hoover tally to two hundred and twenty pounds, still one hundred short of the Dyson that I had now gone in to complete denial about ever purchasing. I marched confidently in to Sainsbury’s and despite the fact it was adorning a smiling face I wanted to kick, I reached up to the Henry……but wait……….next door to it was a Vac Mach Air Vaccuum cleaner, standing there, orange and silver this time, looking at me, tempting me with it’s 300 watts of constant air suction and multiple attachments for skirting boards, cobwebs and wooden floors. Oh believe me, it was a little beauty, it really was, all sleek and curvaceous, it was bordering on erotic. I looked at the smiling Henry then back at the Vac Mach Air, briefly pausing to reflect on what a desperately sad individual I had become, then I walked away to buy some vegetables. I needed time to think.

Vac Mach Air: A Little Beauty that actually works

I went back again, my eyes were darting between the two as if though I was watching a tennis match, whilst meanwhile, alongside me a poverty stricken lady picked up a Sainsburys Basics hoover. I urged her not to make the bitter mistakes I had made and to go and buy a dustpan brush instead (she could have done with losing a pound or two) and she walked away empty handed and slightly bemused or perhaps rather alarmed by my passionate thespian like speech. My final decision was purely based on the fact that I decided that Henry looked to annoying for my liking, I could imagine myself say “what are you smiling at you useless bastard?” when it went wrong or it refused to move any further as the lead strained to breaking point from the bottom of the stairs. So after much deliberation the Vac Mach it was (£110.00 down from £190.00 allegedly) and I rushed home with adrenalin pumping through me as I salivated at the prospect of trying it out. Once again, I paused for thought, what sort of  pathetic, cretinous individual, gets himself in to such a state that the imminent results of a vacuum cleaner can cause such excitement?

“Well?” I hear you all cry……………………….“How was it?”

Well, would you believe it, the little bugger works, it’s so brilliant I even hoovered the car out as well. It is really easy to wheel around and has an extra long cable that fizzes delightfully back in to the machine at the lightest touch of the button. Yes ladies and gentlemen the Vac Mach Air Cleaner is worth every penny, to hear the clickety clack of dust and dirt zooming up the metal pipe as it lifts the carpet temporarily from the floor is a pleasure to behold. How long it lasts, who knows, but it has a six year guarantee, so if I get that amount of time out of it I will be delighted. Apparently, according to the instructions that are now in the bin, you can easily wash the filters and all the other stuff under a tap. How cool is that? I know it’s only twenty four hours since I purchased it and I accept that I am still in the honeymoon period, but finally, I think I may have found the one for me.

With it’s fantastic suction power, good looks and easy maneuverability, I am going to use the Vac Mach Air for cleaning my house, if you are a sexual deviant or a lonely housewife, what you do with it is entirely up to you.