The Boiled Egg of Infinity

Following on from my recent efforts to clean out my flat, we started on my better half’s place last night. I got off to a strong start, working in the big bedroom cupboard and quickly building up piles of clothes to be washed or donated to a local charity shop (turns out I have more than a few t-shirts I completely forgot I owned, and a veritable mountain of underwear…I am, as my better half kindly pointed out, the Imelda Marcos of boxer shorts) but quickly fizzled, retiring from the bedroom cupboard field and instead working in the living room, tidying up the TV unit and running the vacuum cleaner around the place. I called it sticking to my strengths. Judging by the ever-so-slight look I got as my opposite number dug through piles of unwashed socks, I think it might also be categorized as being a bastard and cherrypicking the good jobs.

I have to say I had great fun with the hose attachment for the vacuum cleaner. My better half has one of those fancy Dyson things, which always looks to me as if it’s been nicked from the cleaning cupboard on the starship Enterprise. The proud boast of the Dyson brand is that their cleaners, because of their clever “cyclone” design, never lose suction. No matter what you try to pick up. Well I ask you, what was I supposed to do? Such statements cannot be allowed to stand untested. We live in a scientific age. Of course I had to hide my experiments whenever you-know-who went by with another pile of dirty washing, but that’s nothing unusual. True pioneers are often persecuted and unappreciated in their own times.

For the record, Dyson vacuum cleaners will pick up pennies no problem. Balls of paper, easy. They don’t like pens and tend to spit them back out after a second or so of angry clattering sounds, but they can even have a go at decorative glass beads. The ping-pong ball I found resulted in the best fun, even though it blocked the hose completely and made the vacuum cleaner make the most terrifying “HHOOOOO” sound as the tube was blocked.

That was when disaster struck. Again, like all true pioneers, my own curiosity and devotion to the scientific ideal was my downfall. The ping-pong ball, I reasoned, is round and shiny. So, alas, is my head thanks to a defective consignment of hairline genes from my dad. Shiny ball. Shiny noodle. Not much between them when you look at it. If the vacuum hose can hold on to one then surely it can…

HHHOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

It took a surprising amount of effort to pull the hose attachment off my forehead, truth be told. The overall effect for that magical moment was a bit like the scene in Starship Troopers where the guy gets his brain sucked out by the huge fat bug. Still, flushed with amusement and a fair sense of having contributed to the body of human knowledge, I put the hose back in the cleaner and went on to do other stuff. That is, until my better half pointed out that my “work” had left me with a memento to treasure. Where I grew up they were always called “nookie badges”. I think Americans call them “hickeys”, and I’ve heard them referred to as “love bites” by other people. Whatever you call them I had a spectacular (and perfectly, absolutely circular) one dead-centre on my forehead all of last night. Even today it’s still visible, though thankfully faded quite a bit.