A while back, our old hoover died, and we bought a Dyson upright to replace it.

Now, while I don’t mind the thing in general, it does have a couple of things that piss me off every time I use the sodding thing. Number One is the power cord – call me picky, but having a power cable that has to be repeatedly looped around a couple of hooks every time you use it is a pain in the arse. Hasn’t Dyson heard of the automatic power reel?

The second one is the tools. They’ve been “designed” (and I use the term in its loosest possible sense) to sit in little slots atop the main cylinder. So of course every time you knock into something, or your leg brushes against the cleaner – say in rare circumstances, like when you’re taking the pissing thing up and down stairs – the sodding brushes pop out all over the place. It’s like they were just shoved in at the last moment, in an “Oh sod, what’ve we forgotten?” moment.

In fact, despite the fact that it’s actually a pretty good vacuum cleaner, I can’t help but feel that “Oh sod, we’ve forgotten something” pretty much sums up the design process for the entire thing.