Thursday 7th Jan

Well news of the day is the arrival of my new vacuum - I succumbed, much as I dislike the back story to all this - in particular the decision to move production to the far east, thus closing down the local factory in Wiltshire & throwing people out of work in an area where work is very hard to come by. Why, you may ask - because I've been wracked with guilt over it ever since I made the last click on the website I used, yep, I wouldn't go so far as to say it's given me sleepless nights, but I really do - even now it's sitting in the bedroom, feel a very strong sense of guilt. So why did I buy the damn thing?
Well, firstly because of the wretched round thing. However you cut it, whatever you think of his decisions, there's a first class engineering mind behind it, and coming from an engineering family, it's something I have a good deal of respect for. I mean come on, it's made the most revolutionary changes to vacuuming - something we all have to do, and something most of us have a sort of low level dislike of, and its dispensed with the worst parts of it - excusing the bit about getting it out, switching it on and actually doing it. Firstly the no bag bit - yay, to never have to go through the process of changing the bag! I've just vacuumed the flat, and I had to empty the cyclone thingy 3 times, which just goes to show what a good little machine this is - the amount of dust and dirt it's picked up - but, yes I know, if I'm emptying it 3 times daily I'm not going to be particularly thrilled. But this is the first time, it's a brand new machine, and I'm hoping it's picked up stuff that no other vacuum machine has made contact with. The round thing itself - well it takes a bit of getting used to. It really does glide around things and you find yourself going back and forwards out of sheer habit! It's a bit heavier and clunkier than I expected it to be, but it's footprint is quite reasonable, and I fully expect to get it into my hall closet when I've got the time to clear it out and organise a space for it.
But none of this, not one single hair that it's picked up, not a single fleck of dust excuses what happened to the original factory. This is something that neither manufacturers, nor government seem to get very much these days, that life is not about who is able to make the most money. There won't be a single occasion that I use it when I won't be thinking about that, and cursing the fact that I couldn't get some other manufacturers bagless for the same price, or the fact I can't get a "round thing" anywhere else. This thing has come - get this - with a little pamphlet giving the history of the company which doesn't tell you a great deal beyond having some flashy photo's. There should have been a thriving Wiltshire factory behind this thing, one that wasn't too far away from my family home, providing employment and boosting the local economy. I won't go in to exactly why this didn't come to be, because it's a long story, and I'm sure there probably where difficulties on both sides - but it still doesn't get round the tricky problem of the fact that life is not about who can make the most money in the shortest possible amount of time.