Dyson vacuum cleaners — ITALIAN HOUSE BLOG

A bit of a hiatus from posting regularly at Italian House Blog. Sorry. Let’s blame it on Lockdown. Easy enough. But, oh! Not actually doing Lockdown but, Lockdown as an unavoidable topic of daily conversation, news, written discourse, whatsapp cartoons anf funny videos, self-inflicted thought vortices from the isolation chamber of our lives these days. Just couldn’t bear it any more. Took a break. But, I am back…

I have lived in Italy for over half my life. I’ve chocked-up a lot of experiences. A few left lasting impressions. Many are the consequences, and, today, one is that I look at Italy as a place full of mystery. Mysteries. Mostly on religious grounds and anchored, if that is the right verb, to the Madonna. Disparate sightings even here in Codiponte. Otherwise, statues bleeding, trees along country roads crying real tears, other tears on statuettes in chapel alcoves. Still, the Madonna was a woman, wife, mother and then, lastly, a saint. Yeah, yeah, so her kid was the Messiah. Some Italian women think their sons are the Messiah. And the sons in turn think their mothers are Madonna’s. Equality is, apparently, an attribute of the Catholic religion. While the sons decide to toe the line or not, the mothers… of any nationality!!!… hoping for the former from their off-spring, are responsible for a worrying mystery: their destructive relationship with vacuum cleaners. It is a speciality of our five cleaning ladies… all of them, Catholic. Only to say. And then, there’s You’s mother…

The mother killed my Miele vacuum cleaner when she used it to clean up the mess of a family Christmas pranzo. I was co-habitating with You and his mother for a short while and I brought along some Essential Items, ie. my Miele vacuum cleaner. The Best! All it took was for the mother to run over a grotesque accumulation of walnuts and pistachios shells and other junk on the carpet of the Sala da Pranzo for the poor mechanical beast to gag and expire. 10 days later, the fine folk at the Miele Repair Station, located in the mountainous hinterlands outside Genoa, entrusted me with a revitalised vacuum cleaner and a strong recommendation to keep it away from You’s mother.

I… we… did but, it then fell into the destructive hands of our First Cleaning Lady. She came on board when You & I moved into our first apartment we had bought together in Genoa. The Cleaning Lady #1 managed to kill the Miele out-right. Never understood the circumstances. Neither of us shared Italian as a common mother language and You wasn’t around. So, a mystery. The repair Signori’s faces demonstrated shock & dismay at such an unfortunate event. Augurs ill with the Italians… men. The machine was left with the Signori for its parts.

You & I went to a sooper-dooper appliance store just this side of the Genoese mountainous hinterlands and bought a brand new fancy Dyson vacuum cleaner. Just out on the market in Italy. Cost a bloody fortune. Our Second Cleaning Lady…. the first found an easier job caring for an elderly gentleman. Walks twice-a-day, plus two hot meals and lots of TV… and, she didn’t like Our Puppy!!!… took her chores with a rapt endeavour to clean and arrange our apartment to perfection. Motto being No More Dirt, No More Grime , just Spic ‘n Span.

One fine day, she took it upon herself to fare una pulitina to the apartment’s terrace overlooking the city of Genoa as it rises from the Mediterranean Sea up towards? Mountainous hinterlands, of course. The Cleaning Lady #2 rested the main body of the Dyson up and onto 2 oleanders in large terracotta vases set in an iron trough for such things and anchored to the railing running around the terrace, while directing the nozzle at the dirt & grime she spied behind tubes next to said plants. Pulling at the nozzle, the machine said Adio! to the oleanders, leapt off its perch and fell 9 floors to a fragmented… totally pulverised… Death along the rail line of the funicular below. This, I surmised, were the circumstances for the vacuum cleaner Volare! Oh, Oh! from a mixture of Spanish & Italian of the Cleaning Lady #2… because neither she nor I shared Italian as a mother language… again. Why everyone thinks Spanish is so similar to Italian is another mystery to me. Nothing is the same and especially the verbs. Babble only.

The Cleaning Lady #2 was understandably upset… mortified. She feared loosing her job. She asked and I gave her a short whisky and sought to calm her anxieties about any doubts regarding to a secure employment with us. Machines can be replaced. A good cleaning lady cannot. And she was a good cleaning lady. Perhaps a bit too rigorous but, a good cleaning lady. She also adored our Weimaraner Puppy. And he adored her too. The Cleaning Lady #2 promised to avoid any more gymnastics. Discovered later she resorted to using a broom… mostly. The Dog was afraid of the vacuum cleaner and she respected his fear. Too much ruckus and he could never get the hang of where the thing was going. He’d bolt for the safety of il suo posto underneath my computer. But, she liked his company. Followed her wherever she went. How she got rid of the Weimaraner hair-loss yet another mystery. Three years later, she divorced her creepy first husband… a Ray Liotta type as in that gangster movie but, definitely not as cute… became an Italian citizen and, I guess to celebrate, fell in love with a real nice Italian man, whom we met and liked, from Parma and moved away. to be with him. We stay in touch via Instagram.

Cleaning Lady #3 dropped the second Dyson down stairs, injuring its plastic but it still sucked up Weimaraner hair. Another who preferred a broom. Maybe. Not sure. A couple of years later, she moved back home to Nicaragua to nurse her aged mother & father. She kept odd working hours despite our encouragement to come either in the morning after 9AM or after 2PM in the afternoon. Not at 8PM at night!!!

Cleaning Lady #4 let the Dyson choke to death because, she was afraid to actually touch the thing. EXCEPT to pull the cord out… which later she literally did rip out completely… and to turn it ON. A hint for all of you and it would apply to any type of vacuum cleaner: if you want to suffocate the contraption until it’s lifeless, DON’T EVER EMPTY ITS CONTAINER. Guaranteed method. Works every time.

You & I bought a third Dyson. Latest model. Lot of plastic. Lighter. Cost rivalled the GNP of… Sierra Leone… perhaps, Ghana AND Togo too. You asked me to conduct an obligatory training class with our new Cleaning Lady, #4, on the proper care and use of the new Dyson. She is still in our employ. And the machine works though is showing the effects of its work-a-day life. Cleaning Lady #4 likes to slam her foot on the Big Red Button to turn it ON or OFF and let drop to the Travertine floor, come-what-may, the nozzle, every time her mobile phone rings. Children needing their mother. Requires more instruction but I am not in Genoa. Figurati se You facesse gli istruzioni!!!

Meanwhile, here at il Poggiolo, we have Cleaning Lady #5. We had two Dysons for il Poggiolo. One for below nella Casetta and another upstairs for l’Appartamento Azzuro. One or the other was used to vacuum la Casa Grande in the middle. These two Dysons were sadly on their last suck. Country Cleaning can be a tough go. Dog hair, ashes, Mother Earth in all her variations!!! The oldest… a model from 2009 died inconveniently in the throws of performing its duty as I vacuumed the sisal carpets in the Stanza dei Tini. No funeral or memorial service. The carcass was left in the company of an odd-lot of rejects at the trash containers area in the parking lot above il Poggiolo. Someone had thrown an even older PC out… a cathode monitor large enough to require its own room, a basket with a ruined handle, which I half thought of stealing… You has trained me to spot worthy trash for larceny… and some antiquated gas containers. Those, no thank you. The other Dyson inhales filth pretty well but, its plastic structure has seen better days. It has been put out to rest until an emergency requires its Dyson perfected suction action. Like no other.

I went to the local sooper-dooper appliance store in La Spezia and bought 3 well-priced Hoovers. I did so on the recommendation of an English friend, who swears by hers. The price of the simplest Dyson would’ve dented Brazil’s GNP but, alas, they were out-of-stock. Very disappointed with the Hoovers, I must say. Cannot handle Weimaraner hairs or fireplace ashes. I wanted another Dyson.

You loves Lidl, this German discount grocery chain. He insisted on one rainy Saturday that we go there to do his grocery shopping for the week in Genoa. Brand new, slanted roof, lofty ceilings warehouse of a grocery store. Contemporary German Architecture. Spiffy, clean, orderly. Takes time to recognise what you need or want looking a decapitated card-board boxes. Eventually, you get hang of it. The real reason You loves the store so much is there are two isles dedicated to stuff. Sorry. Stuff. And, at the end of one but, what did I find. A Dyson stick vacuum cleaner!!! And at half the price of those at the sooper-dooper appliance store. Bought one and proudly took it home to il Poggiolo.

Our sweet and hard-working Cleaning Lady # 5 came last week to put back to rights la Casetta, My Winter HQ with the Dog. Takes no time at all for the Weimaraner to shed his pelt creating the most luxuriously grand hair balls… under my bed, on the stairs, in the bathroom!!! Then, his croquettes end up lodged in the strangest locations or, Option B, all over the Kitchen’s floor. Dog refuses to eat anything outside his doggie dish.

She was so happy to see the Dyson over the Hoovers. I left her to do her thing. She called me to say she had killed the Dyson. What? Si, non va. Did you re-charge it. Si, ma niente. OK. Non preoccuparti. Got home later to find the lid to the dust container wasn’t fully closed so, the machine would not go. Easily resolved. Cleaning Lady #5 was relieved to hear the Dyson worked when I called her with the Good News.

But why all these troubles with vacuum cleaners? Cleaning Ladies #’s 1 to 5 do not kill dish or clothes washers. They can turn ON & OFF lights without short-circuiting the house. They flush toilets, and yet, there are no floods, Thank God!!! Just vacuum cleaners. Are they afraid of the noise? Or sucking up something never to be found again? They miss the quiet contemplation of a good sweep? A sentiment I share, by the way. They dislike being pursued by the very thing they are dragging around or, is it that they do not want to be entrapped by the long cord? No idea. A mystery.