Sucked in yet again by airy promises

IT'S hard to be enthusiastic about house cleaning.

IT'S hard to be enthusiastic about house cleaning. It feels like an achievement but soon it's back to the same state as before. So why bother? I gave it up when my wife left me 12 years ago. Instead, there are parts of the house I just don't venture into any more.

When I have to clear a path to the fridge, the bathroom and the sofa, it occurs to me that the vacuum cleaner is designed to appeal to single men: the whooshing roaring motor, the sports-car lines, the red paint job, the impressively telescopic nozzle - it's all about seducing the male buyer.

The first motorised vacuum cleaner, circa 1901, was a petrol-powered, horse-drawn monstrosity that relied on air drawn by a piston pump through a cloth filter. It was invented by a man and, yes, it was red. Men have been inventing new versions ever since, often for their partners, but mostly for single men like me.

The clincher for me was the TV ad where the guy picks up the bowling bowl with nothing more than his trusty Electrolux. This kind of grunt has kept me buying vacs for the past 12 years. The fact that the bowling-ball suction cup never came as an accessory should have been a giveaway, because they keep dying on me. Inevitably, they end up with the suction power of an emphysema sufferer.

An hour's furious activity knocking the paint off doors and walls and the only impression I make are wheel tracks through the muck. And as stated, my cleaning regime is erratic. I wouldn't have covered the surface area of a tennis court since 2000.

Recently, I bought a "cyclonic" bagless model because, as all men know, cyclones move heavy stuff such as houses and caravans. I spent more than ever on this thing of beauty with a grille like a mini Mack truck and a dust canister you could store biohazards in. For the first month, I could suck the labels off beer bottles but before long it was reduced to the feeble wheeze of its predecessors.

Now I grind away on a feather for 10 minutes and still finish picking it up with my fingers. On low speed, it wouldn't part the hair of a cockroach. On high, the roaches use it for resistance training.

The next time I buy a vac, I want the guy with his bowling ball again but I want it suspended a few metres above his head. Then someone can pull the throttle back to low, not because I want to check the power of the vac - I just want to be sure the damn bowling ball is real.