My way or the highway

- "It is just too big!"

- I beg your pardon?

- "And heavy! You can't get it up!"

Oh. The same old topic. Again. Haven't I written about this before? Speak for yourselves, girls. Can't you be happy with what you have? What do you mean, "can't get it up", pray tell? It goes up fine for me. It takes seconds. Effortlessly. Without you having to handle it, touch it, even. If you can't get it up you are just going to have to try another way. Get creative. Make my day.

...

What is it about girls and vacuum cleaners? A vacuum cleaner is just that. A vacuum cleaner. Do I really need one for each floor of the house? We moved into this house in the full knowledge that there would be direction from the top. This house was to be a model household. No parental confusion. Order. As a famous American football coach said, "my way, or the highway". So far, so good.

This time last year the prospect of furnishing a house from ground zero was a laughable nightmare. Yet, here it is, and I am not finished yet. Three sets of bath towels, hand towels and facecloths just went into the airing cupboard: one in oatmeal, the second in light chocolate, the third in burgundy. A single bed, a double bed, and a solid oak king sized bed (shown here after the fact) will be delivered this coming week. I like wood. The following week will see non survival components arriving - washing machines, dryers, and perhaps dishwashers. Even those with real spending power rarely acquire household furnishings at this kind of rate or on this kind of scale. It is predominantly the end game for those fortunate enough to recover from ruin.

Yet, despite all the structured progress I have made and all the visits to web sites and stores who need me in their own moments of ruin, the house still feels half furnished. Metaphorically, if my house was considered against the "OSI", a conceptual reference model that Internet kingpin Cisco sends its employees to bed with every night, and which some "Ciscoids" would have us believe is fundamental to creation itself, then my house is indeed not yet operating at "layer 7". For one thing I do not have a telephone landline yet, and cabling is strictly layer 1. More generally, though, it is the same feeling you might experience when you are at the half way point over the Atlantic: all the anticipation of the trip is still ahead of you, you are far enough away from home so that it is behind you, yet you are still far too far away from your destination to enjoy the excitement that comes with being in the moment when you finally arrive. With a house, does one ever arrive?

Which brings me back to the vacuum cleaner. There is one. It is in the house. It works. A second vacuum cleaner is a luxury. It is at the bottom of the current wish list. Or is it? My way, or the highway: what of it? So far, my approach to girls has vicariously landed me in the family law courts and variously earned me solo return trips over the decades from London Heathrow and Manchester airports on the M1 and M56 respectively - highways to be on indeed! I may be undone by a vacuum cleaner yet - when it comes to girls, there is evidently room for another way and although size may not be determinative, it is nevertheless significant.