Wednesday 2 September 2009

Yearning For the Void.

"Wanted- Vacuum.
desperatly needing a vacuum just had carpets fitted and my vac has broken thank you"

Thus ran the ad in freecycle.. Freecycle, if you've never met it, is like a sort of Craigslist for people who want to give things away and recycle by re-using rather than dumping them. (Oh. Yes, just as in Craigslist, spelling and grammatical correctness are optional on freecycle.)
I signed up for it, but so far things I've put on there have failed to go. Nobody, NOBODY, wanted five steel landrover discovery wheels with part-worn, road-legal tyres on them. Except my pal Ken, who said "why didn't you tell me you'd got a spare set, just what I've been needing". Ken's not on Freecycle.
Those things I've seen, and thought OOOOH! I want that!" like the complete sauna cubicle, or the sony vaio laptop which needs a new battery, oh no. Even if I put in my request seconds after the alert pops up, I never get it.
After you've given a certain number of items away, and proved your green credentials, you're allowed to post a few wanted ads. Very few. This one caught my eye. I've often mused about vacuums.
So this person wants a vacuum. They're hard to come by. I had a thermos flask, with a vacuum in it once, but I dropped it, and when I unscrewed the bottom, I found a lot of bits of silvery glass, but the vacuum had fled. (like an elusive genie).
I had a pugmill, with a vacuum pump, but, the moment you turned the pump off, there'd be a faint sucking hiss, and the needle on the gauge would return to 1 atmosphere. plus or minus a few millibars. Damn that vacuum. The problem is, nature abhors a vacuum. You can buy a fresh thermos, but you have to take it on trust that it does really have a vacuum in it, because, if you try and open it to take a look.... pffft! gone.
So my experience with the elusiveness of vacuums leaves me bewildered by the number of vacuum cleaners out there, if nature abhors a vacuum, then ten thousand times more abhorred is a DIRTY vacuum.

Stop Press... updated. Our freecycler received a "Dyson Vacumn" in response to her plea.
Next request "A dictionary"?
Stop Press again: -
"Hi everyone, I am in desparate need of a vacum cleaner any type will do as long as it is powerful, so it can pick up all my cat's hairs he is malting ."

Malting, huh?