In an antique shop in the middle of Santa Rosa, north of San Francisco, I had to be physically restrained from buying this users manual for a vacuum cleaner from the mid-fifties.

It wasn’t as if the vacuum cleaner even came with it. I just liked it because of the sheer amount of joy the family pictured on the user manual cover were just so insanely overjoyed by their new hoover.

How exciting can a floor cleaner possibly be?

Well, THIS exciting, apparently.

From the left, I think the little girl is the most proportionally happy of all of them. She’s pleased at the sight of this new piece of cleaning apparatus, but looks at it with a sort of condescending acceptance. Yes, it’s a hoover, it’s nice to have it, but it doesn’t, it seems, represent her entire future, her desires or expectations. No, it’s just a hoover.
Then again, she does look like she’s going in to stroke it, so perhaps she’s just a literal moron who believes it to be the new family pet. Who can tell?

Her father, to her right, swells with pride. In possibly more than one way judging by the cut of those slacks. “Have you recently acquired a new vacuum cleaner, or are you just pleased to see me” is a well-known phrase for good reason, you know.
He’s not looking at that hoover with excitement, more with the knowledge that he, and he alone, paid for that hoover by the sweat of his brow. If his brow did sweat, which, let’s face it, it doesn’t. It might sometimes warm enough to make his hair laquer a little runny, but that’s as close as it gets. No, to this man, that new-fangled electronic marvel before him is not a mere vacuum cleaner. It’s a mighty extension of his very own ego, his own manliness - I’d go so far as to say his penis.
Yes: Penis.
It’s a expanding-hosed multi-nozzled penis extension powered by mains electricity.
No wonder he’s twanging those braces. You would too.

The little boy isn’t excited about the vacuum cleaner at all. He’s actually staring into the middle distance. I think he’s just had his attention caught by something shiny. My littlest cat does that face. The runt-of-the-litter mentally-special one.

The mother of the family, towering above her idiot son, is happier than any woman has ever been. About anything. Ever. She’s literally NEVER been this happy. Not on her wedding day, nor her wedding night. Cheeks flushed, eyes bulging, mouth agape, this is the face of true ecstasy.
AND IT IS CAUSED BY A VACUUM CLEANER.

Alternatively, that could just be the face that she’s forced to pull by the insane tightness of her belt. It does seem a little like she might be squealing “…help … h..e…l…p’ in a breathy whisper, as the last breath is squeezed out of her… “…the dog. is pissing. on. my. f…o…o…o…o…t”

The dog, meanwhile, is clearly showing his excitement about the new vacuum cleaner by urinating on it liberally. Well, that and his mistresses foot. Luckily, she is either too filled with elation or close to death to care.

Man, I wish I got that excited about a new vacuum cleaner. Life would be amazing.

That was where I disappeared to.

I honestly wonder if anyone cares when I make these excuses, anymore, but, while I still feel bad for not updating my blog, I will continue to apologise like someone cares. Because I do, after all. Both care, and keep disappearing, that is.

Anyway. I went on holiday. It was both a) A very good holiday (in that I went to places that I love and saw people that I love, and did things that I like very much) and b) a terrible holiday, in that I proved how appalling I have become at the concept of “a holiday” by guaranteeing myself at least two hours of work every morning, and two solid days of other-work right in the middle.

However. It was mainly a).
And therefore a Good Thing.

I will tell you more about it in short other posts about short, other things that I found and saw and did, as I remember them.

My current office - our current office, as, both freelance and incorporated into a ‘Hey Why Not Hire Us We Write Stuff’ company - is in the roof of the flat we have been living in for six months.

It is nice being in the roof. Five floors up, facing over the rooftops out back of the house, and the main stuff we hear through the skylight is the sweet singing of little birds. Apart from in winter, when it was mainly rain and dark cloudy winds and the sound of my will to live leaking out of my ears.

There is the occasional seagull noise, of course. Brighton has seagulls. They’re big buggers. Seriously big. It must be all the abandoned chips they snaffle after everyone’s had their big Saturday night out, as well as all the ice cream cornets they steal from unwitting daytrippers. They’re big, and mean-looking. They’re basically the size of horses, but meaner, and with pointy bits on the front, like angry unicorns.

There are some that live on the roof next door, that watch with one beady eye each as we get up in the morning, as if plotting to break in the second we go on holiday. Or that they might not bother, since they have nothing but disdain for us after all. Sometimes they make a threatening ‘PSHAWWW’ noise to back up their intentions.

And sometimes, at this time of year, they make other noises. The kind of noises a mummy seagull and a daddy seagull make when they love each other very much. I had forgotten they do this. In the last few days, however, I have remembered. And remembered that, (not very) coincidentally, almost exactly four years ago I noticed them doing it, precisely the same.

Or not, actually, exactly the same. Not the same as today, anyway. When, in the middle of a particularly intense bout of contcentration, when I had been tapping away on my keyboard, Small Cat curled up on my knee, managing to tune out the light bumping on the roof tiles above, and the faint ‘Unk unk unk unk unk unk unk’ noise that went with it.

When suddenly, a tangle of mid-coital wings, beaks, feathers and feet came tumbling down the roof, rolled inelegantly over the skylight, and continued, gathering momentum, toward the edge of the roof where, I glimpsed, as I leapt up screaming at the gashes a startled Smallcat had left in my leg, they somehow - ahem - disengaged and flew away.

I just hope that they managed to get over the inevitable shame and embarrassment and continue their date elsewhere. Because it seemed to be going VERY well. In seagull terms, anyway.
Or, in fact, in anyone’s terms, I suppose.

Quite glad the sklylight wasn’t ajar, anyway. It struck me afterward that if it had been, the combined weight of bonking pterodactyls would have flipped the window, leaving them on the office floor, Smallcat through the roof, and me feeling quite the gooseberry in my own house.

Fucking seagulls, eh?

Quite literally.