Things that Make me Swear (pt1)

I call it the "fury of inanimate objects", or rather the fury that is directed towards things that seem to exhibit perverse and most un-objective traits. Take the yard vacuum cleaner for starters. It is noisy, hellishly so, and indiscriminate in what it decides to suck up. It shows no remorse after swallowing the pencil left in the bilges, half a dozen expensive bronze screws, loose change, the bung, or the bitter ends of control lines. Slurp, gobble... gone.

And that's not the end of it. My vacuum cleaner has a ball valve to stop is sucking up water into its motor (sensible) but as it perches perilously on three tiny supermarket trolley-type wheels, it is pre-programmed to topple over whenever you yank lightly on its trunk, and when it falls over the little ball valve thinks it's about to ingest a bellyful of water, and up pops the ball (to the accompaniment of an even more hideous high-pitched screeching which only stops when you climb down from the boat you are up-ended in and switch it off). After what seems an age, you hear a little "plop" which signifies the ball has dropped, and it's safe to switch on again (having set it upright on its stupid little casters).

A few minutes later and over it goes again, and so on... Ha! But I have tamed it, by extracting the ball (which means it will soon,  out of pure spite, develop the thirst of a rabid dog).

Next: the power cord from hell...