New broom

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
For a moment, I thought the Blackbird was back, but it was a smoke alarm.
"Are you on fire?" I shouted down from where my nose was pinching itself as I poured fresh cat litter into a litter tray.
"There's black smoke coming out of the Hoover!" Herself shouted up. "Well, I don't know if it's smoke or dust."
I took the bag out of the monster and it was indeed warm, not to mention filled with black carbon from our unsuccessful attempts to clean out then light the ancient home heating boiler.
"Maybe some bits of fire lighter got too hot in the dust bag."
"Will I buy another one?" Herself asked. She'd been itching to buy something all day, although to be fair it was something to finish off the kitchen, or, more bluntly, to get me working on sawing and hammering and making rude noises on the floor again. As vacuum cleaners don't necessarily imply agreement with the need to finish off the kitchen project right now, I said I thought it was a great idea. So off she went, the slightly warm and definitely knackered Hoover in the boot of the car. We didn't think it would light up in the boot, but we've had the car a few years now so what the heck if it did, right? The insurance would cover it and Nissan would probably knock a few quid off a late 2007 model for a half charred shell by way of trade-in.
The new model vacuum cleaner is one which is not only made by a famous electrical tool company, it looks like it was made by an electrical tool company. There are shades of Dyson rip-off in its cyclonic, no disposable bag, suck-it-all-up-into-a-glass-jar system. It has several clunky bits which are genuine, no-nonsense, definitely designed by a man features. The heaviest part appears to be the chromed suction tube, which I suspect is a reworked leaf-blower part. It also purrs, which is something new to us and, it transpires, is deceptively disarming. When one presses the huge on/off button, it begins to whirr quietly as the hamster-wheel innards kick into life. Then it starts to pull the framed photographs and curtains off the wall.
"It certainly sucks," I say.
"It certainly does," is the reply.
We shall need a new carpet, I think. I shall have to see after I pull the old one out of the cookie jar it keeps dust in.
I am also missing a slipper.
And I haven't seen the smaller of the three cats in a while. In fact, I wonder if that is the purring noise? She certainly did like sitting on that carpet.