No. Such. Luck.

I fixed the vacuum cleaner.

The true state of emotion that goes with the previous statement can't be expressed without telling you a story. A story that perhaps my male readers will not be able to grasp, but a story that may well stir the hearts of the girls.

Once upon a time I was just starting out living by myself and bought the cheapest vacuum cleaner that there was, because I'd also had to buy a fridge/freezer; washing machine; TV; a dining table and some chairs. I couldn't afford anything fancy.

Not long afterwards I heard friends talking about saving up for Dyson vacuum cleaners. They sounded really good, and I loved the concept of the cleaners being bagless because I hated emptying my vacuum cleaner bag. Also, according to their reports, Dysons really suck (which is actually what you want in a vacuum cleaner).

My Beloved and I then married. We now had two (2) vacuum cleaners, neither of them new and one I had to purchase disposable bags for.

"My" vacuum cleaner burst its bag. Although I managed to stitch it up, the little red vacuum was demoted to my Beloved's shed. We now had one (1) vacuum cleaner.

My mother bought a Dyson. It was good.

I began to look hopefully for any signs that our remaining vacuum was about to die.

It died.

I celebrated secretly and began to dream...

One Saturday my wonderful Beloved came home with something for the new house that we needed and it was a surprise.

I couldn't guess at all.

He presented me with a wonderful, bagless...

...Volta vacuum cleaner.

Isn't he a wonderful, considerate, surprising, lovely bloke?

Well, the Volta does a reasonable job so long as the very centre of the head is placed directly over any matter with a diameter greater than 0.01mm - but it is bagless which makes it easy to empty once the dust gets in there. I've always been an empty-the-thing-after-you-use-it-each-time sort of girl, and my Beloved is not. But that's okay, I am now an empty-the-thing-before-I-use-it-saying-prayers-of-thankfulness-that-my-Beloved-actually-cleans-when-so-many-women-complain-that-they-don't-get-any-help-around-the-house sort of girl.

We've been using it for about three years now and I was surprised during post dust-storm cleaning when a little red light came on. I didn't know what the little red light meant. The owner's manual wasn't in my file of appliance manuals and neither of us can find it, so we couldn't work out why the little red light had come on. I was sort of hoping for something expensive to fix which meant it wasn't worth fixing, but then again, we recently threw our savings into a medical waste facility along with my wisdom teeth, so timing was dreadful if that was the case.

I got on the net to try to find information and found a manual for a different model of the same make. It has a little red light that indicates when the bag is full. I wondered whether this might be the case, even though our model is bagless, so I went and emptied the non-bag. Turned it on. No red light.

The chance that this vacuum cleaner will not last for 30 years?

... Approximately None *sigh*