Would you like salt with that?

When someone mentions the words ‘hoover’ and ‘unusual usage of’ in the same sentence my mind immediately constructs an elaborate scenario involving a visit to A&E and a story that the attendant medics can dine out on for months. Whether this is due to a brief but intense addiction to Loaded magazine 13 years ago or the fact that housework is more alien to me than bizarre sex stories is unclear. I did however - and I’m not doing myself any favours by admitting this – experience a slight frisson of excitement today when I inadvertently used said domestic cleaning device in a vaguely unorthodox way, and the fact that I am currently taking any opportunity to put off various work-related tasks has driven me to record it for posterity.

Having recently been given a second-hand salt grinder* I decided that today would be the momentous occasion that I not only bought real salt – in little lumps! – but also filled the implement in question thus enabling me to make the little lumps of salt smaller. The design was clearly intended for use by someone of considerably greater intellect than me, years of academic study proving less than useless when it came to the rather basic task of getting the salt from the bag into its shiny new plastic home (which had thoughtfully been made of clear Perspex, presumably so one can gaze in wonder at the little grains of heart disease without having to do something as vulgar as putting them on one's food).

Having covered the work surface in a light dusting of salty goodness, I finally managed to wrestle the top on, only to discover that the grindy mechanism was - rather frustratingly – not at all grindy. Having pointed out to Beagle that I had got salt “everywhere” during this pointless exercise, he immediately proved that this wasn’t the case by taking it from me and, presumably in a quest to prove that there was some secret ‘way of the grinder’ which required a man’s firm but forceful touch, accidentally deposited the salt in a much more accurate demonstration of the word “everywhere”.

Having assured him that his assistance was no longer needed I set to work cleaning up the little crystals that I’d had such high expectations for when I bought them from the farm shop 2 hours ago (namely, I thought buying coarse organic sea salt would make me both vaguely cosmopolitan and a good cook. Retrospectively this seems an ambitious and possibly unrealistic expectation of a condiment). Eschewing the pan, brush, sweep etc method that would require me finding more than one cleaning implement, I extricated the hoover from its hibernating hole. Having cleared the floor of its snowy coating I decided to hoover up the various salt mountains on the work surface. Just a couple of sweeps would do. But it wasn’t enough! The clear patches just made everything else look…well, unclear**, by comparison. I hoovered the hob, I vacuumed the veg peelings, I sucked up the dirt from crevices which were probably advertised as luxurious holiday destinations in glossy lifestyle magazines for germs. Discovering that the humble hoover is clearly sufficient for every cleaning task, and consequently I am now able to throw away every other housework-related item, gave me an immense feeling of satisfaction, as I had previously only purchased them in the hope that buying them and keeping them under my sink would somehow make the house cleaner.

Despite failing completely to achieve any kind of salt/container interface I am sufficiently satisfied that I have a slightly cleaner kitchen, a lazy way to clean absolutely everything, and in the admittedly unlikely event of slugs having taken up residence in the hoover bag they are now well and truly toasted.

Next week: cutting my hair with a strimmer.

*life’s too short, just buy a new one
**filthy