So the father of a boy in my son's class wants to come around to introduce us to a "valuable marketing opportunity."
"Is it Amway?" we ask.
"No - much better".
He turns up with a very cute blonde dolly-bird in a smart black suit. She unpacks all kinds of cartons and cases from her BMW and gradually we realise they are trying to sell us a vacuum cleaner. But wait - this is no ordinary vac - this is a Rainbow vac, made in Detroit since 1936 with only six design changes and using a water scrubbing system instead of a dirty old bag and filter.
So she pours stuff all over the carpet and sucks it up, all the while coming out with some half-truths like "this is the first domestic appliance to have a brushless motor!" (Well, perhaps it was back in 1970)
She pulls our faithful Henry apart and tries to show us how dirty and disgusting the filter is (but luckily I took it out and washed it last week so that part of her demo falls flat!) and she gives us all the stuff about the bugs that live in the bed and **** in the mattress, etc etc. All the while the bowl of water is getting dirtier and dirtier and it occurs to me that here we are watching the wet equivalent of the useless and lumpy Dyson, where you see all the dirt collecting spectacularly in the tube and feel good about your efforts.
Most of the time she's on her hands and knees on the floor and somehow she keeps managing to give me some first class views of her tidy little bum in tight trousers. It's becoming so obvious that I glance at Mrs RR to see if she's noticed but not being a bloke she hasn't.
Eventually we get to the price. A piece of card is laid with a flourish on the carpet in front of us. We can buy this miracle vac for £10.58 a week, over five years! "Wait a minute...." I'm thinking, "That's, er... £550 a year and.... er.... £2750 TO BUY A VACUUM CLEANER! Feck me!"
But if we took this one now and agreed to introduce another customer we could have it with a £150 a year discount! Wey hey!
She took my emphatic "NO!" in good spirit and hastily packed everything away again.
I wonder how the bowl of water would have coped with all the plaster dust, chunks of plasterboard and sawdust and bits of glass wool that our Henry gobbles up without complaint?
"Is it Amway?" we ask.
"No - much better".
He turns up with a very cute blonde dolly-bird in a smart black suit. She unpacks all kinds of cartons and cases from her BMW and gradually we realise they are trying to sell us a vacuum cleaner. But wait - this is no ordinary vac - this is a Rainbow vac, made in Detroit since 1936 with only six design changes and using a water scrubbing system instead of a dirty old bag and filter.
So she pours stuff all over the carpet and sucks it up, all the while coming out with some half-truths like "this is the first domestic appliance to have a brushless motor!" (Well, perhaps it was back in 1970)
She pulls our faithful Henry apart and tries to show us how dirty and disgusting the filter is (but luckily I took it out and washed it last week so that part of her demo falls flat!) and she gives us all the stuff about the bugs that live in the bed and **** in the mattress, etc etc. All the while the bowl of water is getting dirtier and dirtier and it occurs to me that here we are watching the wet equivalent of the useless and lumpy Dyson, where you see all the dirt collecting spectacularly in the tube and feel good about your efforts.
Most of the time she's on her hands and knees on the floor and somehow she keeps managing to give me some first class views of her tidy little bum in tight trousers. It's becoming so obvious that I glance at Mrs RR to see if she's noticed but not being a bloke she hasn't.
Eventually we get to the price. A piece of card is laid with a flourish on the carpet in front of us. We can buy this miracle vac for £10.58 a week, over five years! "Wait a minute...." I'm thinking, "That's, er... £550 a year and.... er.... £2750 TO BUY A VACUUM CLEANER! Feck me!"
But if we took this one now and agreed to introduce another customer we could have it with a £150 a year discount! Wey hey!
She took my emphatic "NO!" in good spirit and hastily packed everything away again.
I wonder how the bowl of water would have coped with all the plaster dust, chunks of plasterboard and sawdust and bits of glass wool that our Henry gobbles up without complaint?
