The cat's whiskers

As you know, after listening to my sister-in-law's CDs of the Secret, I have been keenly awaiting the arrival of a Louis Vuitton handbag as, to summarise the Secret (and save you from listening to 4 CDs), if you expect something hard enough, it will turn up. Well, nothing to report on the handbag front - yet - but I am now the proud owner of a Dyson Motorhead vacuum cleaner.

This did not exactly drop onto my doormat via the stars, but came from a lovely Dyson PR lady, who invited a group of Mummy Bloggers along to test out her wares and be converted to the wonderful world of bagless suction. Yes, I am at last part of a global phenomenon. It is not the Secret, but instead is embedded advertising. You may already have caught on to this sort of stuff via the current TMobile ad, where everybody gets up and dances, apparently spontaneously, at Liverpool Street station in London. This was first sent round like a virus, from person to person in an email, then appeared on YouTube, and is now coming at you from all sides, while doing an extremely groovy boogey-woogey, admittedly.

Well, I can't promise to boogey much with my Motorhead as it is, as the PR lady warned me, rather heavy. And she did say there was absolutely no need to write about it. But she did also say it is the best for getting out every bit of filth and, as you know, I am nothing if not obsessive about my cleaning. Moi, not write about a new appliance? No, it's just too irresistible and, I'm afraid, too revolting to pass up.

The truth is that I nearly passed out after vacuuming only the sitting room and filling the clear drum up to its max capacity in moments. Given that I am sad enough to enjoy nothing better than a quick whisk round with the hoover on a distressingly regular basis, I really wasn't expecting to pick up much, but soon found a heady mixture of Mme Bovary's whiskers, Jumbo's fluffy tail, and miscellaneous bits of teenage yuck which I couldn't bear to scrutinise too closely, all swirling around the clear plastic innards. Here comes my only criticism so far of the lovely Dyson - when emptying out the cylinder, the compacted dust was most reluctant to leave its glamorous new home, and I had to insert a finger and poke around a bit, with my eyes closed of course, but still, euwww! But maybe because that's because there was just so much in it, euwww again!

Anyway, it was lovely to meet my fellow bloggers, and I am thoroughly enjoying my brush with embedded advertising - and now seriously considering getting the little hand-held Dyson, which looks like the kind of space-age gun that Lara Croft would prance around with in Tomb Raider. Though I shall probably spare the Treasures the sight of their mother dressed in shorts and singlet.