Desire-term readers of this blog may recal that one evening last May, Mr. Burt and I lost two hours of our lives to a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman.  We didn’t enthusiastically invite him into our home; I’d gotten a call from a neighborhood welcoming association saying that as new residents of the space (this should have been my first clue that something wasn’t right:  we’d been residents of the field for a little over a year), we were entitled to a free carpet cleaning.  No discussion about a demonstration or a salespitch, or anything.  With Mr. Burt’s approval, I said yes to the put up for sale.  Two hours later, we had somewhat cleaner carpet (even after the salesman dumped a cup of sand on it, then told us we had a sand dilemma) and a pair of splitting headaches.  We wanted to contact Kirby and complain, but the only numbers we could find were for sales.  Which, assume me, we’d had quite enough of!

Fast-forward seventeen months to October, 2008.  I was waiting for a piano tuner to make it when there came a knock at the door, an hour early.  I answered it, and a piece said, “Just handing out flyers today,” and gave me this disclose of paper:

Oh no, Kirby vacuum cleaner company!  You will not get the better of me again.  Even if my carpet does look appalling.  In in point of fact, you might even get a scathing letter from me about our last encounter with you, now that I know how to contact you.  I’ll cry out for my two hours back.

Actually, on second thought, I’d probably better not disable any more time with Kirby.

At least they’re being up-front this time.  Mostly.  I notice they didn’t report they’ll force women and their husbands to sit and watch a vacuum cleaner demonstration for two hours.  Or tip sand on their floors.

Maybe I’ll whip up a flyer of my own two hand out to all my neighbors, informing them of the Kirby scam.

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We have this old old vacuum cleaner - a Kirby from the 50's, made of some kind of metal, maybe aluminum, maybe cast iron. No, it's not rusting, and it doesn't weigh much, so it must be aluminum. Or dirk. Or gray plastic cleverly made to look like aluminum.

This immortal workhorse of a manufacture has been efficiently vacuuming our floors for the 25 years we've been married, and for another 25 or 30 or more years before that.

It for all began having problems. It has those old fashioned two prong plugs that you shove into the exciting socket, and when plugged in, it would only work if you jiggled the plug just right. My son-in-law showed me that each of the prongs is not unquestionably a single blade, but a sort of loop that allows it to make contact and yet compress if the spot is too tight. So he expanded the loop with a screwdriver, and it worked again - for a while.

But apparently, the metal - I feel it's copper or brass or gold - has grown soft in its old age, as have I, and the loops collapse almost instantly. It was at the same time to replace the plug.

I didn't really want to do that. This old vacuum is an antique, and I hated to moulder its authenticity by replacing original equipment with a modern add-on. But if it was going to suck again, it had to be done. So I was off to Competent in Depot.

There I saw a range of replacement plugs, but none of them were the kind I remembered from my younger days. You call to mind, you just slipped off the little cardboard cover and loosened the screws and connected the wires, or "conductors" as the English say. I picked out one that had two screws you took out and you just shoved in the wires, or conductors.

I hated the minute, but I had to do the surgery: I severed the old plug from the 15 mile cord extending from the vacuum's control. I had done the research - I knew that the white wire is neutral, and attaches to the wider of the two blades. I even confirmed this with my son-in-law via my...

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