Dyson
One of the things they never tell you when you become a parent is that, for the foreseeable future, you will never have clean floors. There will always, always be something on the floor – toy soldiers, small cars, general small-person detritus.

Yesterday evening it had become too annoying to continually be stepping on something so I decided to clear the floors. I tidied away Flea’s toys and pulled out the vacuum cleaner. It’s a fairly regular sort of Dyson cleaner, with a long, rigid extendible hose. We have wooden floors and often I take the end of the hose to provide stronger, more concentrated suction to pick up stuff along the edges of the floor.

I know, I am a fully-fledged housewife genius and domestic role model.

I was merrily cleaning when I saw one of Flea’s drawings under the dining table. Because I’m basically idle, I decided the best thing to do was to pick up the paper with the vacuum hose and then pick it off the end – thereby saving me the hassle of crawling under the table.

At this point I am congratulating myself on my efficiency and general domestic Goddess credentials.

Except, it turns out that when you put something large over the end of a vacuum it creates an air-tight seal.

Then what happens is the extendible hose retracts – at speed. And depending on how you’re holding the vacuum cleaner at the time, it sort of rebounds into your chest a bit like a high-velocity rifle, causing extensive bruising and also causing you to fall backwards, trip over a Tripp Trapp (how’s that for irony?) and cut open your head on the corner of the play table.

And then you’ll need to go to the local clinic to have your scalp stuck back together and also ask your GP for painkillers because one of your breasts has basically turned purple. People may snigger at you during this time. Openly.

Yep. I am definitely, officially Class A role model material.