I don't do gadgets. Or do I?

Wondering how this new vacuum cleaning robot and I are going to get on. Today we meet face to face.

‘I don’t really do gadgets’. Was the thought going through my mind as I tried to open the box.

Out slid a large and lumpy, moulded piece of cardboard holding on tightly to a bright, matt-white vacuum robot. My family have been trying to persuade me to buy one of these cleaning wizards for a while.

I was warned not to use it for mopping the floor. The shop assistant, who was very helpful (there are so many machines to chose from!) said if you put the soap in it and it breaks, the manufacturer will blame the soap you used. Sounds wrong somewhere. But fine. I only need a vacuum cleaner.

Tomorrow will be our 10th guest, not including family, since May and no I don’t run a B&B. On Monday they leave and one son, possibly both sons and girlfriend arrive. Thankfully there’s lots of sun to get the sheets off, washed and back on, in an hour or so. It feels like the old days when I first moved to Barcelona. Post Covid - post Brexit - climate changing, nonstop rainy summer in the north; old friends are looking for a sunshine cure. It’s lovely to see them. To say the least. Fun too. Apart from the cleaning and stripping and making lots of beds which is a bit of a bore. Obviously. I don’t really enjoy domesticity. But their visits totally outweigh all the housework. Even for me.

So, I have given in. This is the first time I have sat on the sofa while the floor is hoovered. Don’t you just love how the passive tense can make you look overrun with work!? And I can add to that. Actually, it’s the first time I have done any writing while I get the house cleaned too. It can’t be bad.

I had worried the puppy would bark, chase, or attempt to sit on the robot but lunchtime she did none of the above, falling asleep at our feet under the table until the robot bumped into her tail. The robot was more a problem than she was. She got up lethargically and moved elsewhere. It had been a tiring morning in the stables at 38 degrees!

Unfortunately, the robot already had detected where she was and was then busy tracing the outline of an invisible dog. It carries on and eventually detects her form at the end of the sofa. She doesn’t look at all bothered but gets up and moves away again. Too late. The robot is tracing a second invisible dog like a detective in a crime scheme. I can’t quite believe that for just a minute I toyed with the idea of scooping up the dog and putting her on the sofa to escape being chased by this master gadget. She’d love that. But I can’t confuse her. Sofas in my mind are out of bounds for dogs. Especially bigger ones. Dogs, not sofas. Hope you don’t think that’s mean.

My daughter is a vet nurse and biologist. More importantly, she’s a horse whisperer. She brings home her dog from the stables seven days a week full of burs, and dust, though I’m not sure who is the dustiest, her or the dog.

It’s so hot all the puppy collie does half the day apparently, is sit in the pond. The horses don’t seem to mind the puppy cooling off her nether region in their drinking water. Hours later, timed perfectly around dinner time, the fine dust from the pond, the ex-silt that is, dries and settles below the dining table. Leaving a pattern on the floor as complicated as a world map, between all the chair legs like a dot to dot.

Cleaning has become tiresome not really because of guests at all.  I don’t think it is just me getting older either even if domesticity has never been my thing. No. Beyond all that. With no rain for months the dust flies around on the farm and gets into everything. It creeps into the house with them undercover, turning up unexpectedly in the corners of the wooden floor. My daughter’s car is no longer black either.

Enter the robot, as it leaves the kitchen. I thought it had been a trifle quiet. Always checking left, it works out the edges of each room before filling in the spaces, as if it were painting by numbers.  

It’s flat wide top, the size of a tiny coffee table spins round mapping the room. Twice I have to sweep my feet out of the way. I resist the temptation to place my empty coffee cup on the top for it to return it to the kitchen for me.

Ha! I don’t do gadgets, says she. Yet in a flash I am wondering what additional chores it could withstand. Extraordinary how fast we adapt to machinery. I don’t do gadgets says the owner of a laptop, phone, three hard disks, a hub adapter with 9 different types of socket, 5 pen drives sitting on the table, a camera and tripod…. The owner of all these gadgets is forced to eat lunch on the sofa since the dining table is out of bounds. All the chairs had to go on top of it. While ‘I don’t do gadgets’, robots don’t do chairs. The table couldn’t hold all the chairs without stacking a couple two-high. Puppy thought the chair tower looked a little threatening. Sheep dogs are so bright. So, back to the hoover, you do get a clean floor while it looks as if a bomb’s hit the room. I also notice the owner of these gadgets took no less than an hour to use the passive tense about the cleaning. Another extraordinary human skill. Constructing a sentence to make it look as though you have done a job when really you haven’t lifted a finger. Just the chairs and my feet.

I notice the robot doesn’t go under the sofa where the material drapes to the floor. Or behind the open doors for that matter. Mmmm, well I will have to get the old hoover out from time to time. That’s a shame. A real shame. I would have been happy to pass it on to someone else. So now I have to store both somewhere.

The robot won’t climb the stairs. Definitely can’t get rid of old hoover! Maybe that’s why there has been an increase in demand for de-cockcroaching homes this summer, downtown. I read that there has been a 40% increase in demand for pest control. If everyone is using one of these and it isn’t getting into all the corners, or under sofas and round chairs, that’s absolute heaven for those black beetles that most of us dread.

My sister has just written to ask how I was getting on with it and if I had named it yet? Is that a thing? Not so far, anyway!

In the shop they said that this wizard cleans itself. Naturally I envisaged this anaemic plastic flat blob opening our front door, looking for cars before crossing the street to empty its belly into a bin two meters high. In what way is it self-cleaning? Beats me. The woman in the shop laughed when I asked this. It must be a secret, though we did catch it about to start sizing up the terrace outside the front door. Escaping from the housework on its first day!? An alarmingly human thing to do I thought. It managed to manoeuvre the cable extension I had to put for the fan to reach both beds that I have just added to the room without any problem. I was expecting it to get all tangled up, but no. It sees, but it doesn’t see a thing, if you get what I mean.

Anyway so this master of gadgets that has turned my lounge upside down but shiny nevertheless and hunted a tired dog out of her slumber, decides, out of the blue, to stop mid-lounge and head back to the ugly two metal bars on the wall. I guess it is recharging. It did say something. Heavily accented, it tells me, ‘Lab creation is frost’.  Mmmm, now you got me. Not sure if I am expected to do something, press a button, or let it do its own thing. I decide on the latter.

So all is quiet. Heavy eyed. That’s me. Sleeping dog too. This summer we have a new lifestyle. The solar power fuels the air conditioning from three to five in the afternoon. I have lived for thirty years in this heat at 80% humidity. It is quite a challenge late afternoon and that’s without a heatwave. It’s time to go and make beds for guests tomorrow in the heat. The other rooms are as hot as an oven right now. I hope the guests don’t mind un-ironed sheets. They are pure cotton and smell lovely, but as creased as a handkerchief in your pocket.

I’m not sure what happens next. Will this robot leave its bay and start again? Or does it await new orders from me? I’m supposed to download an app but when it said it would access camera, microphone, location and photo album I thought that sounded a bit too much. Why doesn’t it have access to my health data too? Bank data? The more the merrier? Less steps round the house today I suppose as I sit while it works. Twenty years ago if someone had said you’ll have a hoover that talks and looks at your photos, I’d have thought they were insane. But you’ve got to have some privacy surely? I know my banking links to my phone. That’s different. A hoover? Even in 2023. As I said, I don’t do gadgets. Not that much.

hot and long, dry, dusty summers by Pipp