A great villain requires a signature sound, a distinctive silhouette, and a grudge. The upright vacuum, a Brewster 900 in a shade the manufacturer calls “Dusk Beige,” has all three. It emerges from the cupboard on Saturdays at 10 a.m. with a roar that has been compared, by a panel of witnesses on a high bookshelf, to the end of the world as seen from below.
What is remarkable is its restraint. It never actually hurts anyone. It merely goes where we are. I watched a colleague, Sir Percival Mouser the Younger, retreat beneath a bed for six hours on Saturday, and when he emerged, his coat had developed what I can only call a political awareness. Four paws for menace, none for the dust.
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