{"id":4245,"date":"2014-12-07T23:17:42","date_gmt":"2014-12-07T23:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=4245"},"modified":"2014-12-07T23:20:00","modified_gmt":"2014-12-07T23:20:00","slug":"two-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=4245","title":{"rendered":"Two Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

User Group Disco<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stanley and I were happy together, happier than anyone should be allowed to be. White-hot joy. So we chose to celebrate our first wedding anniversary by renting a room at the very, very top of a posh hotel –\u00a0 the twenty-first floor. It was amazing being elevated like that, way above the noise of the city. We felt so remote, so special.<\/p>\n

‘Maybe each year we’ll stay in a room at a higher level,\u2019 Stanley said.<\/p>\n

\u2018We\u2019ll end up somewhere like Kuala Lumpa,\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n

\u2018Eventually well have to be shot into space.\u2019 Stanley said.<\/p>\n

Stanley was about to start a new job – digital marketing for a parking company. His last job came with free life insurance but the parking company didn\u2019t offer that so he needed to take out a new policy which he kept forgetting to do. We leaned on the balcony rail discussing Stan’s inability to type his name into an online form. He assured me he would get to it on Monday when we were back home. I remember looking down at the scurrying dots below and thinking about how those people would have no interest in me and Stanley’s insurance arrangements and wouldn’t even be aware\u00a0 that we could see them.<\/p>\n

\u2018I mean obviously,’ I said. \u2018It\u2019s not gonna happen. But if you suddenly dropped dead now, here, this minute, I wouldn\u2019t get your half of the house. Your ex would get it, and I\u2019d be her bitch.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019m not going to drop dead now,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

Then he gripped his throat, made his eyes go googly, and pretended to choke. Stanley was always doing this type of thing. \u2018Help me,\u2019 he said in this whiny, pitiful whimper.<\/p>\n

I just laughed and made a V sign.<\/p>\n

Then he called down to the dots below.<\/p>\n

\u2018Help me, I\u2019m dying,\u2019\u00a0 he cried out.<\/p>\n

\u2018Shut up,\u2019 I said, and lit a cigarette.<\/p>\n

Then, as if he were so out of his mind with pain he wanted to leap off the building, he climbed up on to the balcony rail and began to shout and wave his fists at the sky.<\/p>\n

The panel in the balcony wall must have been loose and under his weight it swayed and buckled outwards. Some steel pins burst out of the sides with a clop-clop sound and then Stanley sailed into the air on that little oblong of glass and steel. I’m sure it floated for a moment, and at the time I thought, he\u2019ll be fine, he will bob down to the ground like Aladdin on a magic carpet.<\/p>\n

But it plummeted away from me with Stanley gripping the sides.<\/p>\n

I wondered if time had slowed down for Stan like they said it did when you fell from a tall building, and I hoped more than anything that it hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

If Stan made a sound when he hit the earth I was unable to hear it.<\/p>\n

The hospital introduced me to the help group; it was for the survivors of people who had died while pretending to die.<\/p>\n

A lot of people died this way; all well-loved jokers with a lust for life, who would use any excuse to act the goat and cheer everyone up.<\/p>\n

I missed Stan desperately. And also, I began to wonder if I <\/i>might die while pretending to die.<\/p>\n

But the group leader assured me that this would never happen.<\/p>\n

‘For some reason women never pretend to die,’ he said.\u00a0‘They just die.’<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Dirt Type<\/strong><\/p>\n

What is the most appropriate age gap between a man and his vacuum cleaner? I am aged 45 and my vacuum cleaner is 19, but everyone is saying that I should be using a much older one. It is unbecoming, they all say, in these deficit reduction days to own such an obscenely recent appliance. Cubanization is the modern way. Buy new parts, replace every component in the machine, but never, never, never buy a new one.<\/p>\n

Divide your age by two and add seven, my brother said. You should be looking for a vacuum cleaner which is at least 29 years old.<\/p>\n

But what models of that vintage still function?<\/p>\n

The man at the deficit reduction advice centre laughed at me. ‘I know of one that\u2019s 108 years old and still sucking hard,’ he said, and gave me the address of a vintage vaccum dealer who operated from under an arch in Salford.<\/p>\n

The dealer had a long ginger beard that a small owl could live in and garish sleeve tattoos and he began the consultation by measuring the length of my arms to work out my reach and then tested the strength of my grip on a special simulation machine.<\/p>\n

He put the results into a handheld computer while asking me questions about the type of detritus the machine would be required to ingest. Did I own a foot spa? Did I cough a lot? Did I consider myself a fast vacuumer or a slow one? Did I take breaks as I vacuumed, or did I do it all at once?<\/p>\n

Did I, and he looked at me meaningfully when he asked me this, ever wear headphones on the job?<\/p>\n

‘Yes,’ I said.<\/p>\n

He wrote something down. ‘Means you won’t hear any large objects rattling up the tube. I need to know that sort of thing. It’s up to you, of course, how you choose to hoover your house.’<\/p>\n

He looked at the screen on the small computer.<\/p>\n

‘I have just the thing,’ he said, and disappeared round the back.<\/p>\n

He returned with an Electrolux 612 which was 27 years old. Not quite the age I was after, but close enough, he thought, and he helped me strap it to the back of my bicycle.<\/p>\n

The younger machine was taken on by my brother, who, at 32, was a much more sensible age to relate to it.<\/p>\n

I sat for a time gazing at my new Electrolux. I thought about how many different motors and filters it had been through over the years, and how it was probably a completely different machine now to when it was born in 1986.<\/p>\n

It glided over surfaces effortlessly, softly murmuring as it went, every hair, skin flake, and food fragment disappearing up its tubes as if it was slurping delicious soup.<\/p>\n

I never felt the need for headphones. I was part of the machine, and when my brother brought the younger one round for a Hoovering competition, I felt only compassion for him as his juvenile contraption struggled with some of the older types of dirt. Hoovering is about removing the past, and that\u2019s what the younger people don’t understand.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

User Group Disco Stanley and I were happy together, happier than anyone should be allowed to be. White-hot joy. So we chose to celebrate our first wedding anniversary by renting a room at the very, very top of a posh hotel –\u00a0 the twenty-first floor. It was amazing being elevated like that, way above the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[314,312],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nTwo Stories - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=4245\" \/>\n<link rel=\"next\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=4245&page=2\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Two Stories - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"User Group Disco Stanley and I were happy together, happier than anyone should be allowed to be. 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