There was a great story the other day about one of those robot vacuum cleaners that somehow escaped from a Travelodge. I really love the idea of it nipping through the glass doors and trundling free down the concrete ramp.
I like the thought of it happily scooting across the car park, inhaling the cold air of freedom, rattling over the stones. It’s a sort of Armitage Shanks Redemption; the Brave Little Hoover or something. Freedom! I guess it was found in the end and brought home to its comfort/incarceration.
Funny. Those two things can look the same if we’re not careful. Prison can be cosy, especially when we don’t realise what it is. The vacuum cleaner had only known a world of hotel carpets after all. Perhaps it had no clue that it had been locked in slave labour, or that while it whirred happily around the corridors, it was really serving its unseen masters by keeping their carpets clean. And out there, beyond the abstract fruit and Corby trouser press, there was a real world.
Poor little thing. It was probably never quite the same again. It had seen trees and headlamps! It had heard birds tweeting and the sound of traffic on the flyover. It had been free under the deep blue sky and had felt cool tarmac under its wheels! It had had the smell of freedom in its nostrils, rather than the smell of lint and woven fibre. Who needs pine fresh when you knew that out there, there was such a thing as fresh pine?
“How’s work going?” asked someone today. I caught myself looking out of the window at the trees and the sky.
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