The Weapons of Mass De-Fluff-tion




















Have you ever wondered just where all the fluff that we produce actually ends up?

On Saturday I spent at least half an hour of my precious time bent over like a rice-planter with osteoporosis vainly trying to brush in dozens of dog hairs, dust bunnies, greyish lint, Love Chunks' whiskers, balls of cotton from our new flannelette sheets - and god knows what other sources of fluff - into a dustpan.

If I'd bothered to think clearly I would have realised that dragging out the vaccuum cleaner and sucking out the fluff once and for all was easier than continually chasing dusty fluffy puffs around and around the house.

The humble dustpan-and-broom (or brush, really) must be vaguely related to the Van-Der Graaf generator that we all had to put our hands on in year nine science and have our hair rise up higher than Hugh Hefner on his horizontal folkdancin' meds. Why, I hear you breathlessly ask yourselves - I'll tell you why - there's obviously some kind of unspoken static electricity that propels dust bunnies away from the broom or dustpan. This natural action thereby condemns the sweeper (in this case, me) to many wasted minutes of bending over to sweep, swearing in frustration as the fluff floats off somewhere else, shuffling over to said fluff whilst still remaining stooped, seeing it again f*** off out of reach, swear again and eventually stand up, red-faced, angry and clutching lower back.

So, not only is the stuff inexplicably everywhere but it's impossible to catch and destroy once and for all. And how come we end up with a handful of greyish blue fluff after each cycle in the spin dryer yet our clothes still look the same? How much fluff is left before our clothes one day simply give up the ghost and fall right off? I mean - hey, it seems to happen a lot in soft porn movies and maybe they're bravely documenting the outcomes of using the dryer too much.....

More importantly, how often does our hair 'down south' regenerate? It must be pretty bloody often if our puke-inducing pale pink bathroom floor is anything to go by (no, it wasn't chosen by us and will hopefully be removed soon). Strangely, when my answer to the sales woman's question of 'What floor tiles are you looking for?' was "Something that is pubic hair, belly button lint and towel fluff camouflaging", I didn't get quite the selection I was hoping for. Instead, we were rather gruffly handed a few brochures and pushed towards the automatic exit doors.

Is there something this un-identified flying fluff could be used for, in the name of public good? Could it be converted to a constantly available energy source, or as a cheap filling for raincoats and the dinghies we'll need when the polar caps finally melt? An instant supply of undergarments readily available to mentally starved 'AActresses' and heiresses at mobile phone launches?

All very valid queries, just crying out for good, scientific answers and implementation....