The shame...

Our upright hoover has been misbehaving recently - in spite of many kind words of encouragement (and a new bag) it refused to pick anything up. It was as though it had decided that vacuuming was nothing to do with it, thankyoueversomuch, and it was happy to simply enjoy the odd pleasure cruise around the carpets without making any effort to remove any of the cat hair, human hair, dust and general assorted grot that was accumulating there.

It would, however, deign to suck things up through it's hose attachment.

This morning, my poor baby-addled brain finally put two and two together and came up with an answer other than 'duh?', and I flipped the hoover over and had a good look at the brush roller.

Ew.

Husbeast very kindly took over with a craft knife and a pair of pliers and manfully wrestled half a carrier bag full of assorted hair and other horrors off of the roller.

I've just hoovered. It took less than five minutes and the carpet is now safe for the baby to play on again.