Fabulous Things about England # 16: Cylinder Hoovers

This is Henry

He's known here affectionately as Henry Hoover; though, he has never been a product of the Hoover vacuum company. The English don't vacuum they hoover. I was raised to love upright vacuums. My mother had a Hoover upright from the time she married my father until we moved to Indiana. That twenty-year-old machine still worked fine. It just wouldn't fit in the truck. When Mom went to buy a new machine she insisted that she wouldn't have a canister vacuum. I don't know why not. Canisters are much more common than uprights in England. I suspect this is to do with tight corners, tiny rooms, ceiling cornicing, and narrow staircases. People here invest in Henry vacuums because they go on and on and on. I've had to settle for my desktop version; he lives next to the penguin on the bookshelf.