Halogen bulbs. Fourteen of them.

Today I spent £17 on light bulbs. I bought two bayonet cap jobs at £2.50 each. One was for the utility room where for months we have had the ‘cap’ of the previous bulb jammed in the socket. So taking advantage of being home alone I turned off the mains electricity supply.

Even as I poked out the broken cap it nagged in the back of my mind that the electric may still be on. What a shock for Angela were she to return home and find me overcooked on the the utility room floor. Like some sort of large burger made with too much lard.

I hope that if this actually happened she would realise that I hadn’t in fact decided to end it all – merely I had decided to take the plunge and fix the light.

But no, incompetent as I am I managed to turn the mains off and then back on again without major incident or death.

In TESCO I also bought all the own-brand halogen lights they had which cost me £1 x 6 (one had the wrong fitting so it is useless to me) and a pack of three for £6 on special offer. Whoo hoo.

In total I changed fourteen halogen bulbs in the kitchen and living room using a stepladder and a lot of patience. ‘But you didn’t buy fourteen halogen bulbs,’ you might point out if you are being attentive. Correct. In fact I had some extra in a box in the house.

So. Now we have light. I have one spare green bayonet cap bulb with nowhere to put it. Anyone that reads this will be aware my difficulties with these bulbs and the low level of light they actually emit. No doubt in a few years one of the current ones will expire and I will very cunningly be able to produce my spare. As a rabbit from a hat.

I always enjoyed Al Pacino shouting ‘I’m in the dark here’ in Scent of a Woman. He too had difficulty seeing but no problem expressing himself. Especially doing the Tango. So, no longer am I in the dark. Let’s see does anyone notice.

That is how I passed my Saturday. Meaningless, mundane, methodical but I enjoyed it. I survived my mains electric phobia.  And Angela is spared the hassle of cleaning me up off the floor when she comes home.