Entre Les Murs

And They Call It the City of Light

We are not meant to have light bulbs in this place.

Janet bought three second-hand lamps before we moved in, so that we'd have something by which to work. I managed to knock one over in our first week in the apartment, blowing the bulb. I thought I'd broken the lamp altogether, but it turned out it had simply tripped the circuit breaker.

I bought a pair of replacement bulbs, however the spare was required very shortly, when I knocked over a lamp again and shattered the bulb. My clumsiness was compounded by the fact that I did it in front of my wife, and became the butt of some "light" humour.

The jokes stopped when she brought home several packages of replacement bulbs and we discovered that they were all for push-and-twist sockets, instead of the familiar screw-in type, which all of our lamps have.

We bought another table lamp on Monday, from Ikea. We took a pair of bulbs from the bin right next to where we found it, carefully checking that the socket was the correct type for the lamp. They were the expensive long-life conservation type. When we got them home I discovered that while the socket was correct, there simply wasn't space under the shade for the bulb, which is slightly larger than a regular bulb of its type due to the extra energy-saving electronics in the collar.

Another Ikea lamp I installed this weekend didn't light up when I switched it on this morning. It turned out to also be controlled from the wall switch, which had been turned off by Janet; but I was ready to give up and light candles before that was revealed.

posted 2.11.05