A friend recently posted this on Facebook, and I nodded with enthusiasm:

It’s so true.  Today I have Googled everything from the email address for my old dentist (so I could request some of the £780 it’s cost me in the last 4 months to correct the appalling work he has done) to the time in San Francisco (to find out when was a reasonable time to contact a colleague) to ‘why won’t Outlook let me open any Word attachments?’ (I’m still at a loss on that one – Google got all technical on me).

I’m thinking now that perhaps I should have done a spot of Googling when I tried to fix the broken cord that turns the light on my bathroom mirror on and off.  I did fix it, and I was so proud of myself that I called Dad to tell him.

‘What exactly did you do?’ He asked

‘Well, I couldn’t get the casing unscrewed, so I sort of ‘popped’ it out.  Then I tied a new cord to the switch and tried to poke it through the hole.  It didn’t work, so I tried a few needles to thread it through, but that didn’t work either so I used some wire.  On the third thickness I tried I got it through and now it’s all working.’

‘And you turned the power off first?’

‘Ummmm…’

And it turns out that had I Googled this, I would have found out the first thing I should have done was turn the power off.  Not, as I did, leave it on so I could see by the light I was actually trying to fix.  To be fair, my bathroom has no windows and the only way I could have seen without the light is to have held the torch in my mouth – I didn’t think that was a good option while standing on a chair, and waving screwdrivers and wire around (Now I think about it, I was probably more likely to make it through alive in that scenario than the one I chose) .

Anyway, 24 hours after my handyman stint / near death experience, the actual switch broke (a complete coincidence – nothing to do with the previous days activities, honest).  I called Dad to ask how safe it would be to unscrew the wires it was attached to so I could take it to a shop get a new one.  I didn’t think Google would be able to factor in my recent total incompetence and that Dad might be a slightly better bet, but I did think I could Google the switch to work out what I would need to do, if Dad thought I would be able to manage.

His response?

‘Do NOT touch anything.  I’ll come down and sort it out!’

He did, and I now have a fully functioning bathroom mirror light, which is lovely – although I’d got quite used to not seeing all the lines on my face every morning and night – the dimness was my friend.  I’d like to point out though, that we did turn off the power this time, but needed two torches to be able to see, so one in my mouth would never have worked.

Weirdly, this was outside the coffee shop I pass on my commute yesterday, just as I was thinking about writing this post:

It’s like someone is telling me something…. :)