This week I had a lightbulb moment.  Three to be specific.  The light in my electric fire went out so I replaced it (after consulting YouTube and Google to work out which end had to be unscrewed first.  This was a good plan as I would have definitely have gone for the back, had I just winged it, and that would have been all sorts of wrong).  Anyway, ten minutes later my outside light went pop and one of the two bathroom lights went at Christmas – but it’s such a bugger to change them, I’d been managing without.  I decided to tackle them all together, and after calling dad to check the possibility of electrocuting myself in the process was small (there was that incident a while back when I attempted electrical things in a way that, apparently, it’s surprising I am still around to tell the tale), I went on a lightbulb hunt.

It turned out the outside one wasn’t as tricky as I’d thought, so I sorted that one out quite quickly.  It was the bathroom one that I was dreading.  It involves standing on a chair, unscrewing three screws, and when you get to the last one trying to catch the wooden frame and piece of glass as it comes away from the ceiling.  I did that ok though, to my surprise.  I took out the bulb that had presumably found better things to do with its existence than be a light and rummaged in my washing up bowl (the place I keep random things that don’t fit in my man drawer) for a new bulb.  The dead bulb was 11 watts but I only had a 25 watt bulb that was the right shape so I thought I’d check for any guidance in the actual light.

Now, what you need to know is that my bathroom is in the middle of my house with no natural light.  I have had that light fitting for about eight years, and for eight years my bathroom has been dim, even after turning the light on.  Really dim.  So dim that I tend to put the light on a good 10 minutes before I use the bathroom in order to be able to see anything.  It’s always a little awkward when new people come over and I have to tell them that they need to wait a while for the light to do its thing before they do theirs.

Which is why it was really annoying to discover that I had misunderstood my light.  It wasn’t meant to have a combined wattage of 25; each bulb was supposed to be 25 watts.  I put the new lightbulb in, did the screwing-the-thing-to the-ceiling dance and hey presto!  I literally had light!  I can see in my bathroom after eight years of dimness.  I did only change the one bulb though – if I had two correct ones the brightness would just scare me…

So check your bulbs, it might not be thick glass or energy saving lightbulbs that are the problem, as I’d thought.  It could be a user error…

And in other news, I’ve finished my first ten dragons.  They’ll be off to a new home soon  :o)