24 June 2020

As part of the snowball effect following on from the bathroom renovations (carpets next, then wardrobe, etc), I’ve been doing a review of the lighting on our bedroom.

And by review, I mean that because the bedroom is currently empty while the en-suite is being renovated, I took the opportunity to clean the light fittings.

In the process I noticed that in the main light fitting in the room, only one of the three small globes was working. Possibly it’s been that way since we moved in, who knows? Certainly I don’t recall taking the light fitting apart to clean it before now. Maybe I just figure all bedrooms have ‘mood’ lighting.

Anyway – in the bedroom we have that one central light fitting which is the only one that gets used. There’s also a single down light near the window, which only ever gets turned on by accident when we miss the switch for the main light. Maybe it’s there to remind me that the windows, or the curtains, could do with a clean. Whatever it’s reason for being there, it’s useless.

But THE most useless light in the bedroom was a little upturned light fitting that appears to have as it’s only purpose in life, to collect dead bugs. The switch to turn this light on sits quite neatly just behind our bed head. The labour involved in moving the bed just to turn this light on has always meant I was totally unaware of its role as a bug graveyard.

Until the other day when I turned all the bedroom lights on as I was painting the inside of the wardrobe. The burning smell got me investigating the light fittings, and there was the bug crematorium merrily toasting it’s inhabitants.

This led to a “what a useless light fitting” diatribe, that neither the dog or the dead bugs paid too much attention to. The man of the house, however, agreed with me, and put the idea in my head of changing out the light fitting for something useful. Like reading lights for the bed, he suggested. A twin fitting so we could have a light each. With individual controls so that one person (obviously him) doesn’t have to put up with the other person (obviously me) reading with the light on to all hours of the night.

Oh – and we’d also move the switch so it wasn’t behind the bed head any longer.

What a great idea! I can picture it in my mind – maybe with longer flexible light fittings that could be angled towards the reader. Preferably black to match up with the black and wood toned bed head.

Surely this was an easy job for someone with my advanced online shopping skills…

Surely….

Two days, about 70 websites, and four actual shops later, I still cannot find what I’m looking for.

I’m in unfamiliar territory. I’m usually a fairly laid back sort of home owner – one colour of beige is much the same as the other, choosing our new carpet didn’t involve an awful lot of deliberation, and even choosing the fittings for the new en-suite was very much a case of “yep that looks ok, we will go for that”.

I feel fairly uncomfortable being unable to settle on any non-crematorium style light fitting. I do know people who deliberate long and hard about any such decisions, discussing it ENDLESSLY. But that’s not me.

Or it wasn’t, until this light fitting.

Do I just get them to take the light off and patch up the hole, and ignore the tantalising option of flexible individual reading lights wired into the wall above the bed????

While we ponder that, let’s just all join in a minutes silence for the passing of the 50 bugs cremated the other day.

RIP, bugs.