We need to talk about lighting.

Why do so many people have such dreadful lighting in and around their houses?

Now that I'm living in a white box, I've realized that the cheap LED thing I bought several years ago looks so much better with just the light up base bit. It originally came with a St Basils Cathedral style dome. I've never actually switched it off - from the day it came in here, that plug Soviet has only been off during a handful f power cuts, only a handful of which have been my fault. I've been on different continents for weeks at a time while that's been on night and say. I feel as if that alone made the Battenburg pink so much worse.

Without the cover piece, it's less Ivan the Terrible, and more television studio. Passers by would've assumed another Muscovite hooker lived here, had they been able to see in.

I've no doubt said before, but my father was big on lighting. The first time I ever went to his isolated home in the middle of nowhere, I was enormously touched to find a Christmas tree aglow - my last stepmother died at Christmas, and he'd kept the tree with the lights etc burning away in the room as it had been when she gasped her last, guarded by her Dobermans. For my arrival, he'd augmented the room with scented candles. Isn't that nice. I'd actually been banned from that property during her lifetime, so it was interesting to have my first poke around.

Onto which, my mother has no appreciation of lighting. Her tree this year was draped in a sorry trail of 'cool blue' lights she had found in a supermarket. They've been dumped in the bin for a golden set I found for just £4.99.

I was talking about this earlierwith my uncle, who is having a debate with his partner about whether to floodlight the facade of their new house. He is totally against, his partner is all for (for context, this man is originally from somewhere around Leicester or Northampton), and I am somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. Americans will expect it, and there are features that deserve to be floodlit, although I agree that it's a bit much on the whole, and the inbreds in the surrounding villages might object.

Why do so many people have such f****** awful lighting.

All I've got in my house are bare lightbulbs.

No shades? BHS had a moment in 1995 or thereabouts - Heil Tonkso of the other place would no doubt back me up on that. You could've stocked up on some half decent stuff then. The high street then was all about recreating the vibe that Paula Yates hooked Michael INXS with - I know, I shoplifted that exact look.

I've never seen the point of light shades. They just force you to buy brighter bulbs than you need.

Don't you just get the ones in the corner shop, and pray you've remembered the difference between screw cap and the one with the prongs? And half the time you've misremembered and it's the one that doesn't fit.

Fortunately, all my fittings are prongy, so I never have to worry about that confusion.

Whichever one I need, I always end up with the opposite. Then find out I needn't have bothered anyway, when I find the right type behind the teabag box, however many months later.

I do wonder why some government or other over the years hasn't brought in one universal fitting for all lightbulbs. Are we the only country in the world that has multiple fittings and sizes for lightbulbs, leading the population to regularly buy the wrong "type"?

For me it's always been ceiling light = prongy, spotlight = screwy. I have yet to make a mistake.

I bought an Ikea 'Fado' light, and I'm really rather regretting it. If I look at the instructions for that 'pairing device' dimmer control once more, the whole lot is going to go out of the window.

Butterfield wrote:I do wonder why some government or other over the years hasn't brought in one universal fitting for all lightbulbs. Are we the only country in the world that has multiple fittings and sizes for lightbulbs, leading the population to regularly buy the wrong "type"?

A very good point. Other than the Wendi and Fangirl residences, is there a household in the land that doesn't have a drawer filled with the 'wrong' lightbulbs, carelessly bought and now just waiting for a purpose to finally be found for them?

This was supposed to be easy. I had to get something politically correct to replace my light in the shape of a St Basils dome, for obvious reasons. As long as Portugal doesn't invade anywhere, the Fado model should last a long time. If I ever figure out how to set it up.