Lights, Damned Lights but I've Fixed It

My kitchen is very annoying. It has too many lights. There are four spotlights in the ceiling, four spotlights of a different kind in the top of the cupboard housing and five strip lights under the cupboards (three small, one medium, one long). The actual kitchen itself is only about six foot by six foot. I'm sure a single bulb or fluorescent tube in the ceiling would have been enough light. Damn builders.

The main problem is that because there are so many of them it's really hard to get them all working at once. It's like juggling plates. Little glowing plates, stuck in the roof. Or something. It's not helped by some of them seeming to have loose connections so that I occasionally have to prod them a little to get them going again. It's lucky I'm of a height.

I think at the moment I have them all going (touch wood), as I had a session yesterday where I prodded all the dead ones to see which ones were actually dead and which ones were just pretending. A trip to York's premier hardware store at lunchtime today then enabled me to fill the gaps. So now they're all working and entering the kitchen is like entering the kingdom of Heaven. Except I expect the floor there is both cleaner and fluffier.

And don't get me started on the cost... I reckon it would cost about thirty quid to replace the whole set at once. Though I'd deserve a slap if I left it so long that none of them were working. Maybe I'd have to use a hat with a light in like a miner. Or maybe an apron with a light on. Now there's an idea.

I still can't work out how to get the glass cover off the light inside the oven though. It's been gone for a few years and it's starting to bug me...

Ghost Tunnel

The lights in the Leeman Road railway tunnel have been totally screwed for three days now. The tunnel is 100m-200m long and so in daylight it's pretty dark. At night and in the morning, the times when I tend to be in it at the moment, it's hard to see your hand in front of your face. Luckily it's a straight tunnel and so as long as you keep going in a straight line you can't go far wrong.

In fact, rather than be annoyed or scared about the darkness, I like to think of it as a fairground ride. With free entry! Like a ghost train without the train. So thank you York Council for the extra joy you are currently bringing me twice a day.

I did wonder whether it was an intentional thing by the council to reduce graffiti. It's hard to graffiti in the dark, and even if you took a torch to do it, nobody else would be able to see it. Is graffiti that nobody reads just as unfunny?

Or perhaps the lights are back on but I've started some kind of Pavlovian reaction and now automatically close my eyes every time I enter the tunnel.

Or perhaps there is no tunnel any more... the blackness I perceive as a lack of lights is merely the surrounding empty void.

Or perhaps the fuse has blown.

Kitchen Light Trauma

Bloody kitchen lights. I've spent £11 on them in the last week and I still have two spotlights that need replacing. Grrrr.

A tip to anyone looking to buy a kitchen: just put normal bulbs in. Don't bother with under-cupboard lighting, above-cupboard lighting or inside-cupboard lighting. Just a single 100W (low energy equivalent obviously) in the centre of the room will do you fine.

Trust me on this. Your wallet will thank me.

Bed-side Lighting

About three years ago I bought a couple of bed-side lights. Today I finally got round to buying an extension cable so that the second one could be plugged in. Shame really, as I had a contingency plan that when the bulb expired in the first one I could just switch-a-roo the whole lights and prevent having to find a new bulb from some shop somewhere. Another fine plan messed up by common sense.