I know this is a bit controversial but hate those bloody energy lightbulbs! Yes, I know,shocking isn’t it?! (Well they might be if they produced any sort of power).  I am aware about carbon footprints and all that sort of thing, but I do still like the good old-fashioned 60 watt bulb.

I have lived in my house for 11 years now; It was a brand new property which had special fittings in the upstairs landing and hall downstairs for the energy lightbulb. That was all very lovely except for a couple of years later when I had to get a replacement, none of the shops sold them!II had to send off for them and they were pretty expensive at £10 apiece! Compare that to the £1 or so cost for a normal light bulb and you can see one reason I hatred them.

Having a brother who is good with electrics helped as he took out those fittings and put the general ones in, so I could use either standard light bulbs or energy bulbs as the mood took me.

Surprisingly, I do quite often use the energy ones in the hall as have got a little better over the years. It no longer takes about 5 seconds for the light to realise that it has been switched on, and kick into action, It is almost instantaneous nowadays.

A couple of nights ago Miss Hap informed us that we had a power cut, well, kind of anyway. She had turned the light on in the bathroom upstairs (it has a normal light bulb) and it blew causing the lights to all go off. Mr Grump had to climb up to the fuse box and flick the switch back on to restore light.

Anyway Mr Grump fitted a new bulb and all was sweetness (and light) in our household. Well, until I went to have my bath the next morning, I turned on the light to be greeted by this eerie kind of greenish glow. It was pretty horrid and I literally had a quick dip before getting out of there.

Miss Hap also moaned about the light when she went to the bathroom, It was a really ugly low energy lightbulb, with the emphasis on ‘low energy’. We nagged at Mr Grump to change it as it was giving us a headache.

When I came home from work later on, I saw that indeed the bulb was changed, Great, he managed to do one of the chores I had left him before I went to work. During the evening I needed to nip to the loo so I went to the downstairs one,

The eerie greenish glow appeared casting its gloom in the room. It seemed to make everything appear grubby. I was not impressed with this at all. It’s bad enough that it had the audacity to be called a ‘light’ bulb, but to have this almost CSI quality of showing up every speck making everything appear grimy was annoying.

Mr Grump managed to persuade my niece’s fiance to take him shopping today as the weather was appalling and we needed some bits. I decided to leave them to it and didn’t go with them. Big mistake, Not only did they forget to buy some normal light bulbs but they decided to stop off at the pub on the way home for a ‘quick pint’!

It seems that he was running a bit low on energy and needed a bit of perking up himself!