Week 147

Monday 10 January 2022

• There are various GU10 LED lighbulbs here, several recessed in ceilings of the the bathroom and the little corridor, and a cluster of protruding ones in the kitchen. Having several means when one breaks – which is often – it’s not so urgent to replace it, I can procrastinate forever while enjoying being less horribly illuminated in the mirror and probably saving some electricity. But I wouldn’t want someone to see the failed lightbulbs and conclude that I don’t know how to change one.

  So to get some new lightbulbs. There are some reviews on the John Lewis website by folks bemused at having been invited to review a lightbulb they’d purchased. “They are light bulbs which provide light – they do what it says on the box.” What ignorance – lightbulbs differ. Some last longer than others, although I think the occasional humidity in the bathroom doesn’t help with longevity. By now almost every lightbulb here is of a different design, brightness, warmness to its neighbour … which is OK, actually.

  Apparently it’s possible to design a lightbulb that lasts for ages and is really efficient, but it’s not in manufacturers’ best interests to do so, and that’s just the economic system under which we live so deal with it.

  By the way, on the recent series of Taskmaster Alan Davies recommends using a suction cup on the end of a child’s toothbrush to help unscrewing a recessed lightbulb, but I think that’s BS, at least every one I’ve ever met is either easy to unscrew with bare hands, or maybe not but I can’t see how the floppy-haired funnyman’s tip would help.

• To London to Blackheath to see Danny Baker, the broadcaster, his sort of one man show. He’s an entertaining fellow, it was fine, I probably won’t go to another but that’s OK. As promised, each audience member got a 45 rpm vinyl single from Baker’s collection; I slightly regret not swapping mine for any other, but it’s not like I have access to a working record player. The main thing is it was so nice to go somewhere and do something.

  (Baker was last known for doing a bad tweet that cost him his BBC job. I don’t think he’s a racist any more than we all are, but that tweet was a moment of stupidity.)

  I went there and back by National Express coach, which was irrational for all sorts of reasons but let’s not be boring.

• Wordle, the sensation sweeping the internation, is a delight. I was a bit mad for a while cos I remember when a Wordle was a sort of word cloud and you can’t use the same name for two different things! But I calmed down.

• It freaks my nut that Americans, yanks, a whole big country of people, use “letter” sized paper instead of A4. It really is a foreign country.

• I have written down “Torres Black truffle potato crisps” which someone recommended, I haven’t tried them.

• Once upon a time I accidentally convinced people that I drunk alarming amounts of coffee, by drinking various things (cider, peppermint tea, water) out of a mug – things which respectable people would drink from a glass, but I’m not respectable? These were people who’d ask what school did you go to (the school of hard knocks) and play water polo (how do they get all the horses in a swimming pool, they enjoy being asked, even more than nordic walking enthusiasts enjoy being asked where their skis have gone).