When I got home, I made the terrible mistake (knew it was a mistake WHILE I was making it, did it anyway) of watching a wildlife documentary on the BBC. These things always end the same way -- with me sobbing on the couch, feeling my heart tear into pieces right there inside my chest. This time it was two orphaned cheetah kittens, brothers, who were raised by an amazing British wildlife researcher until they were two years old. Every time they saw him, they purred. It ended with only one of the brothers surviving, of course, and me with mascara dripping off my chin.
The light bulbs: I read recently about Thomas Edison and his large team of engineers and inventors who helped him invent the light bulb. Edison is, of course, an American, born in Ohio. After the whiz kids invented the light bulb, there was a lot more work to be done, like making it practical for people to use in their homes. They were experimenting with ceiling lights, but found that the bulbs kept falling out of the sockets, because the metal part at the bottom was straight and smooth. One of the inventors, when looking at a screw, realized that if the socket and the bulb both had screw threads, the bulb would stay in the socket and still be easily removed. Tah-dah. We all know the result because when we change a light bulb, we unscrew then screw. Simple.
Not here. Not so simple. In England, there are two basic types of light bulb: the screw-in kind that sane people have been using for a century, and this kind:
It's hard to see, but this bulb has a straight shaft (shut your mouth!) and two little pegs on the sides that have to be slotted into little peg holes in the socket. Rude awakening.
Anyhoo. The store had every kind of bulb you could want, as long as you wanted a 60 or 100 watt bulb of either the screw-in or screwed-up British variety. The lamps I have take little Christmas old-fashioned bulb type bulbs. I guess I'll have to go to the post office or the chemist for those.
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