The light switch in my downstairs shower room and toilet has an intermittent fault. When I say intermittent, I don’t just mean sometimes it works and other times it doesn’t, I mean it stops working and stays not working for indeterminate periods, and then one day, unpredictably, it will start working again. A friend (the same one who helps with the hedge-cutting and feeds the cat when I’m away) once took it apart and put it back together again and it started working, but he admitted he didn’t know what he’d done. It’s the sort of job that’s not really worth calling a professional electrician for, but it is annoying.
It was still working at half term when the family came, but it stopped again soon after, round about the start of lockdown. There’s no window, but there are frosted glass panels in the door, so some light comes in from the hall, good enough to get by, but really not good enough to clean. A bottle of nail varnish fell out of the bathroom cabinet one day and the top came off, so the hand-basin now has turquoise stripes (and I can’t have turquoise toenails, which is a source of great sorrow). Also I worry about the hygiene implications.
I have thought about attempting the taking-it-to-bits approach – after all, I salvaged the hedge trimmer, but I can’t quite face the palaver of it all, especially as I’m not sure I’ve got a decent torch. Even if I could find one, standing on the stepladder holding a torch would be enough of a challenge, never mind trying to wield a screwdriver (or whatever) in the other hand; and with my eyesight, I probably wouldn’t be able to see what I was doing anyway.
So this morning I was sitting on the loo in the gloom muttering to myself: ‘must remember to take the basket of washing out of the kitchen when I go back upstairs, don’t forget, don’t forget, don’t forget’ and thinking about my yoga teacher saying: ‘always have a place for everything and you’ll know where to look’ and me replying: ‘…I do, but the problem is not knowing where to look, but remembering to put things in the right place at the time I put them down’. In 2011 I did a Businesslink course on Self Organisation, talking about time management and list making and prioritising etc, and I broke down and confessed to the tutor that I just can’t do that stuff. She replied: ‘Maybe you should think about trying to get a job instead of starting a business’ and my heart sank as I thought: ‘If I could find anyone who would give me a job I wouldn’t be doing this.’
Well, after my exercise session I went for a shower, pulled on the switch without thinking and heard a snap. I expected it to come away in my hand, but when I noticed it hadn’t, I pulled again and the light came on.