It's been a week since I turned on the kitchen light and nothing happened. Well, not quite nothing. The ends of the fluorescent tube glow a kind of warm orange colour and bathe the kitchen in a rather pleasant and flattering light for someone who is looking to hide the odd wrinkle or a bad hair day, but it's absolutely useless for cooking. If I open the microwave, I can chop vegetables and knock up a stir fry in the light that comes from inside. I wonder why the light comes on when you open it? It's not like a fridge where you need to be able to peer into the depths to see what is hiding behind that jar of authentic Italian pasta sauce you were given three years ago but have never had the inclination to open because you know it couldn't possibly be better than yours. When you open the microwave, you are either expecting it to be empty, or you know exactly what it is you are going to take out. So the reasoning behind the illumination escapes me. Perhaps it is for occasions such as this, where the light is not working - if so, well done, LG.
Every evening, as darkness draws in, I bleat to He Who Can Fix Anything that the light has gone in the kitchen and he answers, "Oh", from where he reclines on his pillows, glued to the latest episode on the Crime channel, Women Who Kill, looking for tips and telltale signs that he might need to look out for. I keep telling him that when the time comes, I have a perfectly good oleander in the garden which I can use as a herb garnish on his braai chops. And so a week has gone by without replacing the fluorescent tube.
You might ask, why don't I just go and buy one myself? Well, the last one I bought and installed didn't work; it just glowed at each end, and having 1. gone to the trouble of getting the thing home without breaking it, 2. climbed a ladder and unclipped the old tube without falling and 3. climbed back up the ladder and clipped the new tube in without falling off it, I was so annoyed at having been sold a shoddy product that I simply left it in and it's been glowing at each end for some two years now. (I should mention that it is a double tube light and I only need one, so it didn't matter that the new tube didn't work - after all, if the kitchen is fully lit by one tube, what could I do with twice the amount of light?) So I have decided to wait and see how long it takes for him to remember to bring a new tube home.
Ummm. The fault might not be with either the old tube or the new one, but a small cylinder near one end, called a 'starter'. They are cheap, clip in place and sometimes fail. And ask the Statue Who Gathers Dust if he would like his next meal half-cooked by half-light...
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