Illuminating!

I want to get something off my chest.  Something that bothers me and something that really frustrates me sometimes.  It's something most of us do several times a day without thinking about it - but oh no, not me, not here in The Land of the Free.  Today people, I'm going to rant about the simple act of switching on a lamp or a light!  

The common household lamp.  You want to just press a switch and on it comes, right?  Not so simple over here.  Most lamp switches are not what you'd imagine a lamp switch to be.  By the time you realize that you don't just press it to turn it on, you're already getting frustrated.  Why is something so simple actually so complicated?  Some of the lamps over here have little dial type switches.  They are all different though.  Some of them have to be turned one click, some two, some even three.  And although sometimes they click in one direction, nothing will happen, this is just to trick you.  You have to be going in the right direction and that is not always the same way.  It's a lamp!  Why so many ways of turning it on and off?!  When I'm in a hotel, it takes me forever to get the bloody lamps working.  Sometimes they are controlled by switches on the wall - sometimes these switches are on the opposite end of the room from the lamp itself, just to confuse me even further!

When we first moved here, it took me ages to realize that sometimes the first switch on the wall when you enter a room, actually controls a lamp on the other side of the room.  But ha, if said lamp isn't switched on at the lamp itself, then it won't actually go on when you flick what you think is the light switch.  You then spend a few minutes walking back and forward between the wall switch and the lamps in the room before finding out what lamp is actually controlled by the switch and checking if it's switched on or not.  Too much unnecessary work for me I'm afraid!

To make matters worse, some rooms in the US only have a ceiling fan and a lamp instead of an overhead light.  It drives me crazy when I'm running between lamps and switches, sometimes in the dark.  I often wonder if I'm being recorded by some secret camera to give people a good laugh at my conundrum!

So there you have it, if you're reading this and are in the UK, please think yourself lucky that you don't have to waste as much energy as I do, trying to solve the eternal mystery of lamps and light switches on a daily basis ;)