OPINION

I’d had a good day.

Got a fair bit done, mainly getting the Boomerang Child’s car a warrant, and had enjoyed a stroll and a coffee on a brisk but gloriously sunny day.

Later
I’d been on Grandad duties for a while which involved singing nursery rhymes and coming up with obscure hand actions – think spiders climbing spouts and sunshine coming out and drying up rain, if you get my drift – before settling down to a good old family roast.

As expected of the Boomerang Child, the meal was hearty and featured an array of rich, healthy-looking consumables which, to my eye anyway, looked particularly dark in colour.

I wasn’t surprised.

Not two hours previous I’d sat on the couch while Miss Two and a Half had a bath and Master 12 Weeks dozed, farted and smiled – in that order.

While enjoying the sights and sounds of this young family I’d thumbed my way through one of their greeny-centric lifestyle magazines and come across a piece extolling the benefits of leafy, deep green vegetables and rich meat with lots of iron etc.

And just to be clear it’s the veges that are green, not the meat.

Anyway. There I was ploughing my way through the meal – which, I have to say, was as tasty as it was dark in colour – and the need to come up for breath arose.

Still chewing, I looked across at the kitchen and lounge and noticed even though all the lights were on the house was quite dim.

Naturally, I put two and two together and wondered if the cost of living coupled with their environmental leanings had led Boomerang Child and Builder Boy to reduce the wattage in their lightbulbs.

By that I mean dimmer lights last longer so you don’t spend as much dough on replacing them. Apparently. Also dimmer lights don’t attract as many moths, which means less will get tangled up in that cobweb under the back door porch you’ve been meaning to remove with the yard broom for ages.

You might want to have a grain of salt or two handy to aid in the digestion of those last two “facts”. Ahem.

I should perhaps explain at this point the Boomerang Child and Builder Boy are not crackpots. Far from it. They have some environmental and societal beliefs which we of an older generation might regard as “hippy” but are actually, when you break it down, kind of sensible and harmless.

Naturally, as a representative of the Old Fart generation, it is my job to take the mickey out of the pair of them relentlessly. I just hope they realise it is good-natured and not intended to cause offence.

When I’m old(er) and grey(er) and they are looking after me in their self-sustainable, off-grid, bush paradise, miles from anywhere I don’t want them refusing my request for, er, a certain weed to alleviate the discomfort of my arthritis.

But I digress. Back to the light bulbs.

I came across the practice a few years back when I visited a house of a friend of a neighbour, to pick up something she’d bought online.

It was a nighttime call and the place was eerily dark save for a few almost pointless light bulbs hanging forlornly here and there.

The pickup was for one of those old porcelain jugs people collect. My instructions were to give it a cursory check and hand over the dough if it was okay.

In the semi-darkness, I had a look, paid the cash and scarpered. I’m sure you can see where this is going.

It was only later in the comparatively bright kitchen of my neighbour we discovered a fairly obvious crack in the base of the thing.

So, back at the daughter’s dinner table, I’ve got that tale in mind as I’m sitting there chewing and staring at the lights.

Eventually, my curiosity got the better of me and I had to ask.

Sensing the early stages of another lengthy political philosophy debate Mrs P tried to interject with a comment about what I nice sunny day it had been but Builder Boy, presumably up for another talkfest with his father-in-law, was having none of it.

No, he said, he hadn’t changed the lightbulbs to a lower wattage to save a few bob. And, he continued with a smile, while the idea did hold some appeal there was probably a simpler reason for things looking a lot darker to me.

I still had my sunglasses on.