Sunday, September 27, 2009

The other day, I did something I haven't done for ages. I read the Guardian. In it was a long article by a Guardian hack about how he had revolutionised his life and electricity bills by switching entirely to low-energy light bulbs over the last six months. Maybe I was in a bad mood when I read the article, but there seemed to be an overwhelming air of "aren't I great?" sanctimony about the whole affair, with this chap clearly regarding himself as some kind of frontiersman.

I am not a journalist for the nation's most environmentally minded newspaper, and yet Schloss Cheeseford has been equipped from basement to attic with low-energy bulbs for the last 13 years (with the last 1996 original only just having come out of service). Given that they cost over a tenner apiece when I began my own energy-saving crusade, I think I'd be able to write a better (and more sanctimonious) article about the wonder of CFLs than some Johnny-come-lately who waited until they were 50p a go, and who seems to have more light sources in his modest townhouse than Pinewood Studios. However, I know that if I'd pitched just such an article, I'd have been lucky to receive a polite rejection note. So, how do these people get these dull, obvious articles commissioned? Compromising negatives of the commissioning editor? Being able to call the commissioning editor Dad? What ever it is, I don't got it.

What I do got is a fractured distal humerus, my Grauniad reading having been something I did to pass the time in hospital. I go back in on Tuesday to have some fairly serious ironmongery inserted into my arm. Cruelly, it was my right arm, so typing is out of the question, and I find myself dictating this painfully slowly into a computer that throws up interesting alternatives for the words that I thought I said. Knowing my luck, I will now be deluged with commissions that I am unable to fulfil. I am now off to buy some incandescent bulbs which am going to leave on all of the time. So there.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Pitch a piece to the Daily Mail along the lines of "Long life lightbulbs fractured my distal humerus". If you tell them they also put up your mortgage payments and stopped you from emptying your bin more than once a fortnight then you'll probably find yourself replacing Amanada Platell before the day is out...

Shaun said...

Staff writers are a sunk cost.

(Sanctimonious? The only anagram I can make of him is Halo Jak).

Get well soon, Louis.

Louis Barfe said...

Good point Shaun. That's another reason not to pitch anything. Not only will they reject it, but you're likely to find an incredibly similar idea being done for free by a staffer a couple of weeks later. That said, there are an awful lot of high-profile talentless wankers getting regular freelance work. Whose cock do I have to suck to get a piece of it?

office pest said...

Hm sorry to hear Louis on all fronts. I have plenty of 200w clear or pearl bulbs in stock if you want to re-equip your house and write a piece about the counter revolution.

They're roughly the size and shape of those glass containers full of coloured water you used to see in Chemist shop windows.

Quite a talking point I find, no-one can quite believe what they're seeing. Almost like, I imagine, having hardcore porn decorating your living room walls and drugs set out on the kitchen table. Or lighting up in a school.

Anyway hope the op goes well and you're back on form soon.

Louis Barfe said...

As late as 1998, there was a functioning light bulb in the backstage area of the Holloway Road Odeon that had been switched on since it opened as the Gaumont in 1937. Somehow, it had even survived a direct Luftwaffe hit, which took out the main part of the original auditorium. It might even still be there.

Simon said...

Good luck with both the arm and the quest for work.

James Paget or further afield?