Dim as a poor man's candle.

Aaaaargh Eeurgh and Ickety Yuk. Just had to get that out of my system. It's that kind of day. My office is only 100 yards from my house and I can't see said abode through the driving rain. The energy efficient light bulbs are on in the office but they aren't making a dent in the strange twilight light that is suffusing the hills.

I'm all for being green. I recycle with a vengeance and have wrenched my shoulder from patting myself on the back when I deposit bags of sorted recycling in the pub car park repository. I don't leave lights on, I am cautious with my heating (partly because it would be cheaper to heat my house with gold ingots than with the oil that I have to use). I turn my car engine off in gridlocked traffic and I buy my food locally but the one thing I can't bear is ENERGY EFFICIENT LIGHTBULBS. I really hate them.

You know how cartoons of a person having an earth shattering idea show a lightbulb springing to life over their head? Never going to happen with EELs (Energy Efficient Lightbulbs). Instead there would be a dim glow, like an exhausted yak's fat candle, which would struggle to light the way to a good idea, let alone startle the world with said idea's incandescent brilliance.

At the weekend, I stayed in one of those eco lodges (translation - really uncomfortable wood cabin held together with cobwebs). The whole place is a lumberjacks wet dream, as it is wood, wood everywhere, all in a dark varnished finish. It was lit with EEL's to stress the eco friendliness of the whole experience. What it actually did was stress me out unbearably. I couldn't read a book, I stubbed each toe seperately by tripping over things that couldn't be seen under the glaring 3 watt glow of the bulbs. If I had lit the place with jam jars of glow worms it would have been brighter. In the end I had to use my wind up torch to read my book without going blind.

The whole issue was further low lighted yesterday when I went to see a friend for a much needed glass of wine. Her sitting room had 5 lamps turned on, all with energy efficient bulbs. Consequently it was nearly pitch black in the room. I couldn't help but think that one 60 watt bulb would have made more difference than all 5 of her lights, and would have had the same environmental impact without the manic depression that bad lighting can't help but create.

Why, oh why can't somebody invent an EEL that gives off a decent, normal coloured light instead of this faintly pink trick of light that we are currently given?

I am a firm believer that being green should not have to mean an ostentatious lack of comfort - it is the only way that we can defeat the whole problem. The sackcloth and ashes approach is bound to fail as nobody other than the odd demented saint enjoys being miserable. And the reason why nobody has done this? Well, it's because every time the scientist bods have a good idea, it is lit up by an EEL and they can't see well enough to actually show anybody else what their good idea is.