Countries often become associated with objects, so a beret or baguette and you think French, bowler hat – British, Bicycle and cheese – Dutch, enormous gun toting, pickup truck driving religious evangelical nutter and you think American… Well, I’m now going to associate Sicilians with light switches….. They just love them!
In fact they love them so much that you can often turn the hall light off whilst sitting on the loo! In our apartment last night the bedroom had 7 light switches, our bathroom 3 and the lounge had 3 banks of 4. It’s like Star Trek!
And they’re not just a light switch.. that would be madness. They are either your normal switch or a sprung toggle switch, that clicks back to its original position after you push it. Usually these are the 2 way switches that turn a light off and on in conjunction with a number of other switches doing the same thing. So you can turn the hall lights off in the kitchen, the lounge as you leave the house and obviously whilst sitting on the loo… clicking fun for all the family!
I think there’s also Light switch ‘oneupmanship’ here too. As we’ve had switches that you actually have to be told how to use (unless you’re Scotty from the Enterprise) as they are just plain plastic boxes with some lines on them – you use them like the transporter controls on the Enterprise and slide your fingers up and down them.
Then there’s the pot luck switches, where you just keep pushing them and different lights come on each time. You may get 2 on the first press, 4 on the next and be blind by the 6th press.
And there room for expansion too. None of this fitting a switch box that’s the right size for the number of switches you need. Oh no, let’s give you some expansion room, just in case you fancy turning the garage lights off whilst in your loft. There’s always blanked switch plates.
Having said that, there are some seriously stylish lights, concealed lights, fabulous designer ones and obviously the bog standard ones too. But like much of the accomodation we’ve stayed in the interiors are often very stylish and modern and some of the best we’ve had anywhere, so I’ll happily put up with the light switch lottery.
Anyway, we left Malta without our part for Tilly and were dreading coming back to the port town of Pozzallo. We thought it would be another tatty, dirty port town, but in fact it was very stylish, clean and very nicely done, it even had a new cycle path in a fetching blue along the sea front.
We cycled through in the dark after docking and left the next day on a sombre grey day with the threat of rain in the air after having lavished sun screen all over us as Linda believed the BBC weather which forecast wall to wall sunshine and 20C and the apartment didn’t actually have windows anywhere apart from the kitchen which had a lovely view of the neighbours and no sky!
The days of trusting the BBC are over! (Especially as they’ve been saying the vegetable shortage is nothing to do with Brexit! Hang on whilst I pick myself off the floor from laughing too much, having slipped over on the mountains of fruit and veg in the shops here!). Another Brexit Dividend eh?
Speaking of which back to our sprocket. We can get these in the UK but the postage to the EU now is £35. Normal post and you obviously have to allow 2 and half lifetimes for delivery and customs clearance. It’s so wonderful we’ve taken back control isn’t it?
So the German company who shipped our sprocket to Malta (who obviously have no control of DHL losing it) have been extremely helpful getting a replacement sent to us and have said they can get one to us within 24 hours anywhere in Europe to help us out… Apart from the UK which takes at least 10 days … Don’t say it!!!!
Next up arrange a shipment of Tillys new part that we can hopefully actually collect…
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