How many people does it take to change a lightbulb?

Well, it depends if it's an Indian lightbulb. The bulbs had blown in the light behind my quilting table, and as they weren't a regular bulb we didn't have any replacements. So I took one of the blown bulbs with me to the shops at Galleria. They were in stock at ElectriCity, and the assistant checked them for me. See, quality control in India is not at, shall we say, international standards, so reputable shops selling lightbulbs have testing units, where they plug the bulb in to see if it lights up. These two did, I handed over my 30 rupees and came home. That part didn't take very long at all.

Came home and asked Rod to change the lightbulbs. That part didn't take very long either. But as the new lightbulbs didn't change the illumination levels of the room enough (i.e not at all), we knew we had a bigger problem. Because these lightbulbs had worked in the shop not half an hour earlier, the problem was somewhat bigger than we had thought, and a more comprehensive approach was needed. Rod got out his toolbox. He unscrewed the light fitting from the wall and armed with his electrical multimeter, proceeded to check all the wires. Now I don't know too much about the next bit, but I do know you're supposed to get a different reading when you touch different wires. Something to do with the live wire having some electricity to it, I think. Well, I can tell you, the live wire was flatlining. It was d...d...dead.

So Rod returned to his trusty toolbox, and got out a screwdriver. He prised the cover off the light switches which was held on by paint, and took off the two screws holding the front plate. Two wires are needed to make each switch work - in untechnical terms, one incoming, one outgoing. If I'm getting this wrong, remember I'm a quilter and not an electrician. But I've seen Rod fit enough switches to know that if you don't push the wires down far enough before tightening the screw, the connection won't be a good one. As we could see the ends of one of the wires we could assume the person who installed this lightswitch was a quilter and not an electrician too. Rod, who is not a quilter nor an electrician, made good the connection and my two new lightbulbs burst into light.

So now we have a light that works but is hanging off the wall, and a set of lightswitches which also work but are also hanging off the wall. Rod tries to screw the front plate back onto the lightswitch box. He has only the two screws that he took out of the box in the first place, but he cannot get the frontplate back on fully. For one of these screws is too long for the job, and the other has stripped the thread. Try as he might, the frontplate won't lie flat. Being facetious, I suggest we superglue the frontplate back on. Reader, it's a good idea, but it doesn't work...we tried. My next suggestion was duct tape, and if we'd had it in white Rod may not have rolled his eyes so much. Running out of good ideas (remembering I'm a quilter, not an electrician), I retired to the kitchen to make lunch, as the tiny job of screwing in two light bulbs had taken hours, and serious sustenance was now required. I have no idea exactly what he did to make the light switches lie flat on the wall again, but I can report Rod's not a quilter nor an electrician, he's a miracle worker!