Let there be light...eventually

You will all know what I'm talking about here, won't you? Perhaps you're wrestling with something technical; say, trying to put together an Ikea wardbrobe by referring to the wordless instruction booklet. Or maybe you're trying to remember who that actor was in Brief Encounter that smacked Myrtle Bagot's bum in the station refreshment room. You can't figure out the former, and you certainly can't recall the latter. Then, all of a sudden...ping! You realise in a flash that you need the smaller allen key to tighten the little metal screw-type thing, and the name you've had on the tip of your tongue is, of course, Stanley Holloway. Congratulations, my bloggy friend; you've just had a light bulb moment.

Depiction of the light bulb moment is very common in advertising these days. There is an ad currently running on UK television where the husband and wife (or they could be unmarried partners or in some other informal relationship - I'm very broad-minded about these things!) have large incandescent bulbs strapped to their crania, which then illuminate, presumably at some point crucial to the purpose of the advertisement. I'm sad to say, dear reader, that the ad had so much impact upon me that I'm damned if I can remember what it's selling. Be that as it may, the lightbulb also appears above the head of cartoon characters when they are struck with some startling thought; quite often the individual will be a scientist (often mad or at least eccentric) or an inventor, perhaps. What it is intended to depict is that Eureka! moment, when an idea evolves or a solution presents itself in a flash.

So, what do we do now that the European Union has decided to withdraw the incandescent bulb in favour of its low-energy successor? The new bulb is 'eco-friendly', in that it reduces carbon emissions (but has a downside in that it contains small amounts of mercury that, in theory, require specialist disposal), and it also lasts for a ridiculously long time. However, what it does not do, when you flick the switch, is bathe your room in instantaneous bright light; no. It's a kind of 'slow burn' light; a bit like a Victorian oil lamp just after you light the wick. It seems to struggle for a bit, giving you the sort of illumination Mr. Dickens probably wrote The Pickwick Papers by. Eventually, it seems to summon up energy enough to light whatever it is you wanted to do, but by then you've finished whatever it was and you turn the thing off again. It this bulb was a person it would probably be David Essex on beta blockers.

So, not for the first time in this blog, I ask...where am I going with this? I'll tell you. Now that the incandescent bulb is on the way out, what will we use in ads and cartoons to denote the instantaneous brainwave? The new generation of bulbs seem to me to be far better suited to philosophers or 'ologists'; those who spend a bit of time pondering the existence of deities or the meaning of life, and to whom ideas come, not in a flash, but rather as a dawning realisation over the course of weeks or even months. In due course of time, the light bulb moment could be used as a derogatory term for a particularly slow-witted individual. Or a philosopher. If the two are different.

So what do we use to replace the current image? I'd like answers on a postcard, please. If you switch that lamp on now you should be able to see enough to write it by Friday.