We have had trouble with our lights for years. Not all the lights in our home, but the expensive lights in our front & back rooms. The ones with half a dozen high-powered halogen bulbs in each.

The problem is that the bulbs blow alarmingly quickly – a dozen a week if we replace them, at £8 each, and then finally the transformer in the light unit failed.

We have consulted electricians a couple of times about this, with £35 call-out charges and £30 per half hour plus parts. None has found a solution, although their list of suggestions is, shall we say, less than scientific.

• If you touch the bulbs with your skin, they will blow – you need to hold them in a tissue
• That’s an aluminium unit. Aluminium doesn’t conduct electricity. It does? Are you sure? (They used it for wiring in the 1960s because it was cheaper than copper!)
• In that case, aluminium conducts electricity, and that is blowing your unit
• You burn logs? That puts soot in the air which (you can guess the rest…)

I’ve finally found out what the problem is. Halogen bulbs burn much hotter, and their filaments are much finer. And in our house we have a creature called Tiny Flirt (Clodhoppus Babyelephantus) who travels everywhere at full throttle in gigantic leaps and bounds, and an enormous creature called Little Nutter (Autisticus Bouncii.) He can bounce on a paved driveway like it’s a trampoline.

When halogen bulbs vibrate, they break. And when the children are in our house, it rings like a bell.

Time to get my screwdriver out. This weekend I shall mostly be fitting cheap light fittings…