IINSTRUCTIONS. Don’t you love them? Don’t you get a little thrill as you turn the box to find them or fish inside for the leaflet? I’ve just enjoyed one. It’s on the side of the cardboard box containing a new light bulb. It was the sort of bulb that has to be given time to consider whether or not it will provide sensible illumination. The sort that has to be treated like a newborn child. And so the instructions were scattered with Never do this, Always do this, In the event of, and so on. And then I spotted a beauty. On the only side of the box not filled with a photograph of the bulb, I read:
NEVER
handle glass when
installing or removing.
Now, I ask you. How, without handling it, do you withdraw something that is 80% glass and sitting snugly in a tightly-fitting pack, glass uppermost? It’s the only part of the bulb you can get hold of.
I sat holding the unopened box and looking at it, relishing the discovery. The stupid instruction to end all stupid instructions.
Then I began opening it and there, sitting on the bulb, was a neatly-fitting cap of thin, white board to protect it from my touch. The spiral of white glass sneered at me.