yeah, I got your new year fireworks right here

Happy New Year, everyone. Let's kick off 2015 in style with some kitchen light bulb updates. You'll recall that after the last round-up and the replacement of the most recently demised batch of incandescent spotlights with LEDs that the only four old-school bulbs left were 1, 6, 9 and 11. So WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?!? Read on....

First to check out, on November 26th, was number 1. This was previously replaced on May 30th, so its second incarnation lasted 180 days.

Then, on December 11th, number 6. This is significant because this one was the last of the original batch of incandescent bulbs installed in April - the only other bulb to remain un-replaced since then is number 8, which is a proper long-life energy-saver which you'd expect to last a bit longer. This one was a halogen one at £4.28 a pop, which after 226 days works out at 0.019 pence per day.

Finally, today, number 9. Well, I say "today", but it could really have been any point over the last ten days or so as it's been pretty busy over Christmas and we were away for New Year. Anyway, I only noticed it today. That one was one of the original batch of 40W bulbs and so was of unknown age when it originally expired on September 18th; its second stint lasted 107 days.

So what that all means is that there is now just one incandescent bulb left in the whole kitchen, and it's number 11, the one on the right in the picture above, blazing its defiance in the face of progress like the roar of a doomed brachiosaur trapped in a tar pit as a meteorite hurtles towards it.

I suppose it's plausible that the attrition rate of the incandescent bulbs could reduce (or have already reduced) as more and more of them get replaced by low-energy bulbs and the overall load on the kitchen lighting circuit diminishes, but I am not an electrician and so it's also perfectly plausible that that's all just bollocks. What certainly is true is that IKEA (or at least their Cardiff branch) are currently knocking out the LED bulbs for a pound, a quarter of the usual price. I'd say that represents pretty excellent value for money, since the total number of LED bulbs to expire since I installed the first one in early May stands at a big fat zero.