Demonic Hunter ceiling lamps

Today started out okay, I mean no real emergencies.  Feeling better after being ill is such a gift.  A gift you no longer take for granted!  As I left the bedroom I accidently touched the remote control of the Hunter ceiling light and fan.  It is mounted on the wall and the last time it was touched the lights went on and we took two days to find a way of turning them off.  You ask the simple question why have remote controls for lights and stuff, surely a simple on and off switch would suffice?  I spent the next hour and half pointing a useless remote at the roof lights from various perspectives including balanced on a kitchen stool, leaping off the bed, etc to no avail. 

Deciding that batteries were probably the problem I drove to the nearby petrol station to buy over priced batteries.  But even with these brought no progress, and I turned to the internet for advice.  The Web turned out to be flooded with other owners of Hunter ceiling lamps with much worse problems than mine.  Their automated ceiling lights came on in the middle of the night, during the day, whenever they dammed please.  The fan had a mind of its own and decided when and if it would work.  Horrified, I tried to find a solution to my problem.  Most involved unscrewing the light fitting and buying a £60 replacement thingy.  Desperation kicked in, why not try the caveman approach.  I went to the fuse box and tried pulling out all the fuses that said lights.  This made no difference and I crept up the stairs with a growing dread to find the spot lights still blazing from the ceiling. 

At 50 watts on each lamp, there are three, my electricity meter was all the while spinning like a demonic trooper.  Fuelled by the memory of my last electricity bill, I threw caution to the wind and threw the mains switch.  I might have turned off the fridge/freezer/ etc but at least that meter would not be spinning like a wild thing.  I went up the stairs to gather my thoughts below the ceiling lamp and found it still on!  At this stage I must admit to a dance of anger and profanity beneath the spot lights. 

After some re-grouping I remembered another fuse box outside in the garage and tripped that switch as well.  Going up the stairs there was such a heave of relief to find the lights off.  Never, have I been so relieved to find something not working.  Felt I had bearded the beast and yet there was no real progress.  If I left the mains switch off, as it was now, my freezer would defrost, no computer, no cooking, no kettle this was not a viable solution.  Every time I put on the mains the blasted spots lights came on again. Then studying the lights I figured if I could remove the bulbs a cure maybe possible.  Because the lights had been on five hours or so the bulbs were hot but a handy towel sufficed and they were unscrewed and removed.  This was duly done and I was at last able to put the mains on.  Do you remember that moment in  Cast Away when Tom Hanks eventually makes a fire on the beach and jumps about caveman like screaming in delight,  “I have made fire!” ,well I did a dance around the bedroom screaming  the equivalent about successfully killing lights. Why did it take me so long to come up with this?  There was an idiotic part of me that thought things could be resolved if the right button was pressed in the right order.  And isn’t that a common thing in all our lives.  We fiddle around while Rome burns and are reluctant to take steps to make real change.  A very big part of us just hopes that the problem will be resolved, go away, be avoided or ignored.  We waste huge parts of our life and energy in the time that follows.  While we do that, our own electricity meter, our ticking heart, beats away the lost time and the cost.  There has got to be a lesson there!