Turn your loo into a late night disco with glow in the dark seats - Susan Morrison

Turn your loo into a late night disco

They are quite bright. Very bright. Unfortunately I omitted to order the dimmable ones.

Should we rise in the night with the need to use the loo, which oddly, we seem to do more as we age, we are literally blinded by the light.

This has the knock-on effect of startling the brain fully awake. Getting back to sleep becomes a mammoth task. I reached 257 sheep the other night, I tell you.

A solution must be found. And found by me, since I was the one who pushed for the bathroom renovation.

A recent overnight stay at my friend's house was a revelation. The evening had involved dinner and a few drinks. Oh, alright, quite a few drinks, and because I rigorously drink a pint of water before going to bed, post-drinky, I therefore had to get up to loo in the night.

Can you imagine my amazement when I pushed open the bathroom door and the toilet bowl itself actually lit up? And then changed colour!

I tell you, good people, this is the future. More than that, the light is only activated when the bathroom door opens.

I felt like one of those monkeys at the beginning of 2001 A Space Odyssey when they’re confronted with the giant monolith thing and start screaming, jumping up and down and banging bones on the ground.

Obviously, I didn’t do that. Not when a guest in a friend’s house. I’ve been brought up better than that.

This was the very thing, I thought. The light was low, soothing and colour changing. I’m a sucker for anything that does that. Fiona told me she’d bought hers on-line, and that’s what I did.

And very good it was, too. For about a month, when it just packed in and stopped working.

I figured it was because I’d bought a cheap one. Entry-level, if you will. On to the old world wide web for a rootle around. I thought I’d go for something more robust, a bit more expensive. And that was my big mistake.

The light arrived in a very nice box, with an instruction manual nearly as long as the kitchen table.

There are 25 steps to get the very best from my new GloOrb, or whatever it's called. It needs an app.

I’m sure other people can use the little diagrams just fine, but I had to resort to the world of How To Do IT You Tube videos, where a series of blokes attempted to talk me through how to set up my light.

Weirdly, all these guys were wearing checked shirts and sported beards. They were all American and very softly spoken, and seemed to be in cellars. I worry that they’re being kept hostage by the light manufacturer.

Why does my light need to be connected to the internet? I just want it to switch on to illuminate the bog.

Anyway, it stopped working, just like the cheap one. The app doesn’t seem to like our internet.

I’m not actually sure I want it to work. For all I know, those blokes in the cellars might be using their smart lights to spy on people. I’m off to buy a dumb one now.