The Rushford Times - A weekly newsletter from Jodi Taylor

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Jodi Taylor

and

Hazel Cushion

Nov 05, 2025

This week we have:

Jodi Taylor writes about light bulbs: What Watt?
News of an exclusive new Chronicles of St Mary’s short story - The Flux Capacitor
An interview with Christopher Boote - compiler of The Thirsk University Challenge Quiz book.
A David Sands Writing Competition entry: A Cat.1 Emergency by Jackie O’Sullivan
This Week in History: The Gunpowder Plot: Treason Beneath Westminster
The St Mary’s Short Stories Christmas Reading Challenge - Story Five in the Read all the St Mary’s Christmas Short Stories before Christmas Day Challenge is Christmas Past
November - Book of the Month: The Nothing Girl and Little Donkey
There’s plenty to read this week and you can see everything new on the blog too. CLICK HERE for the blog.

What watt?

I’ll start with what might be fairly simple questions for most people.

What is a watt?

What is a volt?

What is an amp?

What’s the difference?

Oh – and probably the question I should have led with – which one kills you?

I have no idea whether we covered this sort of thing at school – we probably did, but, as with commas and when and where to use them, I couldn’t see it ever becoming important so I probably spent the lesson thinking about something else.

Well, that’s come back to bite me.

I am surrounded by electrical catastrophes. One of the ceiling lights in the bathroom has gone. Naturally, it’s not a bog-standard fitting – why would it be? – and this has necessitated lots of muttering on the part of the electrician.

Secondly, having hit a problem with St Mary’s 15, I employed the standard procrastination as enjoyed by authors everywhere and went off to clean the kitchen. Well – that was a mistake. The oven light has come on and is flickering like Morse code on steroids. The oven’s not on – at least I hope it’s not because my hydroponics stuff is in there – but the light says it is.

Not one to be defeated by life’s complexities, the obvious thing to do was switch it off at the mains. I switched off everything I could find. Sockets, fused spurs, you name it I switched it off. This only seemed to encourage the light which flickered more violently than ever. Perhaps it’s re-routed the power to itself, somehow. A bit of a sinister thought, that. Never mind the rise of the machines – the human race will be defeated by its own ovens. My relationship with my oven has never been particularly harmonious and the clock setting has always been … imaginative … and I can’t help feeling this final piece of non-cooperation means it’s gearing itself up for the big push.

Thirdly – I know – I have uplighters in my lounge. There’s a sticker on them saying 40 watts only. Whatever a watt is I’m only allowed forty of them. See questions above. However, the light levels are appalling and I’m doing everything pretty much by braille. I had a word with the lovely electrician – he was up his stepladder grappling with the bathroom light and couldn’t get away – and he said, ‘Yeah, not a problem. They said that because old lightbulbs got hot which could be a problem. We use LED bulbs now …’

Do we? When did that happen?

‘… So you could probably get away with 60watts but make sure they’re LED.’

‘OK,’ I cried, mystified but willing.

Oh God – what a performance. You can’t just order a light bulb from Amazon, you know. There are endless specifications to work through. In the end I was searching for light bulbs, LED, 60 watt, warm white, screw fitting, and heaven knows what else.

Anyway, yesterday Amazon threw a couple of light bulbs at me, I found the stepladder, and commenced operations. Contrary to all expectations, everything went well. I don’t mind too much for myself but I’m very conscious my flat is in a block and there are some elderly people here and I don’t want to blow them up or set the building on fire, so I was very careful and did everything properly. Like Yorkshire Tea but less tasty.

I did not fall off the stepladder, the old bulbs came out easily and the new ones went in even more easily. I really should have been more suspicious. Awarding myself a small fanfare – ta ta ta ta ta ta ta-da! – I did the inaugural switch-on thing – trust me the Christmas lights on Oxford St are as nothing compared to me when I really get going – and, expecting to be on the receiving end of the sort of thing previously encountered by Saul on the road to Damascus, I closed my eyes in anticipation.

And opened them again.

You probably won’t believe this – well, I know you won’t believe this – but 60 watt bulbs don’t burn as brightly as 40 watt bulbs. Who knew? Well, not me, certainly. Why don’t they tell you these things? I could barely see from one side of the room to the other. I stamped about a bit, muttering under my breath about why was everything so difficult these days and then it occurred to me to check the light bulbs. No – definitely 60 watts. It said so on the packet.

And then I had another blinding light – internally, obviously because it was like a cave in my lounge – and checked the old bulbs.

75 watts.

So – back to my original question – am I lucky to be alive? I do need a response because I intend to put the old ones back. Since I’ve lived here for nearly nine years and, up until this moment, remain unincinerated, I’m assuming it’s OK.

Answers on a postcard, please …

The Thirsk University Challenge - The official quiz book based on the Chronicles of St Mary’s series by Jodi Taylor

Interview with compiler Christopher Boote - the Jodiworld Quiz Master

How did the idea for The Thirsk University Challenge come about - was it something you’d been plotting for a while, or did it grow out of your role as Jodiworld’s resident quiz master?

I’ve always been fond of quizzes, and own many quiz books. I’d recently written a lot of quiz questions for Jodiworld, and remembered Dave Langford’s much-loved Discworld quiz books - the idea of a Jodiworld one (or two, or three …) seemed an obvious project to attempt.

How closely did you work with Jodi Taylor while putting the book together - were there any moments when she caught you out with a particularly tricky St Mary’s detail?

Yes, there was one reference that I can’t believe I didn’t realise—without wishing to give it away, there’s a theme about some of Director Pinkerton’s staff that I only half spotted. I felt very dim-witted when she explained the real connection.

A Cat.1 Emergency by Jackie O’Sullivan

Chapter 1, Life does not always go to plan.

The first time it happened, I just thought it was a hallucination.

The kind you get when you have been partaking of the quality sort of medications you get to go home with after major surgery. You know, the really good stuff that induces wobbliness, weakness and sleeping at all hours because for some reason your eyes weigh 20Kg each.

When it happened again a few days later, I was less sure that it was the reason and began to ponder why I might have even imagined seeing such a thing happen. After all, I had never imagined or dreamt anything like that before, so why now? It turns out the surgery did have a part to play in it, though, and how I had worked my life around needing a major operation and some care afterwards had definitely contributed to the problem.

Humanity is a bit slow on the uptake, really. We regularly fail to either see or understand what is right in front of us. In fact, far more often than you would think, it turns out. We have not been alone for millennia. They have lived among us since before humanity was able to record its progress through history. We once even worshipped them as Gods. Over time there have been dawnings or enlightenment about the truth. In the Western world’s medieval period, suspicions were raised in many places about their true nature, but the mud that was thrown really did not stick, except maybe as a suspicion of all black ones, and so their secret purpose was maintained. I have, however, been let into that secret because humanity has really messed things up this time, and the secret help and support we did not know was working to our benefit has been short-circuited and disrupted. Now those who nurtured us and then let us rule ourselves while secretly keeping us on the straight and narrow really need our help to save us from ourselves. Again.

This Week in History: The Gunpowder Plot: Treason Beneath Westminster

The origins of the Gunpowder Plot lie in the turbulent religious politics of Tudor and early Stuart England. The Protestant Reformation, initiated decades earlier by Henry VIII’s break with Rome, had plunged the nation into cycles of persecution, suspicion, and sectarian division. Under Elizabeth I, Catholics were subject to fines for recusancy, meaning refusal to attend Anglican services, exclusion from public life, and, in some cases, brutal execution.

When James I ascended the throne in 1603, many English Catholics dared to hope for tolerance. James, the Scottish king who united the crowns of England and Scotland, was the son of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, and had hinted at a willingness to ease the punitive laws against his mother’s co-religionists. Those hopes quickly withered. Parliament remained fiercely Protestant, and by 1604 the new monarch had reaffirmed the anti-Catholic legislation. For a small group of radicals, disillusionment turned into desperation.

The St Mary’s Short Stories Christmas Reading Challenge

Story Four in the Read all the St Mary’s Christmas Short Stories before Christmas Day Challenge Christmas Past

Who’s up for joining in the St Mary’s Christmas Reading Challenge? You simply need to read the 11 St Mary’s Christmas stories and leave a comment below each story as you finish them. We will feature one story a week up to Christmas.