Getting Perspective

They’re ripping the lampposts out of my parents’ road. They did this on our street and now our old warm orange rays have been replaced with cold efficient light that illuminates our bedroom to such an extent it may as well be daytime. Don’t get me started on insomnia and sleeping with weird eye-masks.  Is it wrong to rage against the light, to lament the utilitarian design or the councils that don’t comprehend that something softer, something more sulphury may be more night-timey? My main upset is saying goodbye to the old lampposts; the swirls and twirls of ironwork, the gothic mouldings and palimpsests of a thousand paint jobs. They tell a story, they are art. They are in ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.’

Mister’s old band had a song, ‘I live in a Lamppost’ and I bet they meant a pretty one, not one that really belongs on a motorway. I always pictured the one outside my parents’ house when singing the line from that carol ‘And in the dark street shineth the everlasting light…’

I moaned all of this to my Mum as we walked past the re-lamping of my childhood street. She shrugged and said it may have upset her once but now my Dad is ill she couldn’t care less about lampposts. There are more important things.