Eva Wiseman’s life in lights
The first flat I lived in with my partner was lit almost exclusively by strip lights. The buzz was pleasingly jazzy, and the cold light practically refreshing, like a glass of water thrown in the face to wake you quickly from a reverie.
In the bathroom, the landlady (a stern woman who’d specified I could have the flat only if I lived alone, and sent a ‘cleaner’ weekly to check for men’s shoes in the cupboard) had installed a fluorescent light within a precariously low acrylic ceiling.
When water collected there, as it did daily, the light flickered dangerously but romantically, like a candle. That’s how I remember it now, from the distance of 20 years; a distance itself lit generously, and filtered through a pinkish gauze.
I had recently returned to London from living in Brighton, where, every weekend, I’d spend a £10 fortune at the car-boot sale, mostly on things that, this week, I’ve finally thrown away.
My parents are clearing out their attic, you see, and among the books and A-Level artworks (I watched the skip, convinced a dealer would drive by and I’d finally be discovered), I’ve retrieved several buried treasures, including a 1960s lamp in the shape of a woman’s head.
I remember gasping when I saw it. Reminiscent of the voluptuous, kohl-eyed women in B-movie posters, she was hand-painted in pink, gold and blue and cost £3, including the pink pleated shade.
I was elated, walking home to the tall black house I shared with friends near the sea, because I knew her diluted apricot light would camouflage the horrors, the carnage, of a bedroom in which we’d never quite got round to building a bed, or a chest of drawers, or anything proper at all.
My partner and I graduated from the strip-lit flat to a larger one in the same block, where we avoided the confronting glare of the ‘big light’ in favour of an ancient Anglepoise we’d rewired and hoped for the best, and the odd Ikea lamp that required special trips to Tottenham to buy the stupid bulbs. Anything over £5 we thought of as an ‘investment’.
As time passed, I leant towards paper lampshades, and learnt about ‘very warm’ lighting. And as we grew up, and grew deeper into our relationship, we found ourselves lit better, in kinder ways.
After that flat, another flat, where the first thing I bought after finally acknowledging a baby was coming was a little lamp for her, painted with clouds, and then later, in our new house down the road, a mobile that hung from the light in the next baby’s room, reflecting time and tears and sleeplessness.
The new house required new light, and 1970s ceramic lamps from the local auction house (including one with a lava glaze my partner found so offensive he wrote a poem about it) sit opposite others made by my mum, a sculptor, from smooth, white plaster – they appear to duel for attention and taste in our front room.
I switch them on every day at dusk, reassured that in the right light, even an awkward room, tantruming child or burnt meal might appear almost perfect. And, for everything else I can’t control, there will always be dimmer switches.
