Life and Light

Light and Life  ©

By Michael Casey

Well I’ve not been strong enough to write for a couple of days, Arthur getting the upper hand, so now that the pain has lessened, I’ve decided to write something new. Though Arthritis is a bastard and does work like a roadblock to creativity, if that does not sound too pretentious. If you cannot think straight then it’s hard to write, that’s less pretentious.

Twitter is ok for one-liners and so it’s easy to heckle from Twitter even though you are in pain. I have had fun with Steven Fry, as he left Twitter after the bag lady joke was attacked by the PC idiots. So I invented a series of things Steven Fry might be doing instead at my house. As I speak he is polishing the girls’ shoes ready for school in the morning. Then he has to make their pack lunches ready for school, the school does run out of food on occasion, so it’s safer to have a packed lunch, otherwise you get an afternoon wilt.

So where was I? I remember I was going to write about Light and Life, and how did I chose tonight’s topic? Our bulb died, so there you have it, something happens and that’s enough to trigger a story from the soup. The soup being the word that covers my life experience, ether may be a posher word, but as you know I’d never claim to be posh, eclectic yes, posh no.

Light makes a home, if you have no light you would just go to bed and make babies, perhaps we should all remove the light bulbs from our homes and we’d all be a lot happier. Mothercare would be happier too, their share price would rise too.

Dad always used to nag us when we left lights on in the hall or on the landing, he would sometimes work 16 hour shifts in the steelworks, so he did not want to waste his sweat. My brothers used to burn the midnight oil, so that they could learn enough to get into a good University. One brother bought a fancy angle-poise lamp when he got to Oxford, when me and another brother went to visit we saw it on his desk at Queens. Having a fancy lamp was a status symbol, my brother still has that lamp in his attic, nearly 50 years on. History has now repeated itself as my eldest daughter now has her very own little lamp, she hopes to be a doctor, God Help Us.

Little things do matter, such as light, a night light is a life saver, children are so afraid of the dark. There is so much fear of the dark, but a little plastic night light does make a difference, or sleeping with the curtains open, or having a light on in the landing. Your very own torch beside your bed or in the bed with you is a great thing. Suddenly you are not alone, the monsters cannot get you because the light is on, or you have a super torch that will destroy monsters with just one flick of the switch.

I can remember my own first torch, maybe 50 years ago, we got it at Christmas from Radfords, It was black on the outside and here was the amazing thing, it had 2 filters on it that could change the beam colour, either red or blue, as well as the normal torch light beam. We were so excited when we got it, we shone it on the ceiling in the big front bedroom. Then we put our fingers in front of the beam trying to make all manner of shapes on the ceiling, normal kids’ stuff.

Two weeks ago we had a power cut so I invested in 2 new torches, and to my child’s delight I discovered the beam was really strong, it has 7 lcd bulbs inside, so the beam is so strong and long. Yes I did annoy the neighbours in the dark, but I’m 7 again while they are just old farts,