lamps of our youth

Lighting was always important as kids.

There were loads of types of lights and lighting in the Sixties and Seventies.

Most lights in normal rooms were a light-bulb on a cable dangling from the ceiling. These were called Big Lights in our house.

'Woodsy, put big light on son' could often be heard from my Parent's favourite settee.

Other lights were a bit posher than the big light. These were wall lights and often decorative to show off to the neighbours. You could have metal scallops or green glass upturned troughs or brass candles or even art deco affairs of tubes and glass.

For some reason these wall lights were often called lamps and in the poshest circles lighting.

Table lamps were important too especially bedside lamps, which you read your comics with at night. These usually had a large push-button switch either on the red-hot neck of the thing itself or a mile down a long cable trailing from the sparking socket on the opposite wall.

Lamp stands were the king of lights in our house. Majestic and vertical, these upstanding pillars of illumination were always topped with the biggest lamp-shades you've ever seen. Huge tapered tubes of floral chaos often ringed with a fringe of gold tassles, all in all looking like a thin Egyptian with a giant fez. 

However is was a more subtle lighting that us kids were after. Lighting to fit the mood, especially for moody young teenagers, who wished for nothing more than to skulk and grouch in semi-darkness.

This crepuscular effect was created by that titan of gadgets, the dimmer switch. Often shortened to simply dimmer, these small turning buttons were the height of cool in the early Seventies. There was nothing quite like dimming the TV room's big light to impress your first girlfriend [usually called Janet] before you offered her a lemonade float.

Yet even the dimmer darkened in the presence of another, yes, the queen of mood-lighting that was the coloured light-bulb.

I adored coloured light-bulbs and experimented with every colour I could find. They were sold in most good hardware shops on the coloured light-bulb shelf and going home with a bag of red and blue Mazdas was the business end of luminescence.

Having tried them all I now think I liked red the best. For some reason a diffuse fog of crimson light in my bedroom seemed to fit my pubescent state perfectly and when added to a dimmer it was like mood fondue. 

I could bask in the scarlet energy reading Sounds, listening to Budgie and squeezing spots to my heart's content without anyone bothering me. The red glow meant I was home and slouching for England. Heaven!

What are your memories of lamps and lights readers?