Let there be dark

Who’s afraid of the dark? Who now fears shadows and bumps in the night? Where do you even find any dark to be afraid of when your phone is only a pocket away? One swipe and the screen lights up blue-white like the old explorer’s match in a cave. If I wake in the night I don’t bother with the bedside lamp. A bar of light comes under the blinds. Lights from the flats opposite. Fire-escape lights from the hotel next door. The jaundice glow of London light pollution.

Even staying with my parents, on the edge of a village, there’s no real darkness. There are lights from the lane, lights from the next farm, lights from the main road on the hill. Intruder lights come on each time a muntjac makes for Mum’s vegetable garden in the small hours. Click. Click. Click. Lights on the lawn for a badger, a fox, a pheasant.

Inside, there are pilot lights on wifi routers, smoke alarms, burglar alarms, carbon monoxide detectors, laptops, televisions, phone chargers, electric toothbrushes and razors plugged in overnight. I can stumble to the kitchen for a glass of water without turning on a single switch: just follow the LED stars.

I have no gadget lights in my bedroom, but in hotels I can’t sleep until I have draped dressing gowns, towels, flannels over every last blinking light. I pile cushions in front of air-conditioners and unplug humidifiers. I am just back from Japan, where in Airbnb rentals red bat eyes stare from kettles, fridges, rice cookers, bathtub boilers. Every loo had its light-show shining through paper-screen doors. I never know what to do about ceiling fire alarms with on-again, off-again lights. I lie awake staring back at them in insomniac fury.