Lamps. Standard lamps. Or lamp in the singular, as most households usually only have one of them. Who among us doesn't have cosy feelings of remembrance at, as children, coming home in the evening twilight after a day out adventuring with one's pals, and then being met by the warm, welcoming glow of a standard lamp in the corner of the room, softly embracing everything it cast its light upon? I know I do.
When my family moved house in 1983, I sometimes used to pass our former home and remember sitting in the living-room with the gleam of the standard lamp gently caressing the furniture. Curiously, now that I'm back here, it's the first house prior to this one that my thoughts seem to dwell upon when recalling such a cosy scene. I'd go home, pass through the back door into the kitchen, and then into the living-room, where my family would be sat watching the telly, with a wooden standard lamp sitting in the corner and emanating its mellow illuminance.
That wooden standard lamp faithfully served four or five homes before it was unceremoniously replaced with a metal one sometime in, I think, the late '70s. I was unaware of its disposal until after it was too late to salvage it for another room, but it's that wooden lamp I see in memory whenever I recollect times-past in my mind. It's been a number of years since our 'new' lamp has even been switched on, but last night, gripped by an all-consuming nostalgia for days gone by, I turned it on and enjoyed its comforting radiance for a few hours, recalling childhood memories from far too long ago, but which felt like only yesterday.
Any other Crivvies have similar recollections, or were standard lamps too old-fashioned to have been a feature of furniture when you were growing up? Looking back, our furnishings seemed to have been dated compared to that of friends and neighbours, though I was unaware of it at the time and realised this fact only in retrospect.
Feel free to comment, even if only to say I'm bonkers.
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Bonus: Below is a photo supplied by T47, which shows him circa 1959 (aged 12) reading under the light of the standard lamp he mentions in the comments section.
