The lamps come on one by one

There are seven lamps on Bakehouse Lane, and they do not come on together.

They are the old cast-iron kind, with a little crown of iron leaves at the top and a ladder bar halfway up, where the lamplighter used to rest his ladder. They were converted to gas, then to electricity, then to something cleverer that switches them on when the light falls. Nobody has lit them by hand for eighty years, and they still behave as if somebody does.

The one by the bakery comes on first. Then the one opposite the chapel, then, after a pause long enough to make you wonder, the three in the middle, one after another, as if somebody were walking from post to post with a long pole and no hurry at all. The last one, at the bottom by the river steps, comes on whenever it likes.

The cat on the step

I noticed this in September, when the evenings started drawing in and I started walking down to the river after supper. I noticed, too, that I was not the only one watching. A grey cat sits on the step of number eleven every evening, facing up the lane, and does not move until the last lamp is lit. Then it goes inside.

I asked the woman at number eleven about it. She said the cat had done it since it was a kitten, and that she had stopped trying to understand it.

Waiting for the last one

There is something about waiting for a light to come on that I can’t quite account for. It is the opposite of most of what we wait for, which arrives all at once and is gone. The lamps arrive slowly and stay all night.

I have started to time my walk so that I reach the river steps just as the last lamp comes on, which means I never quite know when to leave the house, which means I spend a few minutes at the window with my coat on, watching the lane. My partner thinks this is very funny. The cat, I think, understands.