Edison light bulb tattoo on the back

The lift in Carrow House has been dead since Tuesday, so I've been taking the stairs up to flat 14 with a torch in my teeth, which is how I came to notice the bulb on the ninth-floor landing. Somebody in the 1970s wired that stairwell with bare fittings and nobody ever changed them, and there it hangs in its wire cage, a fat old glass teardrop gone the colour of a swimming pool. The filament is still in it, bent in a loose zigzag like a child drew it from memory. It hums when the wind comes through the broken pane above.

Mrs Okafor on twelve says the council will rip the whole block down by spring, so the bulb will go with it. I told her I'd write it down before that happens, and she laughed and said I always was a sentimental fool, which I suppose I am. I climbed up last night with a stepladder and a flask of tea to keep warm and sat under it for an hour. Nobody came through. The light was thin and greenish and it made the paint on the walls look like the bottom of a pond.

Here is the thing I wanted you to know. Your grandad fitted bulbs on this estate for thirty years, and he always said the old ones were the only honest light, because you could see the wire working. I used to think he was talking rubbish. Now I sit under it and watch the filament glow orange in the middle of all that teal, and I think he was right.

Come up at Easter if you can. I'll make you climb the stairs, bulb or no bulb.

Love, Dad