Ten o’clock at night and it’s too late to start watching a film. I can’t stand to see any more news, but I’m not ready to turn in, and the dog is gazing hopefully at me from her basket. “Alright,” I say, levering myself up off the sofa, and instantly she’s at the front door. I clip on her reflective collar and shrug a hi-vis gilet on over my coat, but I don’t take a torch: I want the rhodopsin, a protein in my eyes, to develop and give me night vision, a process that takes about half an hour.
I live in a rural village with no streetlamps, no lights illuminating our church and no lit roads nearby. A neighbour keeps a dim porch light on and a glow leaks out around the closed curtains of nearby cottages, but unless there’s a moon when darkness falls it’s unconditional, absolute. In bed at night it can be hard to tell whether your eyes are open or closed, an utterly normal experience for most of human history, but increasingly rare now – especially in the Global North.
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