Switch On Something

Walking home with Neil the streetlights seemed like monuments to an earlier civilization. In that February of powercuts in 1974 our west London suburb was unfamiliar in the darkness. The houses were bulkier, punctuated by the occasional glow of an oil lamp, and every noise was magnified under electric bright stars. I focused on the syncopated swish of our jeans, the clatter of my wooden clogs providing the rhythm section, but still our silence crackled in the space between us. In the pub I’d cultivated deep and moody behind my curtain of hair. Now I was just plain awkward.

‘Cold, isn’t it?’ I tried.

‘Mm.’

‘It was so warm this afternoon. Like spring, wasn’t it? Can’t believe it’s so cold.’
‘No cloud.’ Neil waved his hand at the shiny sweep of starlight. He was wrapped in a second-hand greatcoat. Me in my old crocheted baby shawl. Shawls, like greatcoats, were the alternative fashion, but not so practical.

Neil was deep and moody - no need for cultivation. He lit a cigarette and I watched the orange intensify, the smoke blending with the vapour of our breath. I remembered pretending I was smoking in weather like this, puffing on a stick and exhaling white air. I caught a whiff of his smoke. Felt the sour after-taste of beer. Sharp cold air.

It was the first time I’d been invited to the pub. I knew they went - the older ones who hung around in the back room with coffee and conversation while the less mature played table tennis in the main hall. I did neither. My time at the church youth club was spent sitting in virtual silence on the edge of the stage next to Finola Gordon. The older ones would leave early, trailing fragments of laughter. They were sixteen, seventeen. Doing O’ Levels or in the sixth form. A couple even had jobs. Neil was only fifteen, same as me, but he made up for it in depth. He played guitar and wrote songs about tramps and war. Looked intense at you with pond water eyes through his scruffy brown fringe. Not that he’d spend any time looking at me. But tonight he paused on his way through the hall. Finola wasn’t there, maybe that made him notice me.

‘Want to join us? I’m buying a round.’

‘Hundred pounds a week, the miners want. Just because they look hard and dirty, you want to shake a bucket for them, Neil.’ John Foster looked hard himself, spitting into his pint. The proper man among boys and girls.

‘It’s a great excuse not to do homework,’ Anna chipped in. ‘Could do with a power cut tonight. I’m with Neil. Power to the miners!’

‘Oh yeah? A hundred pounds? More than teachers? More than nurses?’

‘Well, I do think they are going too far, with the hospitals. Candle lit baby units?’ Anna smiled at me, girl-to-girl. I didn’t respond. I knew about the energy crisis, of course. The 3-day week, constant power cuts, telly off at 10.30, made it a bit hard to miss. But I’d accepted the let’s-pull-together-war-time line of the media and right now I was hedging my bets.

‘Holding the country to ransom!’ John drained his pint. ‘Hey, Dave, your round? Heath will send in the troops. Then they’ll know it.’

‘Have you any idea what it’s like to be a miner?’ Neil asked John, glancing at me. I stared into the remains of my lager and lime.

‘Oh, and of course you have, Neil. Your best friends are miners.’ John mocked.

‘Maybe I bother to find out a bit more.’

‘Brainwashed by Big Hip Sister, more like.’

‘She has met them you know.’ Neil looked at me. I nodded knowingly. His sister was at the London School of Economics, presumably gaining him access to this mystery world. As the oldest child I had no such advantage through my family.
‘The NUM addressed their sit-in,’ he explained. ‘You wouldn’t believe what they have to go through. The press only tells the Government’s side.’

‘And why the hell would they want to do that?’ John shouted.

‘Come on Neil, it is a free country,’ Anna interjected, conciliatory.

‘Because it’s the System,’ said Neil with authority.

‘The System, he says. And striking’s going to make it better? Get Wilson in. Put taxes up to 90%. Abolish your school. That’s what’ll happen. My dad says so.’ John was half off his seat, his hand on the table, leaning across to shout in Neil’s face.

‘And your dad and the papers are always right.’ Neil kept his tone perfectly measured.

‘No, Neil, you know better than all of them.’ John kicked his stool away and went to the jukebox; shoving in money and pushing buttons like an experienced operator. T Rex blasted out with Teenage Dream.

‘Talk about brainwashed.’ Neil pushed his hair back from his eyes, looking at me like a co-conspirator. I held his gaze for as long as I dared, amazed and confused by his attention, before hanging my hair over my empty glass again. Marc Bolan’s teenage dream scratched to a sudden halt as the lights went off for yet another power cut.

The landlady came round with candles and the soft pool of light seemed to cast a gentler mood on the group. Anna moved the conversation on to Debbie and Steve. Had they split up and if they hadn’t, well, they soon would. I tore a fringe into my beer mat as I calculated how long it would take to save enough money to buy a round. Neil sat resting his chin on his hands, the light catching the line of his cheekbones. His hair had grown to the limit boys at his school could get away with. Still not long enough to be totally cool. He caught me looking and I could see the candle flame reflected in his eyes. I forced myself to listen to the others, not to look again. My face burnt with the effort.

Neil and I walked back past the church just as the streetlights crackled purple into orange and a random pattern of curtained windows lit the houses. The light seemed garish and unnecessary. The youth club in the church hall was closed now, the windows shiny black in the saggy wood walls. But there was still a faint glow coming from the back. Someone had left a light on.

‘Switch Off Something!’ I said without thinking.

‘Switch On Something, more like,’ Neil retorted.

For a moment I didn’t get it. I had indeed been brainwashed by the Government’s SOS, the Switch Off Something campaign. Ted Heath on the telly telling us to tighten our belts, with his belly rolling over the top of his. Then I had inspiration.

‘Switch On Something! Power to the Miners!’

‘Hey, that’s not bad.’ Neil stopped for a moment and touched my arm. I shivered, pulled my shawl around me. ‘Wonder if they’ve thought of it?’ he said.

My mind felt sharp and clear as the night air. I ran across the road towards the hall, glancing back just once through my hair to check he was following.

It was dark round the side - only the glow of the back light to guide me down the slippy path. I peered through the window. The wooden forms had been stacked up, coffee cups put away. I pushed at the window. It didn’t budge. I edged further round to where the toilets were. That window was always left open.

I tied my shawl in a knot at my neck and kicked off my clogs.

‘Give us a hand up,’ I called back to Neil.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked as I pushed on the step of his joined hands and squeezed myself through the toilet window.

‘Come on.’

‘What?’ He heaved himself through the window.

I ran into the main hall flicking all the switches, the fluorescent lights twitching slowly into action like they weren’t expecting to be woken again. The table tennis tables had been put away, tatty chairs stacked. It looked dingy. Dusty dry.

‘Switch On Something!’ I shouted from the bottom of the hall, ‘Power to the Miners!’

I ran back across the room spinning with my arms outstretched, hair whipping my face. Buzzing with this part of me I scarcely knew. Neil walked slowly towards me, screwing up his eyes against the sudden light. I grabbed his hands and spun him round - his arms stiff with tension. I met his gaze over our hands, held it without looking away and watched a smile curl over his face. He leant away from me, giving into the spin now. Faces turned to the ceiling. Lights joined in dizzy white lines.

‘Switch On Something!’
We fell in a heap, laughing uncontrollably until our lungs ached. He started to pull himself up, then hesitated for a moment, his face above mine, frozen in the green fluorescent after-image of the lights. I could almost taste the smoke in his breath.

Then he was up. Springing onto the stage like a gymnast. He disappeared behind the curtains and started switching on the stage lights. He stepped through the curtains, into the pink and green dust-dancing beams. Stood with his arms out and his head back like Jesus Christ Superstar. Saving the Miners. Shoulder to Shoulder. Next step the World.

We switched on everything we could find. Electric wall heaters in their metal cages, rings on the hotplate in the kitchen, extractor fan in the toilets. All the lights. The hall hummed. Heaters sputtered and singed the dust. There was nothing left to switch on.

‘Let’s go,’ I said.

Neil looked around, not quite satisfied.

‘We need them to know why.’

He found some powder paint and mixed up a pot of red. He painted two big S’s on the floor with an O between them, making a triangle. I started to fill in the W-I-T-C-H and the rest of the letters while he wrote Power to the Miners in a circle around me. We worked without talking, then stood back to admire our handicraft. Neil took the paint and brushes, washed them and put them away. We climbed out of the toilet window. Me first, then Neil.

I found my clogs and walked back down the side, light flooding the path now. Neil stopped by one of the windows, taking a last look. I walked on to the next one, suddenly awkward, not wanting to stand too close. The place looked a dump in all that light. One of the fluorescent bulbs flickered violently. Wall heaters banged out their wavy heat. The writing on the floor looked scrappy and childish.

‘Amazing!’ Neil’s voice made me jump. ‘Wait ‘til I tell my sister about this.’

‘It’s so cold out here.’ I pulled my shawl round me and walked back to the street. ‘Neil, I don’t think we should tell anyone, do you?’ My clogs seemed to ring through the night.

‘Nn no?’ He was fizzing. Reluctant, I could tell, to catch my mood of sudden doubt and fear.

‘Please,’ I asked.

We didn’t speak again until we got to the end of the street. This was where I turned off to go home. He lit a cigarette. I held out two fingers and he put the cigarette between them. I took a drag, held my breath, blew out the smoke and managed not to cough. We stood there for a while and looked back at the hall. It was so quiet, and the hall looked out of place. Like a ship of aliens bringing other-worldly light to our energy-starved suburbia.