Is there such a thing as a human right to night?

The street lamp as bright as the Dog Star is back to its full glare outside my house.

I won a small victory earlier this year when I persuaded the council to fit a shield to one side of it after threatening to throw myself out the window because I couldn’t sleep.

But the other day, an engineer arrived in a van with a crane lift and took the shield away. I wasn’t there, a neighbour witnessed it, but when I got back home the street lamp was sporting a makeshift strip of black gaffa tape around the top, shielding only a tiny bit of light.

I contacted the council and a day later the contractors who fitted the original shield got back to me and admitted that the shield had been taken off after a neighbour rang up and demanded the light be restored to 50 million watts because it illuminates a footpath in front of my house.