Flash of drama
100 words
A lighthouse shrieks: ‘Stay away, do not touch me, I’m making this flashing fuss for your own good.’ Yet the darkness swirls with myth. Stories eddy with tales of sirens singing from rocks, of stopped clocks, dead men eternally waving. Insanity spins the lens, thick as your arm, wooden wheels and their unspeakable grease to the rhythm of an Admiralty Chart. Polished daily, round and never failing, hellish prisms converge. A nautical imperative. Gaze, count until the beam casts shadows over constallations, intimidates phosphorescence. Take your bearing from the towering gas light. Then go about your voyage, if you can.
Photo by Quaid Lagan on Unsplash
I’m a lighthouse freak!
It tickles me that lighthouses have ‘character’ - each has a unique flashing signal known as its character. My fav is Oigh Sgeir, west of Canna. Its character is 3 white flashes, a 30 second pause, then 3 white flashes again. The rock it clings to has a tiny patch of grass on which the keepers used to play one-hole rounds of golf when the tide was low.
The highlight* of my mindfulness teaching career was training the Northern Lighthouse Board’s staff in their magnificent offices in George Street, Edinburgh and in their Oban base. I begged them to let me do a session on their lighthouse supply ships, but they couldn’t - bloody health and safety.
*Apart that is, from the honour of having you in my group!