by Keith Evans
Recently I saw half a dozen Father Christmases crossing the Main Hall which was very confusing for the little kiddies. Their failures in future will probably be traced back by some nutty Psychologist to the traumatic experience at the museum and an ambulance chasing lawyer will sue us. We must be more careful.
I was giving a talk in the Lookout last week. A young couple were listening intently whilst their infant son crawled around the floor. Suddenly he sat back on his nappy and screamed the place down. Well, I thought, my oration wasn't that bad. His mother picked him up and started breast feeding him. That shut him up.
The lighthouse exhibition is drawing to a close. It has been very popular I think, with a nice mix of history, nostalgia, entertainment and technology, especially optics and the transmission of light from candle power to the modern diodes.
Which reminds me, during the blitz my parents and us four kids had been an air raid shelter for several hours. About one in the morning it had been quiet for about an hour when my mother said "Come on, we're going home. We have to be up in the morning." We made our way up the road through the inky darkness of the black-out. My father struck a match and puffed at his pipe. An aircraft droned overhead. There was the unmistakable whistle of bombs. We dived for cover on the grass verge as a couple of explosions rent the air in the fields behind the houses, then all went quiet except for my mother berating my father. "That was your fault, that pipe of yours." "Nonsense" said my father, a very placid man, "they wouldn't be able to see that." "Yes they would" said my sister. "No, they wouldn't" said I, siding with my father. Thinking back, my mother was probably right, as usual.
