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The second half of my first turn was perhaps not as successful as the first part, recalled Retired lighthouse keeper Harold Taylor. The keeper who came 'off' was Davy Jones, whom I had met recently at the Bishop. He was; as I found then, still not very industrious. Fortunately he spent many hours walking around the island. He did the bare necessities to justify his existence.
Although Les found him equally useless, he would not outwardly condemn him being a fellow Liverpudlian, although from opposite end of the spectrum. The next turn I was to meet Cris Ions who was the overlap half of the other relief, but he had been on the staff before, perhaps he had changed his turn. He also was my senior hand.
He was a queer cove and in time became more of a conundrum. He had very funny eating habits, which seemed to be determined by the woman he was living with in Wales, who we came to term as ' the witch '. He tended towards being a vegetarian, but was so confused that I don't really think he knew what he should eat.
He was also from Liverpool and although not a mate of Davy, they had enjoyed the same trade in the telephone service when they had worked before. Even Davy thought Cris was weird, but found excuses for it.
In general we got along o.k. and the station worked quite smoothly. The only fault I really had to find, was when we came across a problem. Cris who had been there some time should have been able to provide the answers, but was completely ignorant of what did what. The general opinion was that he was vague because he was on drugs.
I have no grounds for believing this other than where he lived with his woman, was noted as a centre for those hallucinating mushrooms. I did have reason one occasion to get damned angry with him and requested his transfer, which did not make me popular with Davy.
It came about in this manner. The relief day dawned, I awoke and found the time within 10 minutes of when we expected the chopper. Going into the quarters I could find no trace of Cris who was due to go ashore. I awakened Les and we made a search of the building, by which time the chopper had contacted us to say we were in sight.
I explained our predicament and asked them to make a search of the island as the came over. In the mean time I was making a search along the gullies and rocks nearby the lighthouse. As the chopper came over the island they sighted him the same time that I did.
He was running up towards the lighthouse and was about half a mile away. It seems that he had a friend staying on the island and according to him had gone to say good bye and the time slipped away. Les was as pleased I to see him go.
After Cris had left the replacement was Mike Hall, who I had met at the Eddystone. He was very pleased to have taken place in a swap from the Smalls. Knowing what a useful chap he was I was pleased to see him arrive, unfortunately I was not to have his company for long as I retired early after the next Xmas.
Several things spring to mind before that though. One was another revision of fuelling process which I instituted. The helicopter through Trinity had a fuelling base on a farm at Aberdaron. With the use of a net they would fly in two barrels of fuel at a time landing them in the garden. These we then transported to near the engine room with the tractor supplied for performing our own tasks.
There was a powerful fuel transfer pump in the entrance door to the engine room, and a draw off pipe for inserting into each drum as it came into line for discharge. The big problem seemed to be that either the pump was too powerful, or was inefficient in some way, for when one pulled the draw pipe from one barrel and inserted it in another, suction was lost and it meant priming the pump each time one started a fresh barrel.
Priming could mean using several gallons of fuel and a lot of frustration. I therefore outlined the problem and ordered a new fuel transfer system which consisted of a branched draw off so that there could be a draw off in two barrels at a time. Each with their own turn cock, this would enable you to turn on the new barrel of fuel before the previous one had been fully emptied. Then turning off the emptying tank once you heard air being sucked.
The old method used to take two men most of the morning and they would come away smothered in diesel. My new pipe enabled me to transfer the usual 15 barrels of oil in an hour by myself, which I did before the others were awake.
I mention the tractor. This was a wreck of a machine, which I rarely used, having no purpose to, although the others did as an excuse to avoid walking up the island. On occasions the district tender did call and drop off items. On one occasion this was fuel and they floated them onto the beach.
Then we would take the vehicle down to the beach to collect it. The vehicle was rusted to hell and bits would fall off it. Once when I used it I did not know that the hand brake was inefficient. I was driving down to the beach to collect a load of seaweed for the garden. I had stopped to open and close a gate.
I suddenly noticed the tractor describing an arc and going off the road towards a 12 foot cliff fall. I managed to catch up with it and press my hand down on the hand brake, at the same time scrambling aboard and placing the thing in reverse. Thereby saving the thing from destruction; perhaps it would have been better that way, but why should I be responsible.
I managed to get them to come and service the machine, but Trinity were not prepared to spend any money on it nor buy a replacement, when they looked into the costs. So after the overhaul it was little better than before, and it got worse, when due to rust and vibration the windscreen dropped out.
One of the reasons for the miserliness was the imminent 'Automation' ? of the place. It was at first contemplated for the year 85, but then replaced, but we were having visits from the Technical Branch trying to iron out some of the problems. The D.L.F. from Swansea and their Supremo Snadden visited.
He was one of the converted, he would not accept that de-manning lighthouses was not saving money, whilst costing astronomical amounts of money in sophisticated equipment which had a short life. He was blind to the fact that having people on site to deal with simple equipment was cheaper than have temperamental equipment which needed highly qualified personnel flown in at great cost. Helicopter flights were now about £650 per hour.
It was whilst going through the store room, where the Bird Observatory stored their books during the winter, that I decided to look for a book I had been told about. It was called 'Tide Race' by Brenda Chamberlain. She had been resident on the island when I had first been there and was a recognised poet and artist.
She had written this book when she left the island and went to Greece where she died. It was substantially an autobiography I discovered when I read it and, concerned her life, but condensed it into her period of living on the island.
When I read it I discovered that I had been made into one of the characters, but this realisation did not arrive till I got to the chapter in which she dealt with an incident concerning ' the mad monk of Bardsey'. My character was Mervyn the lighthouse keeper.
During this second stay I met a woman Jill Piercy who had been commissioned to write up the life story of Brenda. Unfortunately the family would not allow it to be published after completion. I understand that ' Tide Race ' was performed on Welsh C4 T.V. in 1997. I wonder who played me.
I renewed my contact with another old friend whilst on that 'first month off'. It came about in rather an odd fashion. On visiting the boathouse to collect the post; where it would be left by the farmer who now had the contract, I could not help but notice an ever growing pile of cardboard cartons addressed to Susan Cowdy.
All these boxes had the label of Liberty's of London displayed on them. Susan had been a benefactor to the Bird Observatory when I had been on the island many years before. I believe she was estranged from her husband. She had two daughters who also visited, one was a stuck up bitch who married an instructor from an Outward Bound school that sent groups to the island.
It did not last. The other, more plain was a mouse like creature who was on the island with a boy when I had the incident with 'The Mad Monk'. I was told that this family and friends came every year to spend a bit of time in the summer. Also to be expected was Guto. Guto was the Welsh boy who used to bring the mail over in days of yor, when his father had the contract.
I know that he spent a lot of time with Susan and knew a lot about her, but it seems that perhaps she had more than taken him under her wing as he lived with her at her Berkshire home, to which I had an open invitation which I never took up. Susan did visit my home once when I was away and took my eldest son to a meeting where she was speaking.
When the visiting group arrived I found that it consisted of some of her nieces and their families, their professional friends and their families who occupied nearly all of the Trust houses. Amongst them I was rather surprised to find Martin Richards, who had been assistant bird warden when I had been on the island before. He was then studying Zoology at Cambridge.
Now he was the head of the Psychology Unit there, and some of the other guests were his associates. I learnt that he had married Susan's younger daughter, but that had also ended in divorce. They were an extremely friendly crowd and I was invited to many of their occasions. What I eventually garnered, but did not seek confirmation, was that Susan owned Liberty's, for her estranged husband had died suddenly and she apparently inherited it.
Continued in part 8.
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