The kettle is on and the door of the hut is open. It’s a grey afternoon, the kind of grey that makes the shingle outside look like this postcard.
The card came in a box of old postcards I bought as a collection. Most of them were piers and promenades. I kept this one aside because I know the view. Kingston Lighthouse, Shoreham by Sea. It’s a short walk east along the beach from where I’m sitting.
The lighthouse went up in 1846, lined up with the harbour entrance. It replaced a wooden one that was, by most accounts, a bit unsteady. When the railway came through from Brighton, people worried the trains would shake it down.
For about seventy years it ran on gas. Every evening the keeper climbed 54 steps and wound a 28 lb weight up the tower to turn the light, the way you’d wind a grandfather clock. In the 1950s electricity arrived, the lantern was fixed in place, and the winding stopped.
Judging by the cars parked on the shingle, this photograph was taken not long after that.
It took me a few looks to notice that nobody in it is looking at the lighthouse. A family stands with their backs to it. A woman bends down to a small child. Someone wheels a bicycle past the door.
I look at it often. I walk past it and marvel that it has stood there for nearly 180 years, through all the weather and all the people who never looked up.
Some lights warn people to stay away. This one has always done the other job. It’s a lead-in mark, guiding the small boats into the harbour. It brings people home.
It still comes on at dusk, one flash every ten seconds.
I’ve decided to stay in the hut until it does, and then walk down to see it tonight.
I keep thinking about the worry over the trains. The wooden light before it wobbled. This tower didn’t. It has stood through every storm and every new worry since, and it is still there doing its job.
When worries come, I’d like to stand like that.
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