Eric and Mr Grinling

In the car listening to an old radio programme with Eric Morecambe talking about birdwatching. At the end the announcer said it was forty years since Eric had died.

"Forty years?!" I yelled at the machine. "Don't be stupid. It can't possibly be."

It was.

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Sometimes I do my duolingo Welsh course and am completely stupid and can't remember anything. Other times I surprise myself. 

Dych chi'n gallu siarad am enghraifft o eich gwaith?

Can you talk about an example of your work?

That is a pretty complicated sentence I think and one I would have had no idea about three years ago. I'm just saying this to reassure myself I'm not wasting my time persevering with Welsh. Even though I can still look at road signs or adverts and have no idea what they mean. (I think it's because they use more colloquial Welsh. That's what I tell myself.)

* * * * *

On her blog Janice wrote recently about lighthouses and a children's book called the The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch. It's one I used to read to my children, and, upstairs I found the sequel, The Lighthouse Keeper's Catastrophe.

In the first book every day Mrs Grinling sends the lighthouse keeper's lunch over to him - they live in the house on the cliff - by zip wire. Seagulls keep stealing it so they have to come up with a solution to protect Mr Grinling's lunch. 

In The Lighthouse Keeper's Catastrophe, Hamish the cat manages to get locked in, the key is lost, the light is not lit, and Mr Grinling has to go on a daring rescue mission.

Lighthouses remain very important to sea-farers but I don't think any are manned any longer. The last keeper of Mumbles lighthouse finished in 1934, and while he didn't live on the island - unless he got marooned by bad weather - other lighthouse keepers and their families had in earlier days.