Plastic strips and lighthouses

Normally this is a time of year when I get a lot of blogging done, but a flurry of car- and caravan-related stuff, social events, appointments, and photographic work have all combined to edge out any such publishing. It's now easing off a bit, so let's get on with some.

First, a sequel to the removal of the towing arm fairing on my caravan. When all of it had been completely cleared away, it left a gap at floor level in the front locker where the gas cylinders, electrical cable, trolley, hitchlock, winder, wooden blocks, air pump, waste water container, fluid bottles and sundry tools all go. That gap needed to be blocked off, so that weather and road spray couldn't get in, nor things fall out. 

It wasn't hard to see how to tackle the job. I'd need to buy a strip of thick white plastic, cut it exactly to size, drill holes in the fibreglass front end of the caravan, with corresponding holes in the now-shaped strip of plastic, and bolt the strip into position, thus sealing the gap and making the front of the caravan look good again. 

Fortunately my next-door neighbour Kevin volunteered to do the cutting, drilling and fixing for me. All I had to do was buy a suitable strip of plastic, and provide him with a similar strip of stiff cardboard so that he could make a drilling template. I sourced the plastic strip from a specialist shop in Hove, and I bought some nuts, bolts and washers too. 

A piece of stiff cardboard of just the right length was actually harder to find. In the end, I raided my attic and found an old poster, a bit bent but still in its wrapping (as I'd never framed it as originally intended), with a stiff cardboard backing - just the kind needed for the job. (There was a sequel to finding that poster, which I'll mention at the end)

I left Kevin to it. He knew his business, and in a remarkably short time had filled that gap for me. And he didn't mess around with nuts and bolts. He riveted the plastic strip into position, so that nothing could work loose and come undone. There was even sealant between plastic and fibreglass, to add extra weatherproofing. A very neat job.

There was still a small gap between the new strip and the edge of the locker floor. There always was - it's there to allow any accidental leakage of propane gas to escape. There are other small holes and gaps too, with the same purpose. Caravans have to be well-ventilated!

Kevin didn't want money or anything like that. But he fancied the poster. I gave it to him. This is it. 

It's a famous photograph, taken by Jean Guichard in 1989, of the lighthouse at La Jument off the treacherous rocky coast of Brittany. At that time this isolated offshore lighthouse, perched on jagged rocks, was still manned: it was automated two years later. Meanwhile the crew were there doing traditional duties, often coping with stormy seas, which would crash against the lighthouse and must have been terrifying at times. An especially fierce storm had already caused damage, ripping off the outer doors of the lighthouse entrance and flooding the lower rooms. The crew were waiting to be rescued. Jean Guichard wanted to get out there in a gale, in a helicopter, and never mind the danger. As the helicopter approached the lighthouse, one of the keepers - as I say, expecting rescue shortly - came out to see. At that very moment a gigantic wave smashed against the lighhouse, and began to curl around it. Jean Guichard's photo catches the keeper at the very moment that he looks most exposed to certain death. In fact, he had sensed what was about to happen, and fled back into the lighthouse with hardly a second to spare before the wave, cut in two, joined itself together again at the lighthouse door. So he lived to tell the tale, and Jean Guichard got the shot of a lifetime.

I'd bought that print, along with several others, in Dartmouth when visiting the Devon town in 1998. All along, I'd thought that it was a dramatic shot of a French lighthouse, but with a man cleverly Photoshopped onto it. I'd never checked out the Wikipedia article. I had been quite wrong - it was a genuine picture. Wow.

So pleased was I with Kevin's work that I felt a poster wasn't enough. I had a book, bought back in 2001, full of dramatic shots of lighthouses all along the Atlantic coast of Europe, from Gibraltar to Shetland. So I gave him that too.