January 12, 2025 • 62 mins
Peter Halil
There are two segments in this episode. The first guest, Peter Halil, was a lighthouse keeper in the UK from 1974 to 1997. He was among the country's final traditional lighthouse keepers before all the lights were automated. He was stationed at some well known light stations in England and Wales, including South Bishop, Dungeness, St. Catherines, Bishop Rock, the Lizard, and others.
Peter interviewed Prince Phillip (master of Trinity House, the UK lighthouse service) in 1995
During his final years as a keeper, he visited as many lighthouses as possible before they were automated. He shot video at the lighthouses including walk-throughs, footage of the keepers at work, and, when possible, interviews with keepers. In recent years he’s gone back and edited the videos and posted them on his YouTube channel, which you can access at youtube.com/@PeterHalil. This is part one of a two part interview.
Candice Simeoni
The guest for our special "Be a Lighthouse" segment is Candice Simeoni, who is a police officer in the southern Maine community of Kennebunk. Candice runs the Golden Ornament Project, which benefits local senior citizens in the holiday season. She is also known as the Sugar Angel, for reasons that are explained in the interview.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
You are listening to Lighthearted, the official podcast
of the United States Lighthouse Society.
My name is Jeremy Dontremond.
Welcome.
Today is January 12, 2025,
and this is episode 306 of Lighthearted.
I wanna wish everyone a very happy New
Year. Today, we have 2 segments.
(00:29):
First, a conversation with a former Lighthouse keeper
in the UK,
followed by a special BLighthouse segment where we'll
discuss a special community program of the Kennebunk
Police Department in Maine. I'm flying solo today
with no cohost, and I wanna get right
into our first segment. Our guest, Peter Howlil,
was a lighthouse keeper in the UK from
1974
(00:50):
to 1997.
He was among the last traditional lighthouse keepers
in the UK
before all the lights were automated. He was
stationed at some well known light stations in
England and Wales,
including South Bishop, Saint Catherine's, Bishop Rock, The
Lizard, and several others.
During his final years as a keeper, he
visited as many lighthouses as possible before they
(01:11):
were automated.
He shot video at the lighthouses, including walk
throughs, footage of the keepers at work,
and when possible,
interviews with keepers.
In recent years, he's gone back and edited
the videos and posted them on his YouTube
channel, which you can access at youtube.com/atpeterhalil.
Again, youtube.com/the@symbol,
(01:35):
Peter Halil. His, last name is h a
l I l. Peter and I spoke recently
using Zoom,
and the conversation covered a lot of topics,
including his experiences at the various lighthouses where
he served as keeper, as well as how
we got started recording videos of the lighthouses
for posterity.
This is part 1 of a 2 part
interview. We'll hear part 2 in episode 307
(01:59):
on January 26th.
So let's listen to part 1 of my
conversation
with Peter Howlil now.
I am speaking today with Peter Hallill,
in England. And, Peter is a former lighthouse
keeper in the UK and also,
has one of the best lighthouse related YouTube
(02:20):
channels, if not the best in the world.
I would say it's incredible.
So, Peter, thanks so much for doing this
today. You're welcome.
So how did you come to be a
lighthouse keeper in the first place? Oh.
I was in the Navy first straight from
school
and,
that didn't go too brittle. And I I
stuck out 8 years of the Royal Navy.
(02:42):
Most of the time it was enjoyable. I
worked on a couple of aircraft carriers
on the flight deck, so that was enjoyable.
And I saw,
a lot of the world. Then I,
left the
Navy under the instigation of the first wife
and,
I was I couldn't find a job. It
(03:03):
was trying to find a job. I don't
know whether it was the wrong time to
look or in in the end, I ended
up as a just filling in as a
milkman. I don't know if you have them
in in America.
We did.
Base basically, it was just driving a van
with all the milk loading on the back
and delivering it to people's houses.
Yeah. But by then, I was living in
(03:25):
Suffolk over in East Anglia.
I was born, by the way, in London
in the east end.
Technically, I'm a Cockney,
but I I left sort of 8 or
9 years old
and moved to Suffolk.
Then after leaving the navy,
driving this truck around East Anglia
with, always milk on, it wasn't just up
(03:47):
and down in streets, it was all over
the countryside,
miles and miles,
delivering to farms really. And 1 and at
the end of the day, you're just so
shattered, you know, I'd fall asleep anywhere when
I got home And I I got home
one day and I fell asleep on the
floor in front of the fire. When I
woke up, the telly was on and there
(04:08):
was a documentary
on lighthouses
and I just
got engrossed with it and I thought, oh,
that's a nice job. I'll I'll have a
go and see if I can try that.
So I
I sort of found an address and and
a phone number, and the rest is history,
I think.
Yeah. Funny how a little thing can make
(04:29):
such a difference,
you know, just a chance, happening like that.
I remember we had milk trucks in this
country. I don't think we do anymore. But
that must have been in the days when
the milk was all in, glass bottles, and
there'd be a lot of clinking of the
bottles when you're carrying them around and that
kind of thing. I I don't think we've
got them anymore. It's all plastic now and
from supermarkets and it Exactly.
(04:50):
So when you started out as a lighthouse
keeper for Trinity House, which of course, I'm
sure a lot of our listeners know is
the the authority for lighthouses
in the UK.
What kind of training did you get starting
out?
Right. There was 2 training schools. 1 was
Harwich in Essex
and the other was Blackall in London.
(05:11):
I I went to the Blackall in London
one,
and it's down on the docks.
And you go, oh, I went there for
a month.
That's that's the normal training.
You should go there and have training in
all sorts of stuff like may, you know,
light maintenance on engines,
all electrics and stuff. You're supposed to learn
(05:32):
the Morse code,
knots and
all sorts of
stuff you'd never use anywhere else, basically, and
how the lights work and all the different
things. But
when I arrived in London
for the training,
it was
the lighthouses
were going through
(05:53):
sort of automation, all the ones out to
sea then,
to
come out of the, oil lamp
era
and into electrification.
The the depot where I went to train
in Blackwall
was also doing the same,
So I should have had
training on the light but it was basically
(06:16):
everything I should have been trained on. They
gave you a film instead to watch
of what it, you know, would be like.
And in fact, we were supposed to do,
a fair bit of cooking to learn how
to bake a loaf of bread and stuff
like that. Just basic, you know, learning how
to feed yourself
and,
even that wasn't available.
(06:38):
So
once I left there,
you you get sent then you're
classed as a supernumerary
assistant keeper.
Sounds like you should have a big s
on your chest and
wear a cape. And
you you're basically being used in interviews
and here, there, and everywhere to fill in
all the gaps.
(06:58):
And you learn different
bits from different lighthouses.
Mhmm. And it's learning, you know, more or
less in the deep end, which is probably
the better way of doing it. Right. So
it sounds like it was mostly learning on
the job. Yeah.
Yeah. And each lighthouse, although similar,
are different in lots of respects.
(07:18):
Sure. Like, you'll get you'll get
some lighthouses. You have engine rooms that look
like you've, just entered,
a Frankenstein film with all the levers and
dials
and great big flywheels going around.
And then you've got places like the lizard
where I was at one stage
(07:39):
and ended my career in the lizard. That
one, you've got all these
levers and dials and engines to to make
the make a noise.
You know, there's about 20 or 30 things
you go through before you even get the
the note out of the out of the
horn.
Yeah. To start with, when I was doing
that, I used to,
have what I called my idiot
(08:00):
book. I had a little notebook.
So,
the boss that was showing me around, the
principal keeper,
normally,
I would, go for it bit by bit
and write it down, idiot fashion.
Number 1, do this. Number 2, do that.
You know? And,
that's how I got by,
till I'd learned, you know, different things off
(08:20):
off by arm. But I'm picturing a a
book, Lighthousekeeping
for Dummies. You know, the do you have
that series of books over there? There's different
things for dummies. Yeah. Yeah. Turn the yeah.
Turn the first three blue vowels on, you
know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I would need that
kind of that kind of, thing too. With
some of the Fogons,
some you just press a button, others it's
(08:42):
like the lizard.
In fact, there's a couple of videos on
my channel.
One with my boss then
doing the fog on and then there's another
one with me doing it, but and we
do it slightly differently,
but it still works. And it's just,
because it's so so many dials
and levers, and you gotta do more or
(09:02):
less in the right order. Yeah.
And things like,
the engine. You gotta
wind in the clutch and then feel that
the clutch is in properly
if it's too tight or too loose. You
know you know, all sorts of little things.
Yep. So by the time you were, getting
into lighthouse keeping in the mid 19 seventies,
(09:23):
was everything there,
electrified? It was all running on electricity, the
lights and and fog signals and everything, or
or no? Wherever I went, yes. Okay.
Yeah.
There were some still at sea, I think,
that might have lingered a bit. But I
think may yeah. I think mostly were must
have been automatic,
(09:43):
not automatic.
They must have been, electrified by then. Mhmm.
Yeah. Because when I went to do different
duties at different places,
it was I never saw another
or any,
oil light at all.
In fact, to try and get a video
of an oil light, I eventually
blacked my way into,
(10:05):
the Bahamas tourist board giving me a ride
out to
the Bahamas because they they reckon they've got
the only
the last
kerosinestrokeoilfired,
hand wound
lighthouse in the world. So And they still
do. It's still it's still
they they had a lot of damage in
a hurricane a couple of years ago, but
(10:26):
I guess things are are back to normal.
Yeah. I was trying to talk them into
doing something
that I don't think they ever did. And
I thought it would be a wonderful
way of making a little bit of money
and
keeping
quite a lot of lighthouse enthusiasts
happy. And that was to,
(10:46):
run like a school for
train you out to be a lighthouse keeper
with an oil light. And you, go there
for, say, a week,
and you you go around with a keeper.
And it ends up with you doing a
proper watch doing the light yourself, you know,
and getting the certificate.
And I I was putting that to the
the, tourist board, but it never went anywhere
(11:08):
Yeah. Yeah. Which is a shame.
It is. Yeah. Well, I I know somebody
there. Maybe we can talk about it
another time, but, yeah, I haven't been there.
I'd love to see that in person.
But anyway, so, your first
place where you were stationed, was it, South
Bishop in Wales?
It's,
I don't know how many miles out to
(11:29):
sea, but it's a few miles out to
sea
off the,
Welsh coast.
Mhmm. And it's,
like a big lump of rock,
almost,
shaped like a a turtle or half a
circle.
And on the top is perched,
the lighthouse and and the dwellings.
The lighthouse sort of comes out of the
(11:50):
middle of the dwellings.
By then,
most places,
were helicopter reliefs.
This one had a helipad
on the top of the rock
but, there was still obviously the
way you could land by boat
because sometimes we had stuff delivered by boat,
but not very often.
(12:12):
Yeah. And were you on there for something
like 28 days at a time or how
did that work? Month on month off. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Was it kind of it must
have been kind of a shock.
I I enjoyed it. I don't know. I've
always enjoyed,
me own company anyway,
but, it doesn't mean,
(12:34):
I am shun away from crowds or anything.
Yeah. The I suppose the shock
bit was,
getting back into some sort of routine. I
suppose the navy trained me for that, you
know, a routine.
But,
yeah, the the hardest bit I think about
being away is you're away from
your wife and your family and you're you're
(12:56):
with 2 guys you you don't know.
Mhmm. And you didn't choose them.
So,
and
yeah. And you got to make friends. So
and once you get into the routine,
you know, it it's amazing how quick the
time goes.
28 days.
Yeah. I found I enjoyed it.
(13:18):
Uh-huh. And lots of people doing.
Right. And it's not for everybody. That's for
sure. No. Or it wasn't for everybody.
So, you did mention, you know, being there
with 2 other guys that you didn't pick.
I imagine
there were times in your in your career
as a as a lighthouse keeper when you
wish you could have picked somebody else.
(13:38):
I act yeah. I actually
asked to be moved at once from one
station because of
what we delicately
class as a clash of personalities.
But, yeah, but that's the only time it
ever happened.
And later on in life,
later on,
I actually met the guy again,
a different lighthouse and we were the best
(14:00):
of pals then. So, you know, it Mhmm.
Just one of those things at the time,
I guess. Yeah. I remember interviewing another keeper
who said exactly the same thing. They didn't
get along with somebody, then they met years
later and Yeah. Got along great. Yeah. It's
it's amazing.
Like, I I I got me one of
me journals next to me, and I was
writing
(14:20):
diligently down for about 5 years.
And
I put all my feelings at the time,
like I say at the beginning of the
month,
you say how how wonderful these other 2
are, you know, really great and all the
rest of it. And by the end of
the month,
picking them to pieces about how they grieve
(14:41):
or eat with their mouth open. And, you
know
it's as as I was saying, it's the
little things that get you nothing big.
Nobody picks an argument and wants a fight
on a lighthouse. It's tiny little, you know,
the little things
bit like being married, I guess you got.
I was thinking the same thing. Yeah.
(15:01):
But Nicola. Yeah.
So I don't we don't have time to
talk about all your stations, obviously, where you
were, where you were a keeper.
But I just wanted to talk about a
couple Dungeness
lighthouse and Romney Marsh on the Southeast coast.
I got to visit there a couple of
years ago when I was in England.
So you got the old lighthouse. That's,
(15:23):
very, very old and kind of a tourist
destination. People go there to see that. Then
you but you were taking care of the
new lighthouse, which is,
kind of, I don't know, maybe put it
nicely nondescript.
Yeah. It's just,
yeah. It's just like a pencil with a
light on the top in it. Yeah. It's
not not yeah. And you were telling me,
(15:44):
we were talking the other day that it
maybe it wasn't, you didn't feel that it
was as well built as some of the
old lighthouses.
Definitely not.
The ones out to sea,
the Victorian lighthouses that are still standing with
all these storms going on,
in those,
although they shudder a bit
(16:06):
and tremble,
you feel safe in those.
They're overengineered
by, Victorian engineers
made out of granite. But the
Dungeness one, it's,
it's a bit like how they made
these,
drains
out of concrete.
(16:27):
Big rings of, concrete,
stressed con concrete, and they put steel rods
through it to hold each section together.
Mhmm.
And that went up bit by bit,
and then they slapped the, lantern and the
lens on at the top. So,
it wasn't very thick.
And as I was saying the other day,
(16:49):
I discovered that if you- when you go
out to the top of Lighthouse,
you can grab hold of their handrail at
the top in- by the lens.
And by a quick jerking moment, you know,
motion of
pulling yourself backwards, you can set
the tower trembling.
Yeah. And I thought if, I don't think
I could do that with
(17:10):
Victorian,
granite one. No way.
Yeah. It didn't feel
terrifically safe to me. And in fact, it's
a wonder it's still standing in my eyes.
But Yeah. But, obviously, it was built properly,
but
it just didn't feel right.
When I visited there, it was like, the
the new lighthouse was sort of just like
(17:30):
an eyesore on the the I'm trying to
photograph the old lighthouse and I said, let's,
you know, get that other thing out of
the way.
And next to the old lighthouse,
there's a roundhouse,
which is the base of an even older
lighthouse. And that's I lived in one of
the building there.
There's a 3 dwellings in there I live.
That's where I lived with the Okay. 1st
(17:51):
missus.
Okay. Yeah. I'm remembering that now. I'd I'd
forgotten about that unusual.
Rooms shaped like wedges of cheese.
Yeah. I know. It's coming back to me
now, that very unusual building.
Nice little lighthouse there. Mhmm. There's also the
miniature railroad that, that Yeah. That's true. Terminates
there, which I got to ride, which was
(18:12):
Yeah. Really, really cool.
And, you were at Saint Catherine's
lighthouse in the the Isle of Wight for
a few years. Is that correct? Yeah. That's
correct.
And I also dis,
dis I don't know how I found
the keeper, an old keeper,
Sid Squibb, and he lived on the island.
(18:34):
And,
he was there when the place was bombed
during the war.
Well, not actually there at the time. He
was. He came along,
shortly after the bombing, I mean. Yeah, it
was I liked the old boys talking to
them. The
the ones who,
did the so called proper light housekeeping with
the oil light lights
(18:56):
and on and off by,
the winch and stuff like that.
Boat boat reliefs.
I know a woman,
named Connie Small who wrote a book wrote
a book called The Lighthousekeeper's Wife. She and
her husband lived at lighthouses in New England
for about 30 years. And,
she lived to be 103, but I interviewed
her. I remember she said that Portsmouth Harbor
(19:17):
Lighthouse when they came to it
had just been electrified. And first time they
had experienced electricity,
in, 1946.
And she said,
they were excited to have electricity. But she
said just to push a button. That was
nothing. It felt like something was wrong.
You know, they were so used to putting
as much of themselves into,
(19:38):
lighting that light suddenly. You
know, they weren't putting themselves into it anymore.
So it was a big, big change for
keepers.
Yeah.
For sure.
And after,
St. Catharines, you were at
the Holy do you do you pronounce it
Holyhead, or is there another pronunciation? We call
it Holyhead. Holyhead. Holyhead.
(19:58):
It's it's actually spelled Holyhead.
Right. Holyhead. That sounds everything gets, you know,
rounded down to whatever.
Hollyhead control center
in Wales.
Yeah. I
suppose I liked it because
I had,
lots of time at home.
Because,
me and the second
(20:19):
wife, who's still here after 42 years,
we decided we weren't going to go down
the road of being in Trinity House property
because we envisaged
that,
you don't really have a house as such.
And at some point they'll move you and
you have to uplift and go everywhere. So
we kept we bought a house in Wales
(20:42):
on Anglesey where Holyhead is.
And,
because that was the only place we could
afford at the time as well,
and we've been here ever since.
Yeah. It was one of one of those
times where we just fought ahead.
And luckily, when it came to the redundancy,
a lot of keepers had nothing to go
(21:03):
to. You know?
Whereas we had already bought our house, and
we were doing month on month off at
different places.
And that that was fine, and the Holyhead
depot
covered several years.
But the only thing wrong wrong with it
in my mind was,
you you started to be then more of
(21:23):
a,
watching stuff on a computer.
You weren't in a lighthouse. It was an
old the old Trinity House depot.
Mhmm. And they used us as,
guinea pigs, really, because
the
sort of monitoring lighthouses and working them from
a distance
was in its infancy.
(21:44):
So they give you a few lighthouses
close to you,
to monitor down the telephone lines and then
1 or 2 further and further away
to sort of see if it would work.
And we used to get alarms
after alarms, constant things to start with.
Yeah. That was quite harrowing to start with.
(22:07):
And,
yeah, it was
but eventually when everything got
ironed out all the faults and they got
better technology,
Once they get it all going pro perfectly,
that's when we all you know, they they
hurried on with the automation,
and,
that's when the keepers got the the golden
(22:28):
boot.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
There's a is there a pier headlight right
there at the by the control center to
light that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hollyhead,
breakwater, they call it. Yeah. Uh-huh. And that
was actually manned at one stage, but not
when I
joined. Yeah. And I found a few keepers,
(22:48):
you know, to talk about the time on
that as well. Mhmm. Yes. So again, you
were a keeper at a few other places
too. And, you know, I wanna get get
into some other things. But
before we do that, anything else that we
haven't mentioned as far as your I mean,
there's a lot of things, of course, but
something
that comes to mind when you think of
your lighthouse keeping career. Any other places that
(23:10):
we haven't mentioned that really, really stand out
for you?
When I'd finished my training as a keeper,
before I got appointed
to South Bishop
because you have to be appointed to a
station just, you know, to when you're a
supernumerate
they send you here, there and everywhere.
Anyway, I rolled up at this lighthouse
(23:31):
on the land
in
Norfolk
and I was supposed to be there for
a few weeks training
to learn,
learn the,
the ropes, as it were. And I just
got out of the taxi.
I got all my food and stuff with
me and clothing,
and then just said goodbye to the taxi
(23:53):
driver.
And he was rolling off down the road
and I,
looked up to see the PK running out
of the house. And he came over to
me
and he waving his arms and he says,
you're not staying.
We've had a phone call from Trinity House.
They need you on the Longstone
(24:13):
up in Northumberland.
So I'm in the middle of nowhere, as
it were, one of these sidelines that you
have to go back down through London
to be able to go anywhere
in in Britain.
And so I then have to
organize myself,
get another taxi, get to the
train station and try and find my way
(24:35):
back to London and then up to Northumberland.
This is how Trinity used to treat us.
And
I get to Northumberland,
and
then you have to find digs. And then
I find the other keeper who's going on,
and he helps me. And,
then you go out on a boat to
the Longstone the next next morning.
And the Longstone is where Grace Darling
(24:58):
did a famous row from to rescue all
these people from a a wreck.
So
that place
was kind of special. It's the first
real lighthouse in my mind that
I I went to. Mhmm. And it was,
spooky and nice all in one go.
It was if you look at it from
(25:19):
above,
it's shaped like a bit like a castle,
but in the like a figure of 8.
And on the left hand side you would
have all the dwellings
where you lived.
And then you had a courtyard.
And then on the other side was the
lighthouse and the engine room. You had to
(25:40):
go in through the engine room and then
up a
spiral staircase
to the top.
And
the spiral staircase
was always semi darkness, very gloomy.
So, as a young
green keeper, that was very spooky indeed.
And on the way up, you'd pass what
(26:00):
was Grace Darling's old bedroom
or the room where they used to live
as a family.
And every time
in the middle of the night
that I'd pass this doorway,
the door would be open
and the light inside would be on. So
I'd put my hand around the
door jam,
click the light off,
(26:21):
pull the door shut, make sure it was
shut properly and clicked,
go up, do your business with the light
and all the rest of it, check on
it, come down,
doors open, the light's back on.
And that happened all the time.
So
that was, you know, a bit
made the old heart flutter a bit, but
(26:42):
Wow.
And the only other thing that was a
bit dodgy as well
was they wanted the weather every so many
hours there. And
once a day
in the early hours of the morning, you
had to do the sea temperature.
And that involved, you know, a big thermometer
on the end of a rope that you
had to walk outside the building
down this path to the edge of the-
(27:04):
where the jetty was and
throw this
thermometer end into the sea
and wait so many minutes and then pull
it out and check the temperature.
That was fine,
some of the time, but I was there
in
wintertime
and it was,
lots of seals there live on the island.
(27:26):
And they pull themselves up and the nice
place they want to sleep is on the
path you're walking down in the dark.
And you don't want to wake one of
those up up
when you're trying to step over it or
around it. That is really funny because I
I got to go to Longstone in 2017
with the US Lighthouse Society tour, and it's
amazing place. I loved it. Thank you. And
(27:47):
there was a seal on the path to
the lighthouse. There was a seal there right
next to the path.
And when we went past it, it seemed
like it sounded like I was crying. You
know, it sounded like a like a a
baby crying. And one of our we had
a young woman on the tour who while
the rest of us went to the lighthouse,
she sat with the seal. And she said,
like, your mama your mama will come back.
It'll be okay.
(28:07):
Yeah. But I got some great close pictures
of that seal. So that's that's funny. But
what a what a amazing place that is.
It is lovely. Yeah. Full of wildlife. Yeah.
Uh-huh. But I mean, the the buildings are
pretty spectacular. So Yeah. But I wasn't gonna
ask you about ghost stories
ghost story type stuff, but I'm glad you
brought that up because, it's, you know, it's
(28:28):
part of the fabric of a lot of
these places. Yeah.
So Yeah. There's a few around,
but that's the only thing I can
physically remember.
Yeah.
Never saw anything.
Other keepers
because there was a place further down
on the same coast, Coquette,
(28:49):
and that was built on the grounds of,
an old monastery.
Yeah. And we got off there. We, we
get to walk around there too. And there's
stories there going about,
ghostly monks and stuff.
But, I asked a few
keepers that live, you know,
were stationed there. And
a few of them,
(29:10):
you know, refused point blank to talk about
what they saw.
Mhmm.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, yeah. I I I, it's an
interesting subject, and, I always say I'm an
open minded skeptic. You know, I can't believe
everything. But there's Me too. Yeah. There's something
going on with a lot of the cases.
There was one there that wasn't exactly a
(29:30):
ghost story.
Some chap come came onto the
oh, that was it. He was coming out
of the,
the building to go and do something outside
one of the keepers.
And then when he'd done whatever it was
outside, he then had to go back to
the,
some sort of engine room or
(29:52):
some doorway that led him to underneath the
lighthouse.
And as he opened the door,
there was a monk coming towards him in
full monk gear and he absolutely screamed
and
nearly messed his pants. And
once every friend calmed down, they turned out
it was actually a real monk that had
come on on the island with a group,
(30:16):
that they didn't know about to,
well, do whatever monks do, visit on an
island. And he he opened this door and
walked in and it shut behind him And
he was in the dark trying to fumble
around, and it was just,
coincidental
that as Yeah. As he got to the
door to try and get out,
the other phone keeper opened the door and
(30:36):
there was a monk.
That is hilarious.
Yeah. There are often other other explanations,
but I I don't think there always are.
So it's it's,
it's very interesting. But that's a great story.
So you've said already that, 1997,
your career as a lighthouse keeper ended, and
that's when it was pretty much ending in
(30:56):
the UK with automation. Yeah.
Yeah. I was one of the last.
I I'm I'm not the last, but,
I always used to say I was down
to about the last thirties, but it was
less than that. We were in the twenties
when, when I got the boot.
But, yeah.
You're like an endangered species.
(31:17):
Yeah. The last of the dinosaurs.
Yeah. Yeah. So so what are your general
feelings about lighthouse automation?
I'd well, I didn't like it, obviously. I
because I I it was a dream job
to me. I loved it.
So I would still be doing it now
in my seventies, but
yeah.
And there was lots of
nastiness
(31:37):
towards the end,
you know,
keep us sniping at each other.
Because Trinity House put around this story that
there was going to be,
a few keepers jobs left at the end.
They wanted a team of keepers
just,
you know, a few to go around
(31:57):
to do husbandry and husbandry
in all of these
automated lighthouses,
give them some TLC and then move on
to the next one and so on. That
was the story they were telling.
But,
so because that job was being banded around.
Everybody was
either
kissing backside as they say, or,
(32:20):
trying to stab each other in the back.
It seemed at the end,
it was
nasty at times,
you know. And in fact,
we went on,
before we got
the Royal boot, we went on,
one of these seminars to what to do
when you're made redundant and all this lot
and how to fill out a CV for
(32:42):
a new job.
And while we were there,
there was a,
I don't know if it was just me
from Holyhead.
I think it was from the Centre and
others were from other lighthouses.
And I got accused of,
being one of the ones that hastened on
the end of the lighthouse keeper.
And I I'm saying pardon?
(33:04):
And it was the fact that because I
worked in the control center
and helped make all this work.
That's what and I said a load of
rubbish, you know. We were all going anyway.
It was just, you know, but that's how
it was at the end, you know. What
was a dream job, you know.
Obviously, it didn't all end like that. It
was just a few people felt that way,
(33:25):
but Yeah.
Yeah. So it was nice in amongst all
that to go on the lighthouse at Christmas
with,
Ralph Humphreys
and,
Jerry Douglas Sherwood.
We had a wonderful time, you know. It
was
That was the needles?
Yeah. The needles.
So that was 97,
(33:46):
that Christmas there? Yeah. Something like that. Yeah.
So you're sort of
celebrating or commemorating
the end of,
lighthouse keeping at the It was one of
those things I wanted to do.
Mhmm.
Because I'd heard that nobody had recorded
Christmas on the lighthouse.
(34:06):
I think I've seen a video somebody did
since then,
of, you know, like his own personal,
you know, during the Christmas
dinner and all the rest of it. But,
not like
the one we ended up with, you know,
the full the full thing. But Yeah.
Yeah. And I I just wanted to record
(34:29):
Christmas on a lighthouse.
And I asked especially to go.
And Trinity House at that time were trying
to help me as best they could.
Mhmm. And when I asked the first time,
they said, no, we can't justify the cost
of sending you. And,
and and I thought, well,
I'll I'll just go in place to somebody.
(34:51):
And, oh, no, that wasn't on either.
So that was out of the window. And
then,
long before that, I was on there,
with this one
keeper
who kept saying,
he was not going to be there for
Christmas. I'm not no way am I going
to be working at Christmas.
(35:12):
And, lo and behold, he suddenly went ill
at Christmas.
And they phoned me up and asked if
I would go.
So I did.
So it was
I'm almost tempted to say bittersweet
because I had to go
and leave the wife and the kids at
home. So you miss that bit.
(35:32):
But,
I have a a wife who, you know,
backs me up.
So she was quite happy for me to,
That sounds even worse than
but, yeah, she was happy for you to
be away for Christmas.
Yeah. So
yeah. It was,
yeah, it was magic time. Yeah.
It was maybe my my own wife is
(35:53):
sorta sorta glad when I'm away doing lighthouse
trips or sometimes a week or 2 at
a time because she can get stuff done
at home that she can't do
otherwise. Yeah. We're lucky.
She likes her own space. I like my
own space.
So month on month off was was great,
you know. So Mhmm. Yeah. Sure.
So to back up a little bit,
(36:14):
when
when, how, and why did you start visiting
lighthouses to take video and interview keepers and
that sort of thing?
Oh, grief.
I think it was like in a in
a rage
that I could see every well, Trinity House
rushing around.
(36:35):
It's you know, that we knew
automation was coming bit by bit, but suddenly
it seemed to snowball
and pick up speed or pick up pace.
And they were rushing around
doing this and doing that,
and no nobody seemed interested in preserving anything
of the keepers.
(36:55):
In fact, when I was at the depot,
when they actually
closed the depot in Holyhead
and turned it into the control center,
The the depot staff that were there before
us,
they had a big skip and they were
burning all sorts of documents getting rid of
it all now. And I was thinking, grief,
you don't burn stuff like that. That's historical.
(37:16):
But now it was all going up in
flames. And I I could see the same
sort of mentality with Trinity House
of just, you know,
automate and rip everything out,
put new in,
and nobody interested in
preserving
anything, it seemed,
other than a few, you know, like Jerry
Douglas
(37:36):
and people like that with the Association of
Lighthouse Keepers stuff. But,
yeah, so I thought, well,
I'll have a go then. So
I asked permission
and they were, you know, all for it
because we had some
decent bods in Trinity House then. The, public
relations guy, I think, was Howard Cooper.
(37:59):
And he was, you know, very good.
Then I had to hook myself up in,
you know,
with the, never never, as they say,
to buy a video camera.
It was
in those days, a video camera was like
£1,000
and £1,000
to
me was, you know, like the end of
the world. But so I had to, do
(38:21):
hire purchase.
And the the first video camera wasn't very
good anyway.
It wasn't till I got a Sony many
years later, it's
got a bit better.
And I had to learn
teach myself how to use it.
And I've always been into
films and stuff
(38:42):
and watching films,
avid film watcher.
So I know how our film runs,
and I know what I like and what
I don't like.
And I've seen 100 of
people's holiday films
where you feel almost like you wanna be
violently seasick or whatever because they're whizzing around.
And I knew I had to slow everything
(39:03):
down for panning and,
you know. Yeah.
So that's what I did. I I it
started off small,
just doing bits here and there.
Yeah. And then
Trinity House helped with,
using me on my month off from the
Holyhead control center
to be used
(39:24):
and abused almost
as,
filling in for people out at sea.
And I'd say I haven't been on this
light or so this light. I see you've
got enough in there and then they'd wangle
it. So I would go there instead of,
you know,
and
so I used
lots of me leave where I should have
been home with the wife and kids.
Mhmm. But luckily, you know, the I I
(39:47):
do like a fortnight here and a fortnight
there. Yeah. But,
occasionally, I'd do a month away,
a 4 month.
You know, it was just
as I said, it snowballed.
And, when I got started, I thought, well,
we're not all automated yet. We're not all
made redundant.
So perhaps I've got a bit time to
(40:07):
do this and a bit of time to
do that.
And then I thought, oh, there's keepers and
old keepers that perhaps I can interview people.
So I started doing that as well. But,
and then I,
I
got,
I I wrote off
in those days, there was no real Internet
as such,
(40:27):
so I used to write everywhere or use
the phone at the depot
and, you know, directory of inquiries. Can you
tell me?
Yeah.
I'd got to,
Gibraltar.
I asked if I could go there,
you know, just and they they okayed that
to go and stay there
(40:47):
just as a passenger as it were or
a tourist.
And I talked to an airline
that had,
a daily charter there that,
to
to give me a ticket, return ticket, which
they did
happily.
Because in those days, lots of these,
CEOs of companies
(41:07):
were avid sailors. So they're quite happy to,
help as
a lighthouse keeper.
And they just had the hardest one I
got to was,
the Falklands.
Yep.
Just joints were up for a moment. Just
for listeners who might not know,
Gibraltar
is a is a British territory. Correct? And
(41:28):
also Falkland Islands. So those are the the
forest flung lighthouse locations under trading house. Is
that right? And
the Gibraltar
one, used to send a principal keeper out
there.
When I went there, the the all the
keepers there were
all from Britain.
But,
(41:50):
I don't know how it
the the Falklands one of Yeah, the Falkland
one was the one where they had the
principal keeper
originally
from Britain
and then the 2 other keepers were islanders
from the Falklands.
But eventually it went to just
islanders,
but they were a bit like a forgotten
(42:10):
race over there.
Because
we had uniforms
and badges and insignia,
and they had nothing. They had to wear
whatever they could get ahold of. I just
wanna mention that, people can hear a little
conversation in the background. There's some some noises.
You have some grand grandchildren
(42:30):
at your house today. Right? Yeah.
Yeah.
It makes it sound,
it's nice. I like I like hearing.
I think that, hopefully, they're on their way
home, but their own home. But What what
format was all that video
shot on?
Was it
It was
on video 8. So 8 millimeter.
(42:52):
And,
occasionally, when I could afford it, high 8.
Alright. I remember those now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I was a media archivist at a
public TV station for a while. We dealt
with all different kinds of formats.
Yeah. They both I've forgotten about the cassettes.
Right? Small cassettes. Cassettes. Yeah. I had totally
forgotten about those formats. So that's interesting. Because
(43:12):
when you look at the videos in your
YouTube channel, they have
a a filmic look to them. They, you
know, I I was look trying to figure
out, is this film? Is this video?
So that, you know, the
Yeah. It's not like high definition we have
today, but still the that has a nice
they have a nice nice look to them.
So I yeah. Some of it,
(43:33):
like, originally, like that first camera
when I went on
the Hanwha and places like that, you have
to see.
Because the
the the, lenses weren't very good. You had,
trying to fit everything in in a lighthouse.
It was awful. So you ended up having
to buy these screw on add ons.
(43:56):
And they ended up looking like you were
you're viewing everything through the bottom of a
beer barrel, you know, beer glasses. I mean,
it wasn't wasn't very
real.
Yeah. Yeah. You need a wide angle lens
to record inside a lighthouse, but too wide
angle gives you that fisheye look. Right? Which
isn't good. Yeah.
Yeah. If only we had the GoPros and
(44:16):
stuff like that back then.
Yeah. Things have things have changed a little
bit. You can shoot
on a average,
cell phone, you can shoot better videos than
what we're doing with them. Yeah.
This is what I get occasionally
on the YouTube channel.
Mhmm. You get some spark that well, you
get like
(44:38):
weeks weeks of being praised and you think,
oh, grief.
I'm in for a fall. I can feel
it. And then you get somebody in a
writing and gives you a good kicking.
And it's normally about,
it's either about the noise
or the- of the engine
or the quality of the,
video and stuff like that.
(44:59):
And you you feel, do I want to
go into an explanation of, you know, we're
talking nearly 30 years ago, mate, when
Yeah.
I did
start to say that once, and in the
end, I thought, no. I'll only get into,
like,
arguments over the air. So I was gonna
say, you know,
if anybody
(45:19):
now gets their pride and joy, their latest
iPhone,
sticks it in a drawer
for 30 years, and then brings it out.
And then People laugh at it. Yeah. Yeah.
Everybody. Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah. And the thing with the engine noise,
I get that,
oh, a lot of them say, oh, I
(45:40):
couldn't do your job. It was it's the
engines that drive me mad. And I thought,
yeah, the engine is always there, the engine
noise.
But the camera's
microphone
boosts it a bit. Mhmm. But
also there's the thing is
when you commute to work, you got the
noise of the car, you got the noise
(46:01):
of every other car. In work, you got
the noise of whatever work you're working at.
If you go by train, you got that.
If you go by plane on holiday, you
got the noise of that. There's nowhere in
this world, probably, where you can go without
being anywhere there near the noise of people.
You know. And so you go on a
lighthouse and you just get one engine in
(46:21):
the background.
I think that's quite quite a bonus.
Again, Peter's YouTube channel
is at youtube.com/at
Peter Hollil.
Again, youtube.com/followedbythe@symbolpeter
halil, h a l I l. Or you
(46:41):
can just get on to YouTube and do
a search for Peter Hollil,
Again, h a l I l. I wanna
recommend also that everyone check out the website
of the Association of Lighthouse Keepers or ALK.
The ALK provides a forum for everyone interested
in lighthouses, light ships, and maritime aids to
navigation.
Despite its name, being a lighthouse keeper is
(47:03):
not a requirement for joining the association.
The website for the ALK
is alk.org.uk.
Next, we're going to have a short be
a lighthouse segment. Our guest is Candace Semione,
who is a police officer in Kennebunk,
a beautiful community in Southern Maine.
(47:23):
I saw some articles this past holiday season
about a community program Candace runs for the
police department
called the Golden Ornament Project.
As you'll hear, it benefits local senior citizens
in the holiday season.
Candace is also known as the sugar angel
for reasons you'll hear in the interview.
Let's listen to my conversation with Candace Cimioni
(47:45):
now.
I'm speaking today with Candace
Cimioni
from the Kennebunk Maine Police Department. Thanks so
much for speaking with me today, Candace. Thank
you for having me. Your title with the,
Kennebunk Police Department is
elder crimes slash community
(48:05):
liaison
slash court officer. Do I have that correct?
Yeah. I'm a a police officer, and I
have different assignments. And so those happen to
be the 3 assignments that is
on my title.
Yeah. So what sort of things do you
do as community liaison?
So I, for the department, I take care
of all of the community events. I focus
on community policing
(48:27):
and, have the opportunity to be out and
about in the community a little bit more
now,
versus being in a cruiser. So let's kinda
cut to the chase here. And one of
the main things I wanna talk with you
about is the Golden Ornament Project. What is
the Golden Ornament Project?
Oh, it's a project that I started a
few years back. So another hat that I
(48:47):
wear is I'm the president of the York
County Elder Abuse Task Force. And so as
you can imagine, my passion in law enforcement
is protecting our older population from crime.
And,
because of that, I often
speak to our older population and distress and
some bad circumstances. And it's it kinda wrenches
on your heart.
(49:08):
And so I feel like the Golden Ordament
Project for me is,
a way for me to,
I guess, celebrate our older population, show them
respect,
embrace their what they've given to us in
our lives and our communities.
And
I give I give the community a chance,
(49:29):
to be part of that with me. So
what I do is I'm sure a lot
of you know about the given trees or
other toys for tots programs.
It's
a way
for our younger generation to be
kind of celebrated during the holidays, to give
them some cheer and and hope. And
I always feel like our older population deserves
(49:51):
that as well.
Santa is alive
and well for everybody.
And what that means is is that's holiday
spirit and joy. And
I decided that, hey, let's give this a
let's give this a whirl. Let's find people,
older people in our community who live alone,
who may have had a hard year, who
lost maybe their husband or their wife.
(50:13):
And let's give the let's let's kind of
wrap our arms around them, and this would
be a great way to do so. So
I opened up nominations
for other community members,
other businesses,
the food pantries,
town halls, etcetera, to nominate a couple of
people that could use use that love, I
guess.
And as a result, the first year I
did it, which has been, I think, for
(50:34):
about 4 years ago, we had 18 recipients,
which is
amazing.
This year, we had over 72
recipients,
for the Golden Ordament Project. And I feel
selfish because I get to hear the stories
and the reason why they're nominated.
The program is, anonymous,
so we don't share names with anybody.
(50:55):
I'm basically me and a couple of my
volunteers are the ones who know the names.
And,
we put little wishes, their wishes,
their age and their wishes inside little clear
bulbs, Christmas bulbs. And people come in from
the community and pick one of their bulbs
that they want, and
they fulfill the wish. And we we
(51:16):
wrap them up, and one of our officers
or our volunteers go and and deliver it
to them and hopes that they feel like
they're being celebrated and that the community cares
about them. Yeah. Well, you know, when I
read about this, I thought it's fantastic.
And, I'm wondering what kind of reactions have
you gotten from both
the the community
(51:37):
at large and the the people who are
the recipients of this these good deeds.
Yeah. So
I I feel as though the people who
come in and select a wish, fill them,
get just as much joy
as the recipients
themselves.
And it's a very meaningful program. And what
I mean by that is I never really
(51:57):
understood the impact that it that it really
made to a lot of people
until last year. When I did this last
year, I had 3 adult people
in the in our police lobby who said
they wanted to talk to the coordinator of
the program.
So I came out into the lobby. There
was a gentleman and 2 women, And they
kinda we kinda stood in silence for a
couple seconds. It was kind of awkward, and
(52:18):
then they explained their story.
And their story was this. They had said
to me they they all held up one
bulb. They all each selected a bulb, and
they said, we just want you to know
how much this project means to us. And
I said, okay. Thank you. Thank you for
being part of this. This is what makes
it happen. It's not me. It's the community
comes and fulfills them.
And they said, no, we have all lost
(52:40):
our last parent this year.
And one of the things we've always done
together around this time is we would go
have lunch together and we go shopping for
our parents. And we all were really upset
about the fact that we weren't gonna be
able to do that again this year until
this project happened. And so the gentleman holds
up a Bob. He's like, look. It's 84
year old man. That's how old my father
is or was.
(53:02):
And I don't know. It just that was
that was like a moment where I was
like, wow. That
that was pretty powerful. You know, a small
idea has turned into something that's like a
tradition for a lot of people now.
And I don't know. I hope a lot
of other communities embrace it and take it
on because it's it's something really special. You
know, it's not on financial need. It's not
on any kind of need except for a
(53:23):
community member selected someone who may need a
little lift for the for the, holiday season
or they live alone, etcetera.
So it's special. It's a it's a special
program.
Can you give a specific example of why
one of these witches and,
you know, how it was, filled?
Yeah. No. This is this is kinda great.
I'm glad you asked that.
So,
(53:43):
prior to working at the Kennywood Police Department,
I did work at another agency, a wonderful
agency, and that's when I actually did the
giving trade for children and families.
And I noticed a lot of the the
children's wishes were, like, fun wishes, but kinda
big.
You know, kids don't know. They wanted a
new, electronic system or something something like that.
These wishes
(54:04):
are gloves
or some per one one woman likes a
special hand cream,
and she wants some more of her hand
cream.
We have one one request this year. They
wanted,
Kenny book trash bags here in Kenny book.
You have to pay for your trash bags.
That's all they wanted.
I think the most expensive I don't even
know. I don't even think I have the
(54:26):
most expensive gift that was asked for or
needed.
We just
it's just humble. They're humble gifts, and I
think it's more
about,
the gesture than really about what what the
gifts truly
are. Yeah. Oh, I completely understand what you're
saying.
I I think it's just great, and I
really hope it catches on as as you
(54:46):
said. But
before we sign off, I just I didn't
tell you I was gonna ask about something
else here. But I I was looking for
information, and I just happened to stumble on
some other very interesting information.
I read that you create custom cakes
and that you're known as the sugar angel
because you, donate many of those cakes.
Can you tell me how that got started?
(55:08):
Yeah. That's so funny too. Oh gosh. Okay.
Yeah. Well, my mom has always been a
culinary chef. She's always been amazing in the
kitchen, and I kinda took that for granted.
I didn't realize I had a little bit
of that skill,
until I was working
actually on the road one day, and it
was it was a little boy's birthday who
had a a bad day. And so I
had asked my chief, can I make a
(55:28):
cake for him and bring it in my
uniform?
I wasn't really sure if he liked police
officers. I actually knew he didn't really like
police officers. So, like, this would be a
really great great moment.
Yeah. And so I made the cake. It
came out, like, really nice, and I I
dropped it off to him. And, you know,
people call law enforcement not because they're having
a great day or they, you know, they're
(55:49):
happy. It's generally they call us because they're
they're in some bad situations. And so I
don't always get those opportunities to be greeted
with smiles or do something like this. And
so I did it, and it made me
feel amazing. So
I started making more and more cakes for
people just free because I'm I'm not a
professional. I just do it for for fun
for friends and family. And,
one of the offices who I worked with
(56:09):
was like, you know, you you kinda you
you got a skill here and you really
should embrace it. And I'm like, no, I
I know I'm not a professional.
And
the low and behold, I was entered into
a,
a contest,
buddy the cake boss. And if you know
who that is, buddy Velasco. He's like a
big he's on the food network. Anyway,
they entered some
(56:30):
of my cakes and I won. I won
this contest. So I got to go down
and meet him in Staten Island, New York.
And and then I got contacted from an
agency called Ice and Smiles that makes custom
cakes for chronically and terminally ill kiddos, and
I obviously couldn't say no. And so I've
made at least 3 dozen of those, for
children and made the New Hampshire over the
last, I'd say. I think it's about 10
(56:51):
years I've been doing it now. 15 maybe
might actually
Yeah. Is flying. So that's just it. That
was my little, I guess, side tidbit that
I wasn't
thinking I was gonna be asked about, but
I guess
Paul, when I saw that, I knew I
had to talk to you about that too.
That's that's great. I I I really love
it.
I in one of the interviews or one
(57:12):
of the recent articles,
about your golden ornaments, that said that you
are trying to humanize the badge, and it
sounds like you're the
worst place.
It's something I've always I've got and that's,
you know, part of my reason why I
I like to be the community, liaison portion
of law enforcement.
Officers and all the ones I've been in
contact with are really a special group of
(57:34):
people.
You know, putting themselves on the line for
things that are are scary
and not we're not always accepted, but we
still trudge forward. And it's something special. And
so for me, I think
a lot of the community members are people
who may have a bad idea about what
law enforcement is have had bad experiences because
they don't look at us as humans. They
look at us. That you guys
(57:55):
the person who decided. So I
And I think this world, we're always looking
for reasons why we're so different and that
(58:17):
things that divide us and focus on that
versus
the things that really connect us and make
us a great community or a great state
or a great world. So that's why it's
important for me to try however I can
to humanize our badge.
Right. So I have one final question for
you for bonus points. Okay?
You live on the Southern Maine Coast. Beautiful
(58:38):
place. And I don't need to tell you
that there are lighthouses. There's a lot of
lighthouses in the Maine Coast. There's some beautiful
ones near you.
The Noble light down in New York isn't
far from where you are and so forth.
And up in the Portland area, there's several.
So, anyway, I'm wondering if you have any
thoughts about the positive symbolism of lighthouses, but
also
any thoughts about the idea, what it means
(59:00):
to be a lighthouse in the world. You
know, when I think about a lighthouse, even
as a little child, I always remember the
light. I remember the light
shining.
And I had always said, you know, the
lighthouses
mean
a lot of things. But when it's stormy
and it's cloudy, you know, you always have
to look for the light. And that's where
the lighthouses are. You know, the
(59:22):
waves crashing up against them and all the
scary stuff and scary storms, they're still there
standing and and flashing their lights. So I
always see it as a symbol
of, maybe like a leader. They're a leader
in our coast. They're powerful,
and
it kinda brings your home too. So, you
know, when you're out in the sea and
you don't know where you're going, you look
for the light, and that will bring you
(59:43):
back home. And so lighthouses in the state
of Maine is is a is a big
symbol. Go to any of the little trinket
shops, and you see my house is everywhere.
And so for what when you when you
talk about a lighthouse, it reminds me of
Maine, it reminds me of our coast, and
it reminds me of home. You think of
a a lighthouse out in the ocean, and,
obviously, every lighthouse serves an important purpose,
but they don't work alone. It's a network
(01:00:05):
of lighthouses
and aids to navigation and the buoys and
all that. It's a sort of a community
in a way of of, these aids to
navigation, including the lighthouses. It's the same thing
with people. 1 person can't save the world,
but,
people,
if you have
1,000, millions of people around the world being
lighthouses for other people, then it they've become
(01:00:26):
sort of, similar to
the the the aids to navigation network, if
that makes sense. So it takes takes a
lot of lighthouses to make things
work work, well in this world. Candace Cimioni,
thanks so much for talking with me today.
Thank you
so much for everything you do. Obviously, you're
doing a great work in the community and
are also doing you're a great asset for
(01:00:48):
the police force there in Kennebunk. So it's
a real pleasure speaking with you,
and, just thank you so much for for
being a lighthouse. So thank you so much,
for this opportunity.
Take care, and happy New Year.
Thanks again to Candace and the Kennebunk Police
(01:01:10):
Department for being a lighthouse in the community.
I read on Instagram that Candace said, quote,
I believe we are connected to each other
for a reason. It takes a village, unquote.
I couldn't agree more. It takes a village,
or you could say it takes many lighthouses
in the world. Be sure to listen in
2 weeks to the second part of my
conversation with Peter
(01:01:31):
Hollow. Until then, to all our regular listeners
and our new ones, thanks so much for
listening and
keep a good light.
You are listening to Lighthearted, the official podcast
of the United States Lighthouse Society.
My name is Jeremy Dontremond.
Welcome.
Today is January 12, 2025,
and this is episode 306 of Lighthearted.
I wanna wish everyone a very happy New
Year. Today, we have 2 segments.
(00:29):
First, a conversation with a former Lighthouse keeper
in the UK,
followed by a special BLighthouse segment where we'll
discuss a special community program of the Kennebunk
Police Department in Maine. I'm flying solo today
with no cohost, and I wanna get right
into our first segment. Our guest, Peter Howlil,
was a lighthouse keeper in the UK from
1974
(00:50):
to 1997.
He was among the last traditional lighthouse keepers
in the UK
before all the lights were automated. He was
stationed at some well known light stations in
England and Wales,
including South Bishop, Saint Catherine's, Bishop Rock, The
Lizard, and several others.
During his final years as a keeper, he
visited as many lighthouses as possible before they
(01:11):
were automated.
He shot video at the lighthouses, including walk
throughs, footage of the keepers at work,
and when possible,
interviews with keepers.
In recent years, he's gone back and edited
the videos and posted them on his YouTube
channel, which you can access at youtube.com/atpeterhalil.
Again, youtube.com/the@symbol,
(01:35):
Peter Halil. His, last name is h a
l I l. Peter and I spoke recently
using Zoom,
and the conversation covered a lot of topics,
including his experiences at the various lighthouses where
he served as keeper, as well as how
we got started recording videos of the lighthouses
for posterity.
This is part 1 of a 2 part
interview. We'll hear part 2 in episode 307
(01:59):
on January 26th.
So let's listen to part 1 of my
conversation
with Peter Howlil now.
I am speaking today with Peter Hallill,
in England. And, Peter is a former lighthouse
keeper in the UK and also,
has one of the best lighthouse related YouTube
(02:20):
channels, if not the best in the world.
I would say it's incredible.
So, Peter, thanks so much for doing this
today. You're welcome.
So how did you come to be a
lighthouse keeper in the first place? Oh.
I was in the Navy first straight from
school
and,
that didn't go too brittle. And I I
stuck out 8 years of the Royal Navy.
(02:42):
Most of the time it was enjoyable. I
worked on a couple of aircraft carriers
on the flight deck, so that was enjoyable.
And I saw,
a lot of the world. Then I,
left the
Navy under the instigation of the first wife
and,
I was I couldn't find a job. It
(03:03):
was trying to find a job. I don't
know whether it was the wrong time to
look or in in the end, I ended
up as a just filling in as a
milkman. I don't know if you have them
in in America.
We did.
Base basically, it was just driving a van
with all the milk loading on the back
and delivering it to people's houses.
Yeah. But by then, I was living in
(03:25):
Suffolk over in East Anglia.
I was born, by the way, in London
in the east end.
Technically, I'm a Cockney,
but I I left sort of 8 or
9 years old
and moved to Suffolk.
Then after leaving the navy,
driving this truck around East Anglia
with, always milk on, it wasn't just up
(03:47):
and down in streets, it was all over
the countryside,
miles and miles,
delivering to farms really. And 1 and at
the end of the day, you're just so
shattered, you know, I'd fall asleep anywhere when
I got home And I I got home
one day and I fell asleep on the
floor in front of the fire. When I
woke up, the telly was on and there
(04:08):
was a documentary
on lighthouses
and I just
got engrossed with it and I thought, oh,
that's a nice job. I'll I'll have a
go and see if I can try that.
So I
I sort of found an address and and
a phone number, and the rest is history,
I think.
Yeah. Funny how a little thing can make
(04:29):
such a difference,
you know, just a chance, happening like that.
I remember we had milk trucks in this
country. I don't think we do anymore. But
that must have been in the days when
the milk was all in, glass bottles, and
there'd be a lot of clinking of the
bottles when you're carrying them around and that
kind of thing. I I don't think we've
got them anymore. It's all plastic now and
from supermarkets and it Exactly.
(04:50):
So when you started out as a lighthouse
keeper for Trinity House, which of course, I'm
sure a lot of our listeners know is
the the authority for lighthouses
in the UK.
What kind of training did you get starting
out?
Right. There was 2 training schools. 1 was
Harwich in Essex
and the other was Blackall in London.
(05:11):
I I went to the Blackall in London
one,
and it's down on the docks.
And you go, oh, I went there for
a month.
That's that's the normal training.
You should go there and have training in
all sorts of stuff like may, you know,
light maintenance on engines,
all electrics and stuff. You're supposed to learn
(05:32):
the Morse code,
knots and
all sorts of
stuff you'd never use anywhere else, basically, and
how the lights work and all the different
things. But
when I arrived in London
for the training,
it was
the lighthouses
were going through
(05:53):
sort of automation, all the ones out to
sea then,
to
come out of the, oil lamp
era
and into electrification.
The the depot where I went to train
in Blackwall
was also doing the same,
So I should have had
training on the light but it was basically
(06:16):
everything I should have been trained on. They
gave you a film instead to watch
of what it, you know, would be like.
And in fact, we were supposed to do,
a fair bit of cooking to learn how
to bake a loaf of bread and stuff
like that. Just basic, you know, learning how
to feed yourself
and,
even that wasn't available.
(06:38):
So
once I left there,
you you get sent then you're
classed as a supernumerary
assistant keeper.
Sounds like you should have a big s
on your chest and
wear a cape. And
you you're basically being used in interviews
and here, there, and everywhere to fill in
all the gaps.
(06:58):
And you learn different
bits from different lighthouses.
Mhmm. And it's learning, you know, more or
less in the deep end, which is probably
the better way of doing it. Right. So
it sounds like it was mostly learning on
the job. Yeah.
Yeah. And each lighthouse, although similar,
are different in lots of respects.
(07:18):
Sure. Like, you'll get you'll get
some lighthouses. You have engine rooms that look
like you've, just entered,
a Frankenstein film with all the levers and
dials
and great big flywheels going around.
And then you've got places like the lizard
where I was at one stage
(07:39):
and ended my career in the lizard. That
one, you've got all these
levers and dials and engines to to make
the make a noise.
You know, there's about 20 or 30 things
you go through before you even get the
the note out of the out of the
horn.
Yeah. To start with, when I was doing
that, I used to,
have what I called my idiot
(08:00):
book. I had a little notebook.
So,
the boss that was showing me around, the
principal keeper,
normally,
I would, go for it bit by bit
and write it down, idiot fashion.
Number 1, do this. Number 2, do that.
You know? And,
that's how I got by,
till I'd learned, you know, different things off
(08:20):
off by arm. But I'm picturing a a
book, Lighthousekeeping
for Dummies. You know, the do you have
that series of books over there? There's different
things for dummies. Yeah. Yeah. Turn the yeah.
Turn the first three blue vowels on, you
know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I would need that
kind of that kind of, thing too. With
some of the Fogons,
some you just press a button, others it's
(08:42):
like the lizard.
In fact, there's a couple of videos on
my channel.
One with my boss then
doing the fog on and then there's another
one with me doing it, but and we
do it slightly differently,
but it still works. And it's just,
because it's so so many dials
and levers, and you gotta do more or
(09:02):
less in the right order. Yeah.
And things like,
the engine. You gotta
wind in the clutch and then feel that
the clutch is in properly
if it's too tight or too loose. You
know you know, all sorts of little things.
Yep. So by the time you were, getting
into lighthouse keeping in the mid 19 seventies,
(09:23):
was everything there,
electrified? It was all running on electricity, the
lights and and fog signals and everything, or
or no? Wherever I went, yes. Okay.
Yeah.
There were some still at sea, I think,
that might have lingered a bit. But I
think may yeah. I think mostly were must
have been automatic,
(09:43):
not automatic.
They must have been, electrified by then. Mhmm.
Yeah. Because when I went to do different
duties at different places,
it was I never saw another
or any,
oil light at all.
In fact, to try and get a video
of an oil light, I eventually
blacked my way into,
(10:05):
the Bahamas tourist board giving me a ride
out to
the Bahamas because they they reckon they've got
the only
the last
kerosinestrokeoilfired,
hand wound
lighthouse in the world. So And they still
do. It's still it's still
they they had a lot of damage in
a hurricane a couple of years ago, but
(10:26):
I guess things are are back to normal.
Yeah. I was trying to talk them into
doing something
that I don't think they ever did. And
I thought it would be a wonderful
way of making a little bit of money
and
keeping
quite a lot of lighthouse enthusiasts
happy. And that was to,
(10:46):
run like a school for
train you out to be a lighthouse keeper
with an oil light. And you, go there
for, say, a week,
and you you go around with a keeper.
And it ends up with you doing a
proper watch doing the light yourself, you know,
and getting the certificate.
And I I was putting that to the
the, tourist board, but it never went anywhere
(11:08):
Yeah. Yeah. Which is a shame.
It is. Yeah. Well, I I know somebody
there. Maybe we can talk about it
another time, but, yeah, I haven't been there.
I'd love to see that in person.
But anyway, so, your first
place where you were stationed, was it, South
Bishop in Wales?
It's,
I don't know how many miles out to
(11:29):
sea, but it's a few miles out to
sea
off the,
Welsh coast.
Mhmm. And it's,
like a big lump of rock,
almost,
shaped like a a turtle or half a
circle.
And on the top is perched,
the lighthouse and and the dwellings.
The lighthouse sort of comes out of the
(11:50):
middle of the dwellings.
By then,
most places,
were helicopter reliefs.
This one had a helipad
on the top of the rock
but, there was still obviously the
way you could land by boat
because sometimes we had stuff delivered by boat,
but not very often.
(12:12):
Yeah. And were you on there for something
like 28 days at a time or how
did that work? Month on month off. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Was it kind of it must
have been kind of a shock.
I I enjoyed it. I don't know. I've
always enjoyed,
me own company anyway,
but, it doesn't mean,
(12:34):
I am shun away from crowds or anything.
Yeah. The I suppose the shock
bit was,
getting back into some sort of routine. I
suppose the navy trained me for that, you
know, a routine.
But,
yeah, the the hardest bit I think about
being away is you're away from
your wife and your family and you're you're
(12:56):
with 2 guys you you don't know.
Mhmm. And you didn't choose them.
So,
and
yeah. And you got to make friends. So
and once you get into the routine,
you know, it it's amazing how quick the
time goes.
28 days.
Yeah. I found I enjoyed it.
(13:18):
Uh-huh. And lots of people doing.
Right. And it's not for everybody. That's for
sure. No. Or it wasn't for everybody.
So, you did mention, you know, being there
with 2 other guys that you didn't pick.
I imagine
there were times in your in your career
as a as a lighthouse keeper when you
wish you could have picked somebody else.
(13:38):
I act yeah. I actually
asked to be moved at once from one
station because of
what we delicately
class as a clash of personalities.
But, yeah, but that's the only time it
ever happened.
And later on in life,
later on,
I actually met the guy again,
a different lighthouse and we were the best
(14:00):
of pals then. So, you know, it Mhmm.
Just one of those things at the time,
I guess. Yeah. I remember interviewing another keeper
who said exactly the same thing. They didn't
get along with somebody, then they met years
later and Yeah. Got along great. Yeah. It's
it's amazing.
Like, I I I got me one of
me journals next to me, and I was
writing
(14:20):
diligently down for about 5 years.
And
I put all my feelings at the time,
like I say at the beginning of the
month,
you say how how wonderful these other 2
are, you know, really great and all the
rest of it. And by the end of
the month,
picking them to pieces about how they grieve
(14:41):
or eat with their mouth open. And, you
know
it's as as I was saying, it's the
little things that get you nothing big.
Nobody picks an argument and wants a fight
on a lighthouse. It's tiny little, you know,
the little things
bit like being married, I guess you got.
I was thinking the same thing. Yeah.
(15:01):
But Nicola. Yeah.
So I don't we don't have time to
talk about all your stations, obviously, where you
were, where you were a keeper.
But I just wanted to talk about a
couple Dungeness
lighthouse and Romney Marsh on the Southeast coast.
I got to visit there a couple of
years ago when I was in England.
So you got the old lighthouse. That's,
(15:23):
very, very old and kind of a tourist
destination. People go there to see that. Then
you but you were taking care of the
new lighthouse, which is,
kind of, I don't know, maybe put it
nicely nondescript.
Yeah. It's just,
yeah. It's just like a pencil with a
light on the top in it. Yeah. It's
not not yeah. And you were telling me,
(15:44):
we were talking the other day that it
maybe it wasn't, you didn't feel that it
was as well built as some of the
old lighthouses.
Definitely not.
The ones out to sea,
the Victorian lighthouses that are still standing with
all these storms going on,
in those,
although they shudder a bit
(16:06):
and tremble,
you feel safe in those.
They're overengineered
by, Victorian engineers
made out of granite. But the
Dungeness one, it's,
it's a bit like how they made
these,
drains
out of concrete.
(16:27):
Big rings of, concrete,
stressed con concrete, and they put steel rods
through it to hold each section together.
Mhmm.
And that went up bit by bit,
and then they slapped the, lantern and the
lens on at the top. So,
it wasn't very thick.
And as I was saying the other day,
(16:49):
I discovered that if you- when you go
out to the top of Lighthouse,
you can grab hold of their handrail at
the top in- by the lens.
And by a quick jerking moment, you know,
motion of
pulling yourself backwards, you can set
the tower trembling.
Yeah. And I thought if, I don't think
I could do that with
(17:10):
Victorian,
granite one. No way.
Yeah. It didn't feel
terrifically safe to me. And in fact, it's
a wonder it's still standing in my eyes.
But Yeah. But, obviously, it was built properly,
but
it just didn't feel right.
When I visited there, it was like, the
the new lighthouse was sort of just like
(17:30):
an eyesore on the the I'm trying to
photograph the old lighthouse and I said, let's,
you know, get that other thing out of
the way.
And next to the old lighthouse,
there's a roundhouse,
which is the base of an even older
lighthouse. And that's I lived in one of
the building there.
There's a 3 dwellings in there I live.
That's where I lived with the Okay. 1st
(17:51):
missus.
Okay. Yeah. I'm remembering that now. I'd I'd
forgotten about that unusual.
Rooms shaped like wedges of cheese.
Yeah. I know. It's coming back to me
now, that very unusual building.
Nice little lighthouse there. Mhmm. There's also the
miniature railroad that, that Yeah. That's true. Terminates
there, which I got to ride, which was
(18:12):
Yeah. Really, really cool.
And, you were at Saint Catherine's
lighthouse in the the Isle of Wight for
a few years. Is that correct? Yeah. That's
correct.
And I also dis,
dis I don't know how I found
the keeper, an old keeper,
Sid Squibb, and he lived on the island.
(18:34):
And,
he was there when the place was bombed
during the war.
Well, not actually there at the time. He
was. He came along,
shortly after the bombing, I mean. Yeah, it
was I liked the old boys talking to
them. The
the ones who,
did the so called proper light housekeeping with
the oil light lights
(18:56):
and on and off by,
the winch and stuff like that.
Boat boat reliefs.
I know a woman,
named Connie Small who wrote a book wrote
a book called The Lighthousekeeper's Wife. She and
her husband lived at lighthouses in New England
for about 30 years. And,
she lived to be 103, but I interviewed
her. I remember she said that Portsmouth Harbor
(19:17):
Lighthouse when they came to it
had just been electrified. And first time they
had experienced electricity,
in, 1946.
And she said,
they were excited to have electricity. But she
said just to push a button. That was
nothing. It felt like something was wrong.
You know, they were so used to putting
as much of themselves into,
(19:38):
lighting that light suddenly. You
know, they weren't putting themselves into it anymore.
So it was a big, big change for
keepers.
Yeah.
For sure.
And after,
St. Catharines, you were at
the Holy do you do you pronounce it
Holyhead, or is there another pronunciation? We call
it Holyhead. Holyhead. Holyhead.
(19:58):
It's it's actually spelled Holyhead.
Right. Holyhead. That sounds everything gets, you know,
rounded down to whatever.
Hollyhead control center
in Wales.
Yeah. I
suppose I liked it because
I had,
lots of time at home.
Because,
me and the second
(20:19):
wife, who's still here after 42 years,
we decided we weren't going to go down
the road of being in Trinity House property
because we envisaged
that,
you don't really have a house as such.
And at some point they'll move you and
you have to uplift and go everywhere. So
we kept we bought a house in Wales
(20:42):
on Anglesey where Holyhead is.
And,
because that was the only place we could
afford at the time as well,
and we've been here ever since.
Yeah. It was one of one of those
times where we just fought ahead.
And luckily, when it came to the redundancy,
a lot of keepers had nothing to go
(21:03):
to. You know?
Whereas we had already bought our house, and
we were doing month on month off at
different places.
And that that was fine, and the Holyhead
depot
covered several years.
But the only thing wrong wrong with it
in my mind was,
you you started to be then more of
(21:23):
a,
watching stuff on a computer.
You weren't in a lighthouse. It was an
old the old Trinity House depot.
Mhmm. And they used us as,
guinea pigs, really, because
the
sort of monitoring lighthouses and working them from
a distance
was in its infancy.
(21:44):
So they give you a few lighthouses
close to you,
to monitor down the telephone lines and then
1 or 2 further and further away
to sort of see if it would work.
And we used to get alarms
after alarms, constant things to start with.
Yeah. That was quite harrowing to start with.
(22:07):
And,
yeah, it was
but eventually when everything got
ironed out all the faults and they got
better technology,
Once they get it all going pro perfectly,
that's when we all you know, they they
hurried on with the automation,
and,
that's when the keepers got the the golden
(22:28):
boot.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
There's a is there a pier headlight right
there at the by the control center to
light that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hollyhead,
breakwater, they call it. Yeah. Uh-huh. And that
was actually manned at one stage, but not
when I
joined. Yeah. And I found a few keepers,
(22:48):
you know, to talk about the time on
that as well. Mhmm. Yes. So again, you
were a keeper at a few other places
too. And, you know, I wanna get get
into some other things. But
before we do that, anything else that we
haven't mentioned as far as your I mean,
there's a lot of things, of course, but
something
that comes to mind when you think of
your lighthouse keeping career. Any other places that
(23:10):
we haven't mentioned that really, really stand out
for you?
When I'd finished my training as a keeper,
before I got appointed
to South Bishop
because you have to be appointed to a
station just, you know, to when you're a
supernumerate
they send you here, there and everywhere.
Anyway, I rolled up at this lighthouse
(23:31):
on the land
in
Norfolk
and I was supposed to be there for
a few weeks training
to learn,
learn the,
the ropes, as it were. And I just
got out of the taxi.
I got all my food and stuff with
me and clothing,
and then just said goodbye to the taxi
(23:53):
driver.
And he was rolling off down the road
and I,
looked up to see the PK running out
of the house. And he came over to
me
and he waving his arms and he says,
you're not staying.
We've had a phone call from Trinity House.
They need you on the Longstone
(24:13):
up in Northumberland.
So I'm in the middle of nowhere, as
it were, one of these sidelines that you
have to go back down through London
to be able to go anywhere
in in Britain.
And so I then have to
organize myself,
get another taxi, get to the
train station and try and find my way
(24:35):
back to London and then up to Northumberland.
This is how Trinity used to treat us.
And
I get to Northumberland,
and
then you have to find digs. And then
I find the other keeper who's going on,
and he helps me. And,
then you go out on a boat to
the Longstone the next next morning.
And the Longstone is where Grace Darling
(24:58):
did a famous row from to rescue all
these people from a a wreck.
So
that place
was kind of special. It's the first
real lighthouse in my mind that
I I went to. Mhmm. And it was,
spooky and nice all in one go.
It was if you look at it from
(25:19):
above,
it's shaped like a bit like a castle,
but in the like a figure of 8.
And on the left hand side you would
have all the dwellings
where you lived.
And then you had a courtyard.
And then on the other side was the
lighthouse and the engine room. You had to
(25:40):
go in through the engine room and then
up a
spiral staircase
to the top.
And
the spiral staircase
was always semi darkness, very gloomy.
So, as a young
green keeper, that was very spooky indeed.
And on the way up, you'd pass what
(26:00):
was Grace Darling's old bedroom
or the room where they used to live
as a family.
And every time
in the middle of the night
that I'd pass this doorway,
the door would be open
and the light inside would be on. So
I'd put my hand around the
door jam,
click the light off,
(26:21):
pull the door shut, make sure it was
shut properly and clicked,
go up, do your business with the light
and all the rest of it, check on
it, come down,
doors open, the light's back on.
And that happened all the time.
So
that was, you know, a bit
made the old heart flutter a bit, but
(26:42):
Wow.
And the only other thing that was a
bit dodgy as well
was they wanted the weather every so many
hours there. And
once a day
in the early hours of the morning, you
had to do the sea temperature.
And that involved, you know, a big thermometer
on the end of a rope that you
had to walk outside the building
down this path to the edge of the-
(27:04):
where the jetty was and
throw this
thermometer end into the sea
and wait so many minutes and then pull
it out and check the temperature.
That was fine,
some of the time, but I was there
in
wintertime
and it was,
lots of seals there live on the island.
(27:26):
And they pull themselves up and the nice
place they want to sleep is on the
path you're walking down in the dark.
And you don't want to wake one of
those up up
when you're trying to step over it or
around it. That is really funny because I
I got to go to Longstone in 2017
with the US Lighthouse Society tour, and it's
amazing place. I loved it. Thank you. And
(27:47):
there was a seal on the path to
the lighthouse. There was a seal there right
next to the path.
And when we went past it, it seemed
like it sounded like I was crying. You
know, it sounded like a like a a
baby crying. And one of our we had
a young woman on the tour who while
the rest of us went to the lighthouse,
she sat with the seal. And she said,
like, your mama your mama will come back.
It'll be okay.
(28:07):
Yeah. But I got some great close pictures
of that seal. So that's that's funny. But
what a what a amazing place that is.
It is lovely. Yeah. Full of wildlife. Yeah.
Uh-huh. But I mean, the the buildings are
pretty spectacular. So Yeah. But I wasn't gonna
ask you about ghost stories
ghost story type stuff, but I'm glad you
brought that up because, it's, you know, it's
(28:28):
part of the fabric of a lot of
these places. Yeah.
So Yeah. There's a few around,
but that's the only thing I can
physically remember.
Yeah.
Never saw anything.
Other keepers
because there was a place further down
on the same coast, Coquette,
(28:49):
and that was built on the grounds of,
an old monastery.
Yeah. And we got off there. We, we
get to walk around there too. And there's
stories there going about,
ghostly monks and stuff.
But, I asked a few
keepers that live, you know,
were stationed there. And
a few of them,
(29:10):
you know, refused point blank to talk about
what they saw.
Mhmm.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, yeah. I I I, it's an
interesting subject, and, I always say I'm an
open minded skeptic. You know, I can't believe
everything. But there's Me too. Yeah. There's something
going on with a lot of the cases.
There was one there that wasn't exactly a
(29:30):
ghost story.
Some chap come came onto the
oh, that was it. He was coming out
of the,
the building to go and do something outside
one of the keepers.
And then when he'd done whatever it was
outside, he then had to go back to
the,
some sort of engine room or
(29:52):
some doorway that led him to underneath the
lighthouse.
And as he opened the door,
there was a monk coming towards him in
full monk gear and he absolutely screamed
and
nearly messed his pants. And
once every friend calmed down, they turned out
it was actually a real monk that had
come on on the island with a group,
(30:16):
that they didn't know about to,
well, do whatever monks do, visit on an
island. And he he opened this door and
walked in and it shut behind him And
he was in the dark trying to fumble
around, and it was just,
coincidental
that as Yeah. As he got to the
door to try and get out,
the other phone keeper opened the door and
(30:36):
there was a monk.
That is hilarious.
Yeah. There are often other other explanations,
but I I don't think there always are.
So it's it's,
it's very interesting. But that's a great story.
So you've said already that, 1997,
your career as a lighthouse keeper ended, and
that's when it was pretty much ending in
(30:56):
the UK with automation. Yeah.
Yeah. I was one of the last.
I I'm I'm not the last, but,
I always used to say I was down
to about the last thirties, but it was
less than that. We were in the twenties
when, when I got the boot.
But, yeah.
You're like an endangered species.
(31:17):
Yeah. The last of the dinosaurs.
Yeah. Yeah. So so what are your general
feelings about lighthouse automation?
I'd well, I didn't like it, obviously. I
because I I it was a dream job
to me. I loved it.
So I would still be doing it now
in my seventies, but
yeah.
And there was lots of
nastiness
(31:37):
towards the end,
you know,
keep us sniping at each other.
Because Trinity House put around this story that
there was going to be,
a few keepers jobs left at the end.
They wanted a team of keepers
just,
you know, a few to go around
(31:57):
to do husbandry and husbandry
in all of these
automated lighthouses,
give them some TLC and then move on
to the next one and so on. That
was the story they were telling.
But,
so because that job was being banded around.
Everybody was
either
kissing backside as they say, or,
(32:20):
trying to stab each other in the back.
It seemed at the end,
it was
nasty at times,
you know. And in fact,
we went on,
before we got
the Royal boot, we went on,
one of these seminars to what to do
when you're made redundant and all this lot
and how to fill out a CV for
(32:42):
a new job.
And while we were there,
there was a,
I don't know if it was just me
from Holyhead.
I think it was from the Centre and
others were from other lighthouses.
And I got accused of,
being one of the ones that hastened on
the end of the lighthouse keeper.
And I I'm saying pardon?
(33:04):
And it was the fact that because I
worked in the control center
and helped make all this work.
That's what and I said a load of
rubbish, you know. We were all going anyway.
It was just, you know, but that's how
it was at the end, you know. What
was a dream job, you know.
Obviously, it didn't all end like that. It
was just a few people felt that way,
(33:25):
but Yeah.
Yeah. So it was nice in amongst all
that to go on the lighthouse at Christmas
with,
Ralph Humphreys
and,
Jerry Douglas Sherwood.
We had a wonderful time, you know. It
was
That was the needles?
Yeah. The needles.
So that was 97,
(33:46):
that Christmas there? Yeah. Something like that. Yeah.
So you're sort of
celebrating or commemorating
the end of,
lighthouse keeping at the It was one of
those things I wanted to do.
Mhmm.
Because I'd heard that nobody had recorded
Christmas on the lighthouse.
(34:06):
I think I've seen a video somebody did
since then,
of, you know, like his own personal,
you know, during the Christmas
dinner and all the rest of it. But,
not like
the one we ended up with, you know,
the full the full thing. But Yeah.
Yeah. And I I just wanted to record
(34:29):
Christmas on a lighthouse.
And I asked especially to go.
And Trinity House at that time were trying
to help me as best they could.
Mhmm. And when I asked the first time,
they said, no, we can't justify the cost
of sending you. And,
and and I thought, well,
I'll I'll just go in place to somebody.
(34:51):
And, oh, no, that wasn't on either.
So that was out of the window. And
then,
long before that, I was on there,
with this one
keeper
who kept saying,
he was not going to be there for
Christmas. I'm not no way am I going
to be working at Christmas.
(35:12):
And, lo and behold, he suddenly went ill
at Christmas.
And they phoned me up and asked if
I would go.
So I did.
So it was
I'm almost tempted to say bittersweet
because I had to go
and leave the wife and the kids at
home. So you miss that bit.
(35:32):
But,
I have a a wife who, you know,
backs me up.
So she was quite happy for me to,
That sounds even worse than
but, yeah, she was happy for you to
be away for Christmas.
Yeah. So
yeah. It was,
yeah, it was magic time. Yeah.
It was maybe my my own wife is
(35:53):
sorta sorta glad when I'm away doing lighthouse
trips or sometimes a week or 2 at
a time because she can get stuff done
at home that she can't do
otherwise. Yeah. We're lucky.
She likes her own space. I like my
own space.
So month on month off was was great,
you know. So Mhmm. Yeah. Sure.
So to back up a little bit,
(36:14):
when
when, how, and why did you start visiting
lighthouses to take video and interview keepers and
that sort of thing?
Oh, grief.
I think it was like in a in
a rage
that I could see every well, Trinity House
rushing around.
(36:35):
It's you know, that we knew
automation was coming bit by bit, but suddenly
it seemed to snowball
and pick up speed or pick up pace.
And they were rushing around
doing this and doing that,
and no nobody seemed interested in preserving anything
of the keepers.
(36:55):
In fact, when I was at the depot,
when they actually
closed the depot in Holyhead
and turned it into the control center,
The the depot staff that were there before
us,
they had a big skip and they were
burning all sorts of documents getting rid of
it all now. And I was thinking, grief,
you don't burn stuff like that. That's historical.
(37:16):
But now it was all going up in
flames. And I I could see the same
sort of mentality with Trinity House
of just, you know,
automate and rip everything out,
put new in,
and nobody interested in
preserving
anything, it seemed,
other than a few, you know, like Jerry
Douglas
(37:36):
and people like that with the Association of
Lighthouse Keepers stuff. But,
yeah, so I thought, well,
I'll have a go then. So
I asked permission
and they were, you know, all for it
because we had some
decent bods in Trinity House then. The, public
relations guy, I think, was Howard Cooper.
(37:59):
And he was, you know, very good.
Then I had to hook myself up in,
you know,
with the, never never, as they say,
to buy a video camera.
It was
in those days, a video camera was like
£1,000
and £1,000
to
me was, you know, like the end of
the world. But so I had to, do
(38:21):
hire purchase.
And the the first video camera wasn't very
good anyway.
It wasn't till I got a Sony many
years later, it's
got a bit better.
And I had to learn
teach myself how to use it.
And I've always been into
films and stuff
(38:42):
and watching films,
avid film watcher.
So I know how our film runs,
and I know what I like and what
I don't like.
And I've seen 100 of
people's holiday films
where you feel almost like you wanna be
violently seasick or whatever because they're whizzing around.
And I knew I had to slow everything
(39:03):
down for panning and,
you know. Yeah.
So that's what I did. I I it
started off small,
just doing bits here and there.
Yeah. And then
Trinity House helped with,
using me on my month off from the
Holyhead control center
to be used
(39:24):
and abused almost
as,
filling in for people out at sea.
And I'd say I haven't been on this
light or so this light. I see you've
got enough in there and then they'd wangle
it. So I would go there instead of,
you know,
and
so I used
lots of me leave where I should have
been home with the wife and kids.
Mhmm. But luckily, you know, the I I
(39:47):
do like a fortnight here and a fortnight
there. Yeah. But,
occasionally, I'd do a month away,
a 4 month.
You know, it was just
as I said, it snowballed.
And, when I got started, I thought, well,
we're not all automated yet. We're not all
made redundant.
So perhaps I've got a bit time to
(40:07):
do this and a bit of time to
do that.
And then I thought, oh, there's keepers and
old keepers that perhaps I can interview people.
So I started doing that as well. But,
and then I,
I
got,
I I wrote off
in those days, there was no real Internet
as such,
(40:27):
so I used to write everywhere or use
the phone at the depot
and, you know, directory of inquiries. Can you
tell me?
Yeah.
I'd got to,
Gibraltar.
I asked if I could go there,
you know, just and they they okayed that
to go and stay there
(40:47):
just as a passenger as it were or
a tourist.
And I talked to an airline
that had,
a daily charter there that,
to
to give me a ticket, return ticket, which
they did
happily.
Because in those days, lots of these,
CEOs of companies
(41:07):
were avid sailors. So they're quite happy to,
help as
a lighthouse keeper.
And they just had the hardest one I
got to was,
the Falklands.
Yep.
Just joints were up for a moment. Just
for listeners who might not know,
Gibraltar
is a is a British territory. Correct? And
(41:28):
also Falkland Islands. So those are the the
forest flung lighthouse locations under trading house. Is
that right? And
the Gibraltar
one, used to send a principal keeper out
there.
When I went there, the the all the
keepers there were
all from Britain.
But,
(41:50):
I don't know how it
the the Falklands one of Yeah, the Falkland
one was the one where they had the
principal keeper
originally
from Britain
and then the 2 other keepers were islanders
from the Falklands.
But eventually it went to just
islanders,
but they were a bit like a forgotten
(42:10):
race over there.
Because
we had uniforms
and badges and insignia,
and they had nothing. They had to wear
whatever they could get ahold of. I just
wanna mention that, people can hear a little
conversation in the background. There's some some noises.
You have some grand grandchildren
(42:30):
at your house today. Right? Yeah.
Yeah.
It makes it sound,
it's nice. I like I like hearing.
I think that, hopefully, they're on their way
home, but their own home. But What what
format was all that video
shot on?
Was it
It was
on video 8. So 8 millimeter.
(42:52):
And,
occasionally, when I could afford it, high 8.
Alright. I remember those now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I was a media archivist at a
public TV station for a while. We dealt
with all different kinds of formats.
Yeah. They both I've forgotten about the cassettes.
Right? Small cassettes. Cassettes. Yeah. I had totally
forgotten about those formats. So that's interesting. Because
(43:12):
when you look at the videos in your
YouTube channel, they have
a a filmic look to them. They, you
know, I I was look trying to figure
out, is this film? Is this video?
So that, you know, the
Yeah. It's not like high definition we have
today, but still the that has a nice
they have a nice nice look to them.
So I yeah. Some of it,
(43:33):
like, originally, like that first camera
when I went on
the Hanwha and places like that, you have
to see.
Because the
the the, lenses weren't very good. You had,
trying to fit everything in in a lighthouse.
It was awful. So you ended up having
to buy these screw on add ons.
(43:56):
And they ended up looking like you were
you're viewing everything through the bottom of a
beer barrel, you know, beer glasses. I mean,
it wasn't wasn't very
real.
Yeah. Yeah. You need a wide angle lens
to record inside a lighthouse, but too wide
angle gives you that fisheye look. Right? Which
isn't good. Yeah.
Yeah. If only we had the GoPros and
(44:16):
stuff like that back then.
Yeah. Things have things have changed a little
bit. You can shoot
on a average,
cell phone, you can shoot better videos than
what we're doing with them. Yeah.
This is what I get occasionally
on the YouTube channel.
Mhmm. You get some spark that well, you
get like
(44:38):
weeks weeks of being praised and you think,
oh, grief.
I'm in for a fall. I can feel
it. And then you get somebody in a
writing and gives you a good kicking.
And it's normally about,
it's either about the noise
or the- of the engine
or the quality of the,
video and stuff like that.
(44:59):
And you you feel, do I want to
go into an explanation of, you know, we're
talking nearly 30 years ago, mate, when
Yeah.
I did
start to say that once, and in the
end, I thought, no. I'll only get into,
like,
arguments over the air. So I was gonna
say, you know,
if anybody
(45:19):
now gets their pride and joy, their latest
iPhone,
sticks it in a drawer
for 30 years, and then brings it out.
And then People laugh at it. Yeah. Yeah.
Everybody. Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah. And the thing with the engine noise,
I get that,
oh, a lot of them say, oh, I
(45:40):
couldn't do your job. It was it's the
engines that drive me mad. And I thought,
yeah, the engine is always there, the engine
noise.
But the camera's
microphone
boosts it a bit. Mhmm. But
also there's the thing is
when you commute to work, you got the
noise of the car, you got the noise
(46:01):
of every other car. In work, you got
the noise of whatever work you're working at.
If you go by train, you got that.
If you go by plane on holiday, you
got the noise of that. There's nowhere in
this world, probably, where you can go without
being anywhere there near the noise of people.
You know. And so you go on a
lighthouse and you just get one engine in
(46:21):
the background.
I think that's quite quite a bonus.
Again, Peter's YouTube channel
is at youtube.com/at
Peter Hollil.
Again, youtube.com/followedbythe@symbolpeter
halil, h a l I l. Or you
(46:41):
can just get on to YouTube and do
a search for Peter Hollil,
Again, h a l I l. I wanna
recommend also that everyone check out the website
of the Association of Lighthouse Keepers or ALK.
The ALK provides a forum for everyone interested
in lighthouses, light ships, and maritime aids to
navigation.
Despite its name, being a lighthouse keeper is
(47:03):
not a requirement for joining the association.
The website for the ALK
is alk.org.uk.
Next, we're going to have a short be
a lighthouse segment. Our guest is Candace Semione,
who is a police officer in Kennebunk,
a beautiful community in Southern Maine.
(47:23):
I saw some articles this past holiday season
about a community program Candace runs for the
police department
called the Golden Ornament Project.
As you'll hear, it benefits local senior citizens
in the holiday season.
Candace is also known as the sugar angel
for reasons you'll hear in the interview.
Let's listen to my conversation with Candace Cimioni
(47:45):
now.
I'm speaking today with Candace
Cimioni
from the Kennebunk Maine Police Department. Thanks so
much for speaking with me today, Candace. Thank
you for having me. Your title with the,
Kennebunk Police Department is
elder crimes slash community
(48:05):
liaison
slash court officer. Do I have that correct?
Yeah. I'm a a police officer, and I
have different assignments. And so those happen to
be the 3 assignments that is
on my title.
Yeah. So what sort of things do you
do as community liaison?
So I, for the department, I take care
of all of the community events. I focus
on community policing
(48:27):
and, have the opportunity to be out and
about in the community a little bit more
now,
versus being in a cruiser. So let's kinda
cut to the chase here. And one of
the main things I wanna talk with you
about is the Golden Ornament Project. What is
the Golden Ornament Project?
Oh, it's a project that I started a
few years back. So another hat that I
(48:47):
wear is I'm the president of the York
County Elder Abuse Task Force. And so as
you can imagine, my passion in law enforcement
is protecting our older population from crime.
And,
because of that, I often
speak to our older population and distress and
some bad circumstances. And it's it kinda wrenches
on your heart.
(49:08):
And so I feel like the Golden Ordament
Project for me is,
a way for me to,
I guess, celebrate our older population, show them
respect,
embrace their what they've given to us in
our lives and our communities.
And
I give I give the community a chance,
(49:29):
to be part of that with me. So
what I do is I'm sure a lot
of you know about the given trees or
other toys for tots programs.
It's
a way
for our younger generation to be
kind of celebrated during the holidays, to give
them some cheer and and hope. And
I always feel like our older population deserves
(49:51):
that as well.
Santa is alive
and well for everybody.
And what that means is is that's holiday
spirit and joy. And
I decided that, hey, let's give this a
let's give this a whirl. Let's find people,
older people in our community who live alone,
who may have had a hard year, who
lost maybe their husband or their wife.
(50:13):
And let's give the let's let's kind of
wrap our arms around them, and this would
be a great way to do so. So
I opened up nominations
for other community members,
other businesses,
the food pantries,
town halls, etcetera, to nominate a couple of
people that could use use that love, I
guess.
And as a result, the first year I
did it, which has been, I think, for
(50:34):
about 4 years ago, we had 18 recipients,
which is
amazing.
This year, we had over 72
recipients,
for the Golden Ordament Project. And I feel
selfish because I get to hear the stories
and the reason why they're nominated.
The program is, anonymous,
so we don't share names with anybody.
(50:55):
I'm basically me and a couple of my
volunteers are the ones who know the names.
And,
we put little wishes, their wishes,
their age and their wishes inside little clear
bulbs, Christmas bulbs. And people come in from
the community and pick one of their bulbs
that they want, and
they fulfill the wish. And we we
(51:16):
wrap them up, and one of our officers
or our volunteers go and and deliver it
to them and hopes that they feel like
they're being celebrated and that the community cares
about them. Yeah. Well, you know, when I
read about this, I thought it's fantastic.
And, I'm wondering what kind of reactions have
you gotten from both
the the community
(51:37):
at large and the the people who are
the recipients of this these good deeds.
Yeah. So
I I feel as though the people who
come in and select a wish, fill them,
get just as much joy
as the recipients
themselves.
And it's a very meaningful program. And what
I mean by that is I never really
(51:57):
understood the impact that it that it really
made to a lot of people
until last year. When I did this last
year, I had 3 adult people
in the in our police lobby who said
they wanted to talk to the coordinator of
the program.
So I came out into the lobby. There
was a gentleman and 2 women, And they
kinda we kinda stood in silence for a
couple seconds. It was kind of awkward, and
(52:18):
then they explained their story.
And their story was this. They had said
to me they they all held up one
bulb. They all each selected a bulb, and
they said, we just want you to know
how much this project means to us. And
I said, okay. Thank you. Thank you for
being part of this. This is what makes
it happen. It's not me. It's the community
comes and fulfills them.
And they said, no, we have all lost
(52:40):
our last parent this year.
And one of the things we've always done
together around this time is we would go
have lunch together and we go shopping for
our parents. And we all were really upset
about the fact that we weren't gonna be
able to do that again this year until
this project happened. And so the gentleman holds
up a Bob. He's like, look. It's 84
year old man. That's how old my father
is or was.
(53:02):
And I don't know. It just that was
that was like a moment where I was
like, wow. That
that was pretty powerful. You know, a small
idea has turned into something that's like a
tradition for a lot of people now.
And I don't know. I hope a lot
of other communities embrace it and take it
on because it's it's something really special. You
know, it's not on financial need. It's not
on any kind of need except for a
(53:23):
community member selected someone who may need a
little lift for the for the, holiday season
or they live alone, etcetera.
So it's special. It's a it's a special
program.
Can you give a specific example of why
one of these witches and,
you know, how it was, filled?
Yeah. No. This is this is kinda great.
I'm glad you asked that.
So,
(53:43):
prior to working at the Kennywood Police Department,
I did work at another agency, a wonderful
agency, and that's when I actually did the
giving trade for children and families.
And I noticed a lot of the the
children's wishes were, like, fun wishes, but kinda
big.
You know, kids don't know. They wanted a
new, electronic system or something something like that.
These wishes
(54:04):
are gloves
or some per one one woman likes a
special hand cream,
and she wants some more of her hand
cream.
We have one one request this year. They
wanted,
Kenny book trash bags here in Kenny book.
You have to pay for your trash bags.
That's all they wanted.
I think the most expensive I don't even
know. I don't even think I have the
(54:26):
most expensive gift that was asked for or
needed.
We just
it's just humble. They're humble gifts, and I
think it's more
about,
the gesture than really about what what the
gifts truly
are. Yeah. Oh, I completely understand what you're
saying.
I I think it's just great, and I
really hope it catches on as as you
(54:46):
said. But
before we sign off, I just I didn't
tell you I was gonna ask about something
else here. But I I was looking for
information, and I just happened to stumble on
some other very interesting information.
I read that you create custom cakes
and that you're known as the sugar angel
because you, donate many of those cakes.
Can you tell me how that got started?
(55:08):
Yeah. That's so funny too. Oh gosh. Okay.
Yeah. Well, my mom has always been a
culinary chef. She's always been amazing in the
kitchen, and I kinda took that for granted.
I didn't realize I had a little bit
of that skill,
until I was working
actually on the road one day, and it
was it was a little boy's birthday who
had a a bad day. And so I
had asked my chief, can I make a
(55:28):
cake for him and bring it in my
uniform?
I wasn't really sure if he liked police
officers. I actually knew he didn't really like
police officers. So, like, this would be a
really great great moment.
Yeah. And so I made the cake. It
came out, like, really nice, and I I
dropped it off to him. And, you know,
people call law enforcement not because they're having
a great day or they, you know, they're
(55:49):
happy. It's generally they call us because they're
they're in some bad situations. And so I
don't always get those opportunities to be greeted
with smiles or do something like this. And
so I did it, and it made me
feel amazing. So
I started making more and more cakes for
people just free because I'm I'm not a
professional. I just do it for for fun
for friends and family. And,
one of the offices who I worked with
(56:09):
was like, you know, you you kinda you
you got a skill here and you really
should embrace it. And I'm like, no, I
I know I'm not a professional.
And
the low and behold, I was entered into
a,
a contest,
buddy the cake boss. And if you know
who that is, buddy Velasco. He's like a
big he's on the food network. Anyway,
they entered some
(56:30):
of my cakes and I won. I won
this contest. So I got to go down
and meet him in Staten Island, New York.
And and then I got contacted from an
agency called Ice and Smiles that makes custom
cakes for chronically and terminally ill kiddos, and
I obviously couldn't say no. And so I've
made at least 3 dozen of those, for
children and made the New Hampshire over the
last, I'd say. I think it's about 10
(56:51):
years I've been doing it now. 15 maybe
might actually
Yeah. Is flying. So that's just it. That
was my little, I guess, side tidbit that
I wasn't
thinking I was gonna be asked about, but
I guess
Paul, when I saw that, I knew I
had to talk to you about that too.
That's that's great. I I I really love
it.
I in one of the interviews or one
(57:12):
of the recent articles,
about your golden ornaments, that said that you
are trying to humanize the badge, and it
sounds like you're the
worst place.
It's something I've always I've got and that's,
you know, part of my reason why I
I like to be the community, liaison portion
of law enforcement.
Officers and all the ones I've been in
contact with are really a special group of
(57:34):
people.
You know, putting themselves on the line for
things that are are scary
and not we're not always accepted, but we
still trudge forward. And it's something special. And
so for me, I think
a lot of the community members are people
who may have a bad idea about what
law enforcement is have had bad experiences because
they don't look at us as humans. They
look at us. That you guys
(57:55):
the person who decided. So I
And I think this world, we're always looking
for reasons why we're so different and that
(58:17):
things that divide us and focus on that
versus
the things that really connect us and make
us a great community or a great state
or a great world. So that's why it's
important for me to try however I can
to humanize our badge.
Right. So I have one final question for
you for bonus points. Okay?
You live on the Southern Maine Coast. Beautiful
(58:38):
place. And I don't need to tell you
that there are lighthouses. There's a lot of
lighthouses in the Maine Coast. There's some beautiful
ones near you.
The Noble light down in New York isn't
far from where you are and so forth.
And up in the Portland area, there's several.
So, anyway, I'm wondering if you have any
thoughts about the positive symbolism of lighthouses, but
also
any thoughts about the idea, what it means
(59:00):
to be a lighthouse in the world. You
know, when I think about a lighthouse, even
as a little child, I always remember the
light. I remember the light
shining.
And I had always said, you know, the
lighthouses
mean
a lot of things. But when it's stormy
and it's cloudy, you know, you always have
to look for the light. And that's where
the lighthouses are. You know, the
(59:22):
waves crashing up against them and all the
scary stuff and scary storms, they're still there
standing and and flashing their lights. So I
always see it as a symbol
of, maybe like a leader. They're a leader
in our coast. They're powerful,
and
it kinda brings your home too. So, you
know, when you're out in the sea and
you don't know where you're going, you look
for the light, and that will bring you
(59:43):
back home. And so lighthouses in the state
of Maine is is a is a big
symbol. Go to any of the little trinket
shops, and you see my house is everywhere.
And so for what when you when you
talk about a lighthouse, it reminds me of
Maine, it reminds me of our coast, and
it reminds me of home. You think of
a a lighthouse out in the ocean, and,
obviously, every lighthouse serves an important purpose,
but they don't work alone. It's a network
(01:00:05):
of lighthouses
and aids to navigation and the buoys and
all that. It's a sort of a community
in a way of of, these aids to
navigation, including the lighthouses. It's the same thing
with people. 1 person can't save the world,
but,
people,
if you have
1,000, millions of people around the world being
lighthouses for other people, then it they've become
(01:00:26):
sort of, similar to
the the the aids to navigation network, if
that makes sense. So it takes takes a
lot of lighthouses to make things
work work, well in this world. Candace Cimioni,
thanks so much for talking with me today.
Thank you
so much for everything you do. Obviously, you're
doing a great work in the community and
are also doing you're a great asset for
(01:00:48):
the police force there in Kennebunk. So it's
a real pleasure speaking with you,
and, just thank you so much for for
being a lighthouse. So thank you so much,
for this opportunity.
Take care, and happy New Year.
Thanks again to Candace and the Kennebunk Police
(01:01:10):
Department for being a lighthouse in the community.
I read on Instagram that Candace said, quote,
I believe we are connected to each other
for a reason. It takes a village, unquote.
I couldn't agree more. It takes a village,
or you could say it takes many lighthouses
in the world. Be sure to listen in
2 weeks to the second part of my
conversation with Peter
(01:01:31):
Hollow. Until then, to all our regular listeners
and our new ones, thanks so much for
listening and
keep a good light.
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