Old George lives at the lighthouse. He is long past retirement age, but kept the light going, unpaid, because it needs doing, and he likes living in the lighthouse.
He loves the air at the top. At a hundred and three feet high, the tower's elevation means that the air is palpably thinner, and George, having spent a good deal of his life at the lamp, says he finds it easier to breathe up there.
There is little call nowadays for the lighthouse, and it has become simply daymark, in function, with the decline of the shipping industry, but George still keeps up the tradition, just in case.
He enjoys watching the boats. In his youth it was cargo vessels, but now it’s mostly just leisure boats, and the occasional fishing expedition. Watching from the top of the tower, inhaling a sweet mixture of pipe tobacco and lamp oil, Old George can see the whole town, and feels almost as though he is their protector, ever vigilant, should anyone need help.
He sees Horace the Grocer’s rowboat, adrift on the river, and chuckles to himself, as he imagines the scolding Horace will be getting now for having sailed home drunk from the pub again. It’s quicker, and shorter, to walk home, but greengrocery belies Horace’s true passion, and after a few drams of navy rum, he is wont to feel the water under him.
“It’s not a bad old life really”, George mused
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