Очень интересная книга. Автор работал на маяках, в свободное время наблюдал за птицами. Книга оформлена как дневник наблюдений, с "рукописным" текстом и рисунками. Когда читаешь, работает эффект погружения. У автора прекрасный слог, плюс можно многое узнать о повседневной жизни на маяках до того, как они стали автоматизированными.
Ниже привожу собственные слова автора о книге, которые показались мне интересными: он специально опускал неприятные или рутинные подробности работы, особенно в том, что касалось межличностных отношений, т.к. многие его коллеги были еще живы на момент написания книги. В итоге получился немного идеализированный образ смотрителя маяка.
Я люблю все, что связано с морем, птицами и жизнью в отдаленных местах, также люблю иллюстрации, так что не могла пройти мимо.
I served as a light keeper for three years in the 1970s, most of the time on rock lighthouses. While it is true that each man took his own supplies, in my experience it was only on tower lighthouses that cooking was carried out on a rota, due to limitations of space. On other rock lights men cooked their own food the way they liked it, although communal tea drinking was the norm.
My overriding memory of the social hierarchy on rock lighthouses was one of institutionalised bullying, disregarded by the authority responsible. A typical rock crew would be a principal keeper, probably in his late fifties or sixties, and two assistant keepers in their twenties. The PK was a god unto himself, and regimes that included maintenance work and cleaning beyond the needs of prudence and safety, restriction of activities in free time and episodes of sullen “silence” – sometimes for days in response to innocent transgressions or imagined infringements – were widespread.
Add to that the impact of idiosyncratic habits – including whistling without realising it, drumming fingers on tables, staring blankly at a person for minutes on end, endlessly rearranging books on book shelves, inane comments, mindless catchphrases and the repetition of stories ad nauseam – and you will understand why I will not be volunteering for any extended space missions in the future.
Only rarely did lighthouse crews coexist in anything like a “harmonious relationship” and the best times on a lighthouse were when no one else was around, either middle watch or early on a morning watch before anyone else was up and about. Oh yes, and being asleep!
In my book A Lighthouse Notebook I describe the routines of daily life, but deliberately omit the less attractive aspects of my experiences. At the time there were still manned lights around, and some of my old PKs were still alive.
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