Things got a bit tight in the early Fifties - newly married, couple of kiddies - talk about recession… I had to have a job which was long lasting and I saw the advert for a lighthouse keeper. After we’d removed ourselves from windy Pendeen Watch the mile or so to the snug bungalow he shares with his wife Joan, he told me something of his long career at Trinity House. They are what Handel calls “proper” lighthouses as opposed to the “convalescent homes” attached to large lumps of land. This not exactly healthy procedure was only necessary out on the big sea-borne lighthouses such as the Bishop Rock west of Scilly and the Longships, off Land’s End. “You put it in a shammy leather, hold it over a container, then squeeze the leather hard as you can - and the mercury will go through the pores of the leather, but the dirt will stay behind.”
So then you have to go up there with a dustpan and brush cleaning up the mercury - you put it in a jar and then clean it. Lighthouse keepers were no strangers to mercury, as Handel explained: “The waves do run up the side of the lighthouse and the mercury trough will be vibrated so much that the mercury will splash out. But it’s not that – for a long time now I’ve been wondering if it’s the result of mercury poisoning.” “At first they thought I’d got Lyme’s Disease because. “It’s the nerve-endings in my legs,” he told me. He joked and laughed constantly regardless of the fact that he sometimes struggles to walk when I met him. The first thing to say about Handel was that he had a sense of humour.
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