Blinking lights on the aeroplane, on the flank of a motor car. Blinking lights stitch the night sky - guiding us home, or simply marking where the cursed cursor waits, pulsing, impatient. The telephone rings, but it’s the quiet in between that I really hear.
There is no crawling away from blinks and blanks. They insist upon being seen. Most exist to warn, to beckon, to save us from ourselves. Like the loop of a catchy track, or the clustered chatter that tips me into a stutter, the snap and return of light annotates the world, a rhythm laid down to stop our stumble.
Is it any wonder, then, that lighthouses speak in their own kind of Morse? A language learnt by the old sea dog, flashes standing in for words where words won’t reach. A single, steady glow isn’t enough. Make it blink. Make it count.
I drift through the sea mist of Southwold, suspended between the lure of the shore and the gravitational pull of the coffee shop. But it is the looming white tower that claims me. It always was.
A lighthouse folded into a townscape is a rare thing, rarer still with cottages still clinging to its base - ghosts of the shifts once required to keep mirrors polished and light lit. One hundred and thirteen steps wind upward. From the top, the rooftops of Southwold scatter below me like a wonky wedding photograph, the whole scene thrown slightly off by one tall, unavoidable uncle.
Once, the light burned by candle. These days, its luminance is less easily bullied by a freak gale. When this tower was built, oil had replaced wax, though trouble followed anyway - the first incarnation catching fire a mere six days into service. Years later came petroleum burners, another careful compromise. Electricity arrived only in 1938, a date that still feels oddly late, as though the world had been hesitating.
Now it sends blinking white beams across land and sea. Every ten seconds, Southwold speaks - a flash that trawlers and tugs can catch from twenty-eight miles out. Far enough to avoid the rocks. Far enough not to stumble. It’s worth remembering it was not always so generous. Before high-tech light, the reach was halved; before oil, halved again. Once, safety flickered on a wick.
There is no equal to these structures. Gallant and graceful in the same breath, they stand ready, patient, repeating themselves into history. They have guarded jagged edges for thousands of years. And besides, didn’t one of Southwold’s cousins make the list of ancient wonders? A pedigree written in light.
The Lighthouse And Sole Bay Inn. Southwold.