I come from a long line of lighthouse keepers. It started one hundred years ago when my great-granddad agreed to take the position over from a close friend, who worked at a lighthouse on the southern coast of Australia despite his chronic fear of the ocean (known as thalassophobia, for your information). My great-granddad was the keeper there for three decades before retiring and passing the baton down to my granddad.
Now, my father was the second-born child of his parents, so he wasn’t going to inherit the family business. Instead, he decided to become a local painting contractor around Melbourne. After about twenty years of that, however, he got tired of his job and decided to follow the family tradition. His older brother had inherited the family lighthouse, though, so my dad had to get a job at another one. I basically grew up in that little lighthouse, down on the Mornington Peninsula.
Unfortunately, there was one thing I didn’t like about that lighthouse, and that was its white and red stripes, which made it look like a Christmas candy cane. In my opinion, it looks really tacky. I used to beg my dad to paint it, to change it to literally anything else. I once even stole my dad’s old painting supplies, trying to paint the walls of the lighthouse blue. I got about one per cent of the way there before he caught me. It seemed the colour of that lighthouse would never change.
But oh, how things are different now. Dad has just announced to the family that he will be retiring, handing his job down to me. Guess what the first thing I’m going to do is? That’s right, I’ll be hiring a residential painter in the Melbourne area to paint this lighthouse blue. There’s nothing my old man can do about it. Although, maybe it will need to be a commercial painter, since technically a lighthouse isn’t a residency, even if I do sleep in it most nights.
No matter! Nothing will stop me from getting this lighthouse painted. No longer will it look like a Christmas lolly, standing out to the whole community.