One day Ollie was looking out through the binoculars and I looked in at him from the wrong end, and I saw there reflected the exact difference between us. Ollie, a much younger man, wants to see ahead. Myself, now requiring an annual medical certificate to remain in the Service five more years, I tend to a more retrospective view. It happens naturally to everybody, I suppose.

Since re-joining the Service in 1993, after some years in Siberia, I have been looking over my shoulder. That first Attendant's routine maintenance visit with Ollie was unnerving; the silence and the absence of any human presence on the rock most striking. We opened up and went inside.

The place, down to familiar scratch marks on the kitchen table, was almost unchanged. Ollie banged on the kettle and reeled off a string of tasks we had to do. I looked past him. Surely Nick Lawlor, Dominic Gaughan, Ned Keenan, any one of dozens of old hands, would now appear. But we stirred our tea, Ollie rolled a smoke, and no one else put in an appearance. Along with Ollie's cigarette smoke a surreal Marie Celeste sense of abandonment hung in the air.

With great difficulty I shrugged it off and got to grips with the more pressing tasks like changing engine oil, filters, sweeping, cleaning, etc. Some of this we did in the familiar noise and heat of the engine room. The Lister diesels looked like the old ones except fitted with large external lub oil tanks.

But maybe not. The workmens' quarters I swept down next. A lot of the ceiling lay on the floor. The wall paint erupted with damp. None of the old hands here. Initials, dates, and graffiti covered the inside of the press doors.

But that was all. The cutlery drawer contained rusty knives that would never again be used on the dusty plates. I quietly swept down the steps leaving the workmens' quarters. Deja vous to you too, lads. 'Don't forget the jacks' Ollie shouted up. Ollie dumped diesel to the holding tanks, while my assignment was to spread oxalic acid on the landings. Luxuriant weed climbed the north landing steps and had begun colonising the concrete underfoot. A liberal dosing of an extra strong mixture would put paid to that. If and when the Granuaile called we would be ready for her. The Cot-hole now seemed disused. Parts of the pathway and south side were missing and the landing itself undermined (it is now railed off with a safety notice).

On the building job constructing the new top storey bedrooms in 1959 we swam here twice a day, nearly every day. Now it is occupied only by the seals who use it and the pathways as a sort of sauna.

The helipad, our life-line to the land, is now a priority for anti-weed and anti-algae treatment.

Ollie explains the Datac, the radio interface, the modem, the fire-systems, the Racon, the radiobeacon and, up top, the videograph fog detector and the emitter, the green spots, the lot. Automation is complete and almost foolproof. The systems work perfectly. In the lantern the great Fresnel lens rotates with two 1000 Watt bulbs at its centre, one angled 45° from the other. If the main bulb blows it closes a relay which energises the spare bulb to rotate through 45° until reaching the exact centre of the focal plane where it halts and strikes. The bulbs are extremely long lasting and the blown bulb will be duly replaced and the system re-set. Ollie watches over all this. He does a very good job. He looks beyond this technology to solar power and the implications-mainly financial-that this may hold for Attendants. I polish the old firing button on the lantern bulkhead. 'God be with the days', I say.
'What's that?', Ollie asks absently.
'The old explosive fog signal'.
'I wondered what that button was for' Ollie says. 'All that old stuff should be got rid of'.

He is right, of course. Looking out at the gleaming emergency light strapped to the balcony railing where the firing jibs had swung down, I remembered the long cold four-hour fog watches, firing every five minutes, with the birds scattering against the lantern glass and the misty fog dripping down your sleeves as you connected on the charge.

'We'll fail the main light' Ollie says, 'I'll cover the photo-cell and you check the emergency lights for synch'. When I joined the Service in 1961 nearly all lighthouses other than Tuskar were equipped with paraffin vapour burners for their main light. The story then on the coast was that when these burners were first introduced circa 1900, the wick burner generation of Keepers were afraid of them. It took two Keepers to light a paraffin vapour burner. Maybe that's true. If so, what effect would the present rate of change have had on them, up to and including abandoning the rock?

'You're a great bit of stuff' Ollie said when the separate emergency lights flashed in unison. We left the lantern for other work. I followed down polishing the brass handrail. A lovely gently curving piece of metalwork. Cleaning it came naturally but stepping back in time was a little more difficult. Ollie foresees the day when someone will paint it-black. We worked on until late evening when Ollie announced again that I was 'one great bit of stuff' but that I had done enough and so had he. While cooking up a good meal we looked to the weather chart and saw it predicted good weather for the morning. Good flying weather.

I had brought out a popular pick-me-up. We poured out a glass or two and it worked perfect. Ollie had an alarm clock so he said he would give a shout in the morning. Before retiring I had a last look at the night scene and noticed some seals in the dark corners close up to the lighthouse where they had not ventured before when the station was manned, except in storms.

Next morning we set the automatic systems, locked up, and walked out to the helipad. Seals rested on the lower paths and swam in the Cot-hole. A south wind brought up the strong smell of their dung scattered around. Minutes after landing, doors secure, strapped into our seats, the helicopter lifted and climbed away from the Tuskar.

Attendants of Tuskar Lighthouse

Oliver Hickey, Attendant, (left) and Raymond Wickham, Assistant Attendant, on board ilv Granuaile on their way to Tuskar Lighthouse on 24 June 2001 for the Commissioners' inspection of the station. (photo: Elizabeth Shanks)

OLIVER HICKEY is the Attendant of Tuskar Lighthouse, and Raymond Wickham is Assistant Attendant.

Oliver (Ollie) was deep-sea for a few years before joining Irish Lights, and then worked as a temporary Lightshipman for two years before his appointment in 1974 as a Supernumerary Assistant Keeper. He served as a relieving Keeper at various stations for nearly two years, and was then promoted to Assistant Keeper serving at St John's Point Down, Wicklow Head, Kish, Tuskar, and briefly at Rathlin East. Ollie and John Busher were the last Keepers to leave Tuskar when the station became unwatched. Ollie remained as Assistant Keeper of Tuskar for the first year of automatic operation. He took early retirement on 31 March 1994 and was appointed Attendant of Tuskar Lighthouse from the following day.

Ray Wickham worked as a cabinet maker and was at sea for some time prior to joining Irish Lights; he also assisted on the construction of the second story of the Workmens' Quarters building at Tuskar in the late 1950s. He became a Lightkeeper in 1961. After serving as a relieving Keeper he was stationed at Galley Head, Slyne Head, Tuskar, Hook Point, Rockabill, Ballycotton, Mizen Head, Kish, Baily Mew Island, and Bull Rock.

He took early retirement in 1988 and became Assistant Attendant of Tuskar Rock Lighthouse from June 1993.

Ray has many accomplishments, not least of which is the ability to put a model ship in a bottle. His special trade mark is to include a tiny model lighthouse in the neck of the bottle.