The Truth about Lighthouses

Last week I meet with students in both secondary and a primary school. The secondary was Methodist College, Belfast. This school is more commonly known as Methody. Hello to everyone there.


May on her boat.

The next day I visited Crumlin Integrated Primary. The students there had done some drawings of Ballydog. I was particularly taken with these impressions of May, throwing fish fingers from the Sunny Buoy to her friend below.


Ballydog's lighthouse.

Quite a few drawings featured the lighthouse and I asked one boy why he, and everyone else, had given the lighthouse red and white stripes. “Because that’s how it is on the cover of the book,” he replied without hesitation. He was right of course, I had forgotten the illustrator had painted the lighthouse on the cover of The Badness of Ballydog in that way. I had asked the question because in reality Irish lighthouses are simply painted white from top to bottom. They are never red and white.


Sticks of Rock, also known as Candy Cane, and a barber's Pole. Sadly, lighthouses don't get painted this way.


Apart from the lighthouse, I also really like the big smoke filling the top of this drawing.

The young artist behind one of these drawings took the stripes one step further. The red and white bands have been thrown to 45 degrees. I wonder was the image of a barber’s pole mingling in her/his mind. Or maybe the sticks of rock sold at the seaside. I have definitely never seen a lighthouse painted like that in reality … although I’d love to.

Make Mine a Monster

This is what I got for Christmas. It’s a wonderful monster kit. These kits are created by the knitting ninja Donna Wilson and it encourages, in fact requires, you to use your imagination. There is very little in the way of instruction or direction. Every kit is made up of a different selection of materials and threads. You use the bits and pieces to make your own original monster.


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This central piece is pre-made and comes with the kit. Turn it inside out and stuff it (stuffing supplied) via the single opening. I did not like the shiny pink side that mine came with, preferring the carpet-like darker side. But this did give me an idea. The pink side would be my beast’s sensitive underbelly. The creature would be a crawler. Or, better still, a swimmer.


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I gave it flippers at each corner. Then some nasty teeth. My kit came with several red pieces. A tongue! Let’s call it the Big-Tongued Platy-Beast, distant relation of the Australian platypus (the platypus is in fact a very small monster that has evolved a shy temperament in the last four million years. Not many people know that).


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Eyes, fins, eyebrows … Done! But hang on … I still have a few pieces of red material left.


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Now I’m done. The Three-Tongued Platy-Beast. On the box Donna Wilson suggests you take a digital photo of your monster, email it to her and she’ll put it on her website. I wonder if she'll like it.