00:30Dear club members, my name is Dick and I live at Totland Bay in the Isle of Wight.
00:44I have drawn you a map of the island.
00:47At the west end are some rocks called the Needles, with a lighthouse on the end of the
00:51last one.
00:57The little house up there on the cliff is the coast guard station where my dad works,
01:02and this is the view from his window.
01:08At school, the last day of term was an exciting one.
01:12You see, I had only just time, after the end of school, to put everything away and hurry
01:16to meet my cousin Mary from London.
01:19She was coming over from England to spend a holiday with us.
01:24I had a bit of a rush, but I got to the quayside in time to see the ferry coming in.
01:39And there was Mary waving.
01:42I jumped down and was just in time to meet her as she came off a gangplank, and the holidays
01:48really began.
01:52Mum made us changing to old clothes at once.
01:55Then we went to the post office to buy Mary a shrimping net.
02:03The post office sells nets like mine for half a crown, and a cheaper kind for a shilling.
02:08Dad had given me half a crown to buy her a net, but as soon as she started looking round,
02:14she sought a jar of sweets.
02:15Of course, she wanted some, so she'd generally had to put up with a shilling net.
02:21After all, if she'd rather have a lot of sticky old sweets than a really good net like mine,
02:26that's her lookout.
02:31We were soon hard at work, but somehow we didn't have much luck.
02:35Anyway, we hadn't got as far as the best place for shrimping when something terrifically
02:40exciting happened.
02:41I looked up, and there was a fox watching us out of the grass on the cliff.
02:46As a matter of fact, it wasn't so exciting for me, but Mary lives in London and have never
02:51seen one.
02:52Before I could stop her, she was running towards the cliffs, but they're not real rock cliffs.
02:58They are mostly made of soft, sticky clay, called blue slipper.
03:03Mary ran straight for the softest, stickiest bit of all, and in she went.
03:12I thought I could pull her out of my shrimping net, but she was much too heavy and sticky.
03:17But in the end, she did get on the slippery stick.
03:20She pulled hard, slipped, and there we both were.
03:23It had all been great fun, but we did begin to wonder a bit what Mum was going to say when
03:51we got home.
03:54She did look a bit surprised because we were covered in mud, but she soon started laughing
03:58like anything, and we all joined in.
04:00Next morning at breakfast, I waited till Dad had gone off to the coast guard station, and Mum had followed to see he didn't forget to take his dinner.
04:07Then I began, surprised we planned for Mary.
04:10Mum knew all about it, but Mary couldn't think why I was taking all the sugar, and thought it was pretty mysterious.
04:14Well, of course it was meant to be.
04:15We'd planned to go to Carishbrook Castle, and when we arrived at the gate, Mary was still asking about the sugar.
04:21So I challenged her to a race up to the keep.
04:28That's the tower in the middle.
04:29That's the tower in the middle.
04:30That's the tower in the middle.
04:31That's the tower in the middle.
04:32That's the tower in the middle.
04:33That's the tower in the middle.
04:34That's the tower in the middle.
04:35It's the tower in the middle.
04:38We had to come to the gate.
04:39We had to go to Carishbrook Castle, and when we arrived at the gate, Mary was still asking about the sugar.
04:42So I challenged her to a race up to the keep.
04:45That's the tower in the middle.
04:46The tower in the middle.
04:47We were both out of breath when we reached the top of the castle and we were glad of
05:12a chance to stop and look over the wall.
05:14It's awfully high up there and you can see for simply miles over the island.
05:22Then we went into the well house.
05:24In here there is a dear little donkey who walks around inside a big wheel.
05:31As he turns the wheel it winds a bucket up out of the well.
05:35He doesn't do it all the time of course and there's most of the time in the field.
05:44But working in the well must be quite hard work.
05:51You see the well is a hundred and sixty feet deep and the bucket is quite big.
05:56After all that I thought it was time to show Mary what the sugar was for.
06:17She thought it was a splendid idea and so did the donkey.
06:21Anyway he ate every bit.
06:23That afternoon it was lovely and calm so mum said I could take the boat and teach Mary how to fish.
06:37I rode out a bit and then handed the tackle to Mary.
06:57We were looking for mackerel and so we used a spinner that you have to pull through the water by rowing as hard as you can.
07:15I was so busy rowing that I didn't see how far out we were until I found we were drifting fast with the tide away from home.
07:39I turned the boat round and started to row for home as hard as I could but the tide was too strong and carried us away.
07:46I didn't want Mary to get scared so I tried to keep her amused by talking about the bits of coast we passed.
08:06All the time I tried to work in towards the beach.
08:09I thought that by keeping as close to the cliffs as possible we might be able to get to the Needles lighthouse.
08:27Soon the current was carrying us right past the Needles rocks and it was jolly good to see the lighthouse standing there looking very friendly
08:34while the big white Needles suddenly looked a bit less frightening.
08:42As we came up with the lighthouse the keepers who had been washing threw us a line and pulled the boat alongside.
08:54The keepers invited us in. We went inside the lighthouse and up by very narrow winding stone stairs into the kitchen.
09:02All the rooms in the lighthouse are quite round. While Mir and I looked out of the window one of the keepers made some tea while another sent a signal by a big flashing lamp to tell Dad we were all right.
09:16As a matter of fact Dad spotted the signal himself from the window of the coast guard station.
09:30He signalled back that he would send a motorboat for us.
09:33While all this went on, Mir and I climbed right up to look at the large lantern at the top of the lighthouse.
09:47The big polished lenses help to make the light visible for miles out at sea, even in bad weather.
09:57It must be exciting to live in a lighthouse and be able to climb right to the lantern whenever you want.
10:01When the motorboat came to take us off, it took our little boat in tow.
10:08We were sorry to leave, but it had been an exciting day and a wonderful start for the holidays.
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