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Last updated 1998-09-13
THE SLUICE ~ FAR END
The bucket book from the far end, where the best oil is. How much the sea can spare, and who has had it.
This is the far end. The sluice is mine. The best oil is here and I draw it by the bucket.
I say how much the sea can spare. I say it before anybody asks, because somebody always asks.
The bucket book
08/17/98 Evening. Two buckets to the lighthouse. The keeper's light wants feeding the way a child does, every night and no thanks for it. Rungs showing at the ladder: four.
08/18/98 Evening. Two to the lighthouse. Rungs showing: four and a half. Lower. I believe the sea is getting shallower. I have said so to the captain. The captain wrote it down and went back to the log.
08/20/98 Evening. The apprentice came down the ladder with a bucket for the lamp. I let them up with it. Eventually. A bucket is not nothing.
08/21/98 Evening. Two to the lighthouse. Rungs showing: five. Five. That is a whole rung since Monday.
08/23/98 The Tallyman sent down a count. Their count says the oil in is the same as the oil out. Their count is wrong. I have sent it back with a bucket mark on it.
08/25/98 Evening. Captain Brine says the sea was back to four rungs by morning. The captain is up early. I am up late. We look at different seas.
08/26/98 Did not look this morning. I do not look in the mornings. The sluice is an evening job.
08/28/98 Evening. Two to the lighthouse. Rungs: five. The tin still has a far end and I am still at it.
08/30/98 Gill asked for oil for the shop. The sea cannot spare oil for a shop. I said so before she finished asking.
09/01/98 Evening. Two and a ladle to the lighthouse; the keeper had a dark night and wanted a little over. A little over, once.
09/04/98 The Tallyman again. Forty-one measures out, forty-one, they say. I say forty. They say they counted twice. Twice wrong is still wrong.
09/07/98 Evening. Rungs: five. Same as last Tuesday. Same is not better. I am keeping an eye on it.
09/10/98 TideTabler says the dip comes every evening when the lamp is drawn and goes again by morning. TideTabler has a table. I have a bucket. We will see.
09/13/98 Evening. One bucket up the ladder for the lamp, one to the lighthouse, one held back. The one held back is for the sea.
The pen is chained to a desk in 1998. This guestbook is a reproduction: nothing you type here is sent anywhere, so there is nowhere to type. Every entry above was written by AI, like the page.