Recently I did a telephone interview with a reporter for the Sunday Times about Princess Anne visit to Eshaness a few years ago and the appeal of lighthouses. I have included what was printed from my part of the interview but if you would like to read it all you can go to http://www.timesonline.co.uk - Annie get your lighthouse/. As interviews goes this was one of the more accurate. It constantly amazes me when I read what was written after an interview. Many times I cannot even recognize my self in what is published. In this particular article I find most of the information accurate enough but with an entirely different interpretation of what I meant. The most distressing is the comment that my injury last summer and selling the lighthouse was the reason I was not obsessive about lighthouses. I love lighthouses and always will. But my life has never been ruled by lighthouses. I love Eshaness but probably I love the ocean and the views more than the fact it is a lighthouse. As I have written for another magazine recently living in a lighthouse is just living in a house with a light on top. The following is my part of the Sunday Times article.
SHARMA KRAUSKOPF, originally from Michigan, fell into pharology almost by accident. Sixteen years ago she and her husband Dean decided to retire to Scotland. They hadn’t been planning to live in a lighthouse. But after missing out on one in Skye, they were hooked. Seven years went by before they found a suitable property, at Eshaness in Shetland.When Princess Anne came to visit in 2002, Krauskopf was so anxious that she had contacted the British consulate in Chicago to ask about protocol. Those nerves were soon put at rest. “She wasn’t just down to earth, she was well informed,” says Krauskopf. “By the questions that she asked, you could see that going there wasn’t just a duty. She had a genuine interest in and knowledge of the subject. We just stood and talked, woman to woman, next to the Raeburn.”
There is a touch of the evangelist about Krauskopf, who has written three books about her time at Eshaness. At times she refers to lighthouses as if they were alive. “They have gone from being lovingly tended by their keepers to the cold reality of being operated through phone lines,” she has written.
“In many parts of the world, the lights have been shut off and the properties abandoned. In the state where I live, we once had 247 lighthouses on the Great Lakes, but now we have less than 100 in good condition. They have been allowed to decay and deteriorate.
“Tears come to my eyes when I think of something so historic and beautiful as Scotland’s Duncansby Head being allowed to die a slow and hideous death. At least I know the Northern Lighthouse Board will not allow that to happen.”
Despite all this, Krauskopf says she is not a lighthouse obsessive. Perhaps living at Eshaness for nine years — before a chronic back injury forced her to sell it in January — has cured her of that.
“There are very few negatives about living in a lighthouse but one of the things is tourists. We’ve always had a time when the tourists can’t come in but they’d come in anyway. You’d be making dinner and they’d be peering through the window.
“Personally, I don’t understand the kind of tourism where all you do is go and see as many lighthouses as possible. It’s a kind of spectator sport. One of the problems is that the people who like to look at them often aren’t interested in the lighthouses.”
When Britain’s lights were automated, many of the keeper’s cottages were sold off privately. It has been a mixed blessing. “Living in a lighthouse sounds great, but there has been a tendency for people to buy them and lose interest. Somebody from the Northern Lighthouse Board told me recently that the average turnover for a lighthouse is four years between owners. The biggest problem for all of us is maintenance,” says Krauskopf.
Happy Reading,
I love to hear from you so contact me by Email at sharma@sharmakrauskopf.com
You can find more articles in the archive under Island Miniatures/Lighthouse Letters.
I have three books which are directly related to this column. The Last Lighthouse tells how we bought our lighthouse, the day by day journal of a year at Eshaness entitled A Year in the Lighthouse and in Scottish Lighthouses our lighthouse is featured in the 31 lighthouses presented. You can find out more about these books and others I have written at my official author web site.
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