Brindle Rock at Low Water

Brindle Rock is a tidal island, which is a polite way of saying the tower is only reachable when the sea agrees. The causeway uncovers for about ninety minutes at the month's lowest tides, and the maintenance calendar is written around them, not around us.

We walked out at 4:40 in the morning to re-bed the door hinge. The load was tools, mortar, thermal coffee, and headlamps, and the rule is you watch the water the whole time. Cass Holloway has done this walk two hundred times and still checks the tide board twice.

Here is what the tide does to a schedule: a job budgeted for three hours becomes a job of ninety minutes, because the return walk cannot wait. You either finish or you pack up, and the sea does not care which. We packed up. The hinge got finished on the next low water, and that is normal.

It is good work anyway. There are worse offices than a granite tower at dawn with the gulls complaining overhead.