Recently, I was telling my family an interesting bit of research I’d found that day, about wartime defences on the Suffolk coast, such as the Sound Mirrors of Dungeness. These are giant concrete structures there from the 1930s, designed to reflect engine motor noises from out at sea into specially tuned microphones. The intention was to hear enemy planes before they arrived to prepare.
Those defences were never used during wartime — radar was invented soon after as a much more accurate system — but the walls are still there after over 90 years.
Anyway, as I was telling my family about this over dinner, the television was on at the same time with Jim Moir in the BBC’s Walking With… series, making his way around the Kentish coast. We weren’t really paying attention to it, but I could see the screen out of the corner of my eye.
As I was telling them about these defences, what should come onto the screen but the very stone walls and parabolic shapes of the Sound Mirrors that I was describing! I was pretty surprised, as was the rest of my family.