A church has discovered a novel way of keeping in touch with parishioners amid the covid lockdown - by communicating with them in morse code.
With the Orchardhill Parish Church in Giffnock closed amid coronavirus restrictions, the congregation came up with an idea to remind people the closure was only temporary.
A church member built a six-foot high working model of a lighthouse which has been positioned near the church's front door. Another has used a tiny computer to control the sequence of the lighthouse's flashing lights which brighten up the surrounding area when it gets dark at night.
At first, the lighthouse mimicked the same pattern used at some of the real lighthouses functioning across Scotland.
However, it's now been programmed to use morse code and project a secret message, with parishioners challenged to work out the code.
Anyone can visit the lighthouse on Giffnock's Church Road, scan the QR code and enter their answer.
However, so far no-one has been able to work out the cryptic clues, much to disappointment of the outgoing minister, Rev Grant Barclay.
Grant, who has recently left Orchardhill Parish for a new position at Glasgow Presbytery, said: “Morse code used to be a great deal more common than it is now, which perhaps explains the difficulty of working out the message.
“However, it is proving to be a major talking point in the area.”
Morse code uses sequences of short and long blasts of light or sound, known as dots and dashes, with each sequence denoting a letter of the alphabet.
It was initially devised for maritime emergencies and the most famous usage is 'dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash, dot, dot, dot', a sequence commonly known as SOS, which was associated with the phrase “Save Our Souls” or "Save Our Ship.”
And Glasgow Live readers can help to crack the code by watching a video of the lighthouse in the video player above. Let us know in the comments if you manage to work it out!
