"Flat Tyler" at St Mary's Lighthouse, Whitley Bay

Have you heard the 1964 children’s story “Flat Stanley”? Stanley gets squashed flat when a big board falls on him. He survives, flattened – with the advantage is that he can be mailed in an envelope to visit friends!

Well, a school class in West Virginia is doing a project along these lines. The children have made cardboard “copies” of themselves and have mailed them on various travels. A lad called Tyler, known to our son’s American fiancée, has sent “Flat Tyler” to visit us in Newcastle, England, for a holiday. We have been taking photos of “him” in different places around the UK - which we’ll be sending back to the “real” Tyler.

Today we visited the lighthouse on St Mary’s Island at Whitley Bay, about 7 miles from our home and took a photo of Flat Tyler there. The island is only really an island at high tide; we visited at low tide so we could walk across the causeway which you can see in the photo. We held Tyler in such a position as to make it seem that he was standing on the causeway (sort of); he is NOT just Photoshopped on!