On a damp morning, Antony Siese stood in his front yard with two straightened coat hangers.

Each had a little L-shape at the end.

Lightly holding one in either hand, the 89-year-old walked forward. When he reached a certain point, the rods crossed.

“There is a water pipe below us,” he explained.

He backed off and came back to the same spot from a different angle. Again, the rods crossed.

Mr Siese was demonstrating the ancient art of water dowsing – witchcraft to some; pseudoscience to others.

“Why it works or how it works I have no idea,” he said cheerfully. “It also works on electrical lines.”

He first heard about water dowsing at a party on Prince Edward Island in Canada a few years ago.

“I had never seen it done before and was sceptical,” he said.

“It is not hard. Some people can do it and some people cannot.”

He put it to work for a friend who was considering drilling a well at his home in Portland, Maine.

“I said they will find water between 55 and 60ft. The well drillers came three months later and found water at 58ft.”

Water dowsing has been one of his interests since retiring from optometry in 2012.

Mr Siese grew up in Dinas Powys, a small village just outside Cardiff, Wales. His father lost his job on October 29, 1929, the day the US stock market plummeted.

“And that was the day my sister, Anne, was born. He was out of work for 18 months.”

His father eventually found a job on the Cardiff docks but hated every minute of his time there.

“His happiest day was the day he retired,” Mr Siese said.

He was six when the Second World War erupted and children from English cities were evacuated to the countryside in the belief they would be safer from bombing. There were suddenly a lot more children in Mr Siese’s neighbourhood.

“We would go to school for one month in the morning and then the next month in the afternoon, so the evacuees could go to school at the opposite time,” he said. “They had their own teachers.”

Cardiff, only five miles north east of Denis Powys, was heavily bombed in air raids because of its docks.

At the start of the war, students would be sent home on foot when the air raid siren sounded.

“One day we were all on our way home after an air raid siren went off when we saw a German plane flying overhead,” Mr Siese said. “Children being children, we stopped to gawk. The plane sent a pile of shots down the road.”

He and his friends dove into the bushes for safety.

“Luckily, no one was hit,” he said. “After that we had to get under our desks during an air raid.”

At home, they had a Morrison shelter, a sturdy metal box with chicken wire along the sides.

“It could fit six people,” Mr Siese said. “At night you got in it to sleep. If the house caved in while you slept it was sturdy enough to keep you safe until you could be rescued. During the day we used ours as a dining room table.”

His father was a keen gardener, so they never went hungry.

“My parents gave me two things in life: love and an education,” Mr Siese said.

A school counsellor suggested he become an optician because his maths and physics were good. He studied optometry in Cardiff.

“In those days it was a three-year course and you were trained in refraction, recognition of eye disease, use of drugs and how to make glasses and lenses,” he said. “You were given a slab of plastic and you had to cut out a frame. You also had glass lenses and you had machines where you ground a lens. You would grind it down with various forms of grit. Then you would polish it.”

After he graduated, he was conscripted into national service. Mr Siese did part of his time in a military optometry clinic in Westphalia, Germany. He was then hired by a clinic in the Welsh valleys.

“This area is beautiful when the sun is shining, but you could have wet weather for six weeks straight,” he said. “It could be very depressing. I saw this advertisement for a position in Bermuda and applied for it. I just wanted a chance to see the world.”

The flight from London took 14 hours, with multiple stops before he reached the island at 7am on February 4, 1961.

A couple of hours after arriving, he went into Hamilton to see his new workplace.

“An alarm went off on the top of City Hall,” he said. “Every day at noon they would test it.”

The alarm’s purpose was to alert volunteer firefighters that there was a blaze somewhere. To Mr Siese it sounded eerily similar to the wail of an air raid siren.

“It had been 17 years since the war by that point but I got goosebumps all up and down my arms when I heard it,” he said.

His old employers had told him he could come back at any time if things did not work out in Bermuda, but he never needed to take them up on their offer. He loved the island.

After working for Bermuda Optical Company for several years he opened his own practice, Antony Siese Ltd, in 1978. Over the years he saw several generations of eyes.

It was a job that suited him because he always liked people.

By the late 1990s he was slowing down, only running the business three days a week, while he enjoyed sailing with his friends.

“I was slowly taking the equity out of the business,” he said. “I did not know if I would be able to sell it.”

Then one day he came to the office and found a note under his door from Wannita Smith. She was interested in optometry and was looking for a summer job.

He took her under his wing, giving her a job and giving her career advice. He eventually sold the business to her in 2012.

“I call her my oldest grandchild,” Mr Siese said.

Ms Smith now runs Spexx on Bermudiana Road.

Meanwhile, Mr Siese enjoys ham radio operation and writing letters to The Royal Gazette.

He has three sons Michael, Martin and Mark, and six grandchildren. He and his wife Jeanine have been married for 38 years.

• Lifestyle profiles the island’s senior citizens every Wednesday. Contact Jessie Moniz Hardy on 278-0150 or jmhardy@royalgazette.com with the full name and contact details and the reason you are suggesting them