Our Sincere Apologies to the Good People of Skegness

You stare at the sand levels getting gradually higher and start to tell me about how it gets here. It’s not, you take great care to point out, like a miniature Atlantis rising out of the sea to enlighten us. The sand, you say, is stolen from the good people of Skegness. How it works? That’s easy. A pipe is placed at our end, they run it under the sea and then a team of divers, like underwater ninjas, swim and plug it into Skegness beach.

Listen now, this is where it gets tricky. There is a boat that sails up and down the coast between Newbiggin and Skegness. The purpose of this is clear, you tell me, to ensure that the pipeline doesn’t spring a leak because if it does disaster will strike. We will have no beach. We will be miserable and in a beachless stupor. They learned their lessons, you tell me, on the west coast when a pipe burst. That’s how the Isle of Man was made, they just didn’t catch it in time.

But what about the Skegnetians, I ask. I buy you another pint (just the one) and you go on, telling me about how the diver-ninjas keep an eye on the beach. Try to make sure that they only turn the pipe on when there is nobody on the beach but it doesn’t always work. Only yesterday a small boy, six years old, in a blue swimming costume and his dad, thirty two, in a red swimming costume and sunglasses vanished in a puff of sand. Sucked into the pipe. Two days later and they are wandering our promenade, lost and confused.

Some people down there are bound to notice but you tell me not to worry, that by the time we have stolen their beach it will be too late and besides we have ninja-divers in case the good people of Skegness try to remove the pipeline. It’s better they stay away. St Bartholomew’s Church is full of them now; dog walkers, dogs, holiday makers, swimmers, even an ice cream man. The police are keeping it under wraps.

When I ask you what we can do you shrug and sip your pint so I decide to go to Margaret’s Card Shop, buy a postcard ‘Greetings From Newbiggin by the Sea’ and send it, an open letter (well, an open post-card). On it I will write in my best handwriting:

“Our sincere apologies to the good people of Skegness.
Yours in thanks,
A representative of Newbiggin by the Sea.”

You say I lack imagination and I always have.