They that go down to the sea in blow-up flamingoes...

What is it about Rhyl and inflatables? Rhyl, as regular readers may remember, was where a mother-and-son duo aboard an inflatable rubber ring were fished out of the Irish Sea by the long-suffering RNLI a few years ago and every summer since has brought more examples of pneumatic foolhardiness.

The latest occurred last week, when lifeboats were called out to look for a child who had 'fallen from an inflatable flamingo' some 400m from the beach. According to witnesses, the deflated bird retrieved from the water during the search (the RNLI web page helpfully includes a picture) was originally part of a flotilla of giant blow-up toys which included a 'white flamingo' (or possibly a swan?), a unicorn and a slice of pizza.

While there is no shortage of parents who, having reproduced, appear to be attempting to remedy the fact by casting themselves and their progeny adrift on inflatable toys in in an offshore breeze - the prevailing winds at Rhyl head more or less straight out to sea - and an outgoing tide (the flamingo call-out came an hour and a half after high water), this motley collection surely qualifies for special mention (or possibly an Arts Council grant).

This story comes only a few weeks after reports that the Rhyl lifeboat crew, called out to a small inflatable dinghy in difficulties in an offshore wind, found something strangely familiar about the situation:

The two people in the vessel were immediately recognised as the same ones the crew had been called to on three previous occasions in the last month. 

Although the boat was equipped with an outboard motor, the engine lacked sufficient power to counteract the forces of wind and tide. One can imagine that it was through gritted teeth that the pair were subsequently 'given some strong advice' about basic seamanship; with that level of incompetence and carelessness out there, it must be only a matter of time before there simply aren't enough lifeboats and helicopters to go round.

Perhaps all this is an inevitable consequence of the ubiquitous health & safety culture pervading our schools and society as a whole. Remove the hazards from day-to-day living and the human race, in Gaia-esque self-regulation, is likely to discover for itself other ways of putting natural selection into practice for the good of the species.

Pick and mix

Today we are raising a brimming tankard in honour of the rambling Irish Grandad, who has performed the sterling public service of putting online the archives of the Raccoon Arms (see sidebar). Grandad, your very good health!

Meanwhile, I've been doing a spot of housekeeping here in the Tavern, and, among the dust and cobwebs, I found an assortment of notes which never made it online.

For a variety of reasons, these draft (or daft) fragments either resisted further development or proved too insubstantial to make a reasonable post. Rather than throw the whole lot out with the rubbish, I thought I'd offer a few of them for your edification and amusement this Bank Holiday weekend so, in no particular order, here we go:

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Every now and then you hear of a demise so bizarre that you can imagine St Peter at the Pearly gates, quill in hand, pausing and looking up from his list in utter amazement: "You did what?"

In keeping with its chosen role as purveyor of exotic and salacious news stories from around the globe, the Telegraph last week brought us the tale of a Michigan woman who was admitted to hospital with a fatal gunshot wound to the eye.

St. Joseph Public Safety Department Director Mark Clapp told the Kalamazoo Gazette 55-year-old Christina Bond was “having trouble adjusting her bra holster and could not get it to fit the way she wanted it to.” 

In an attempt to sort out the problem, she apparently bent forward to have a closer look, whereupon the gun went off; although 55 is probably rather too late in life to qualify for a Darwin Award, this untimely departure surely deserves some kind of honourable mention.

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With apologies to readers of a sensitive disposition:

The Clacton Gazette surpassed itself this week with the tale of a couple observed in flagrante delicto on Martello Beach in broad daylight amid the crowds of promenading holidaymakers.

For reasons known only to himself, one witness decided to film their antics and, presumably, share the result with the local paper, leading to this exquisite quote from the article:

The couple’s identity is unknown. Their faces can’t be seen on the video but the woman is believed to have a bulldog tattoo on her back.
 

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And finally, this one just defied any attempt to make sensible use of it but remains one of my favourite headlines:

Giant gorilla made from 40,000 spoons proves popular at Llangollen Eisteddfod

'Warning! Warning!'

As I write this, there are two gas engineers busy digging a hole in the road outside the Tavern. One of them has just lit a cigarette so, if this post is never completed, you will know why...

Remember Sully Island?

The 400m rocky causeway which connects this tiny outcrop to the coast of south Wales is completely covered by fast-flowing water twice a day. Back in 2014, the RNLI installed warning lights in a bid to reduce the number of visitors cut off by the rising tide.

    (BBC news)

At the time, there was a suggestion that additional measures would be needed - audible warnings, perhaps, or text messages; this does not appear to have happened, although a new warning sign was put up earlier this year to supplement the pleasingly dramatic admonition below.

So, three years on, is the system working?

Thirty people have been rescued near Sully Island so far this year.

Well I'd say that's a resounding 'no' - either that or there are even more potential Darwin Award winners out there than I thought. The RNLI and coastguard clearly have their work cut out - and they're not the only ones:

Gordon Hadfield, who owns the beach at Swanbridge and a cafe, said he and his staff had saved six people from the water in the past four years. Three weeks ago he led a family of eight to safety.

So how do people manage to get themselves marooned or washed off the causeway with such depressing regularity? According to the coastguard service

"The sad fact is, a lot of people come down here and do not know the tide is going to come around them. They don't know it's an island, so there's a lot of education around that."

Now, here I have to hold my hands up and say I have never been there but a quick look at Google clearly shows that, at low tide, the island's crown of vegetation is surrounded on all sides by sea-washed sand and rock; you don't have to be a geographical genius to work out the implications - unless, of course, you have no understanding of the concept of tides.

Sadly for humanity (or fortunately for the gene pool, depending on your outlook), such ignorance appears to be far from uncommon, as a trawl through the pages of this blog will show. In addition - and possibly a significant factor at Sully Island - there are the latter-day Cnuts, who somehow believe themselves (and their hapless families) exempt from the laws of nature and regard a tide-lapped causeway as a challenge.

As we have seen on previous excursions to the Somerset coast, the Bristol Channel claims to have the second strongest tides in the world (though some Canadians and Australians might beg to differ). Add in a 40-minute round trip on a slippery rock causeway and a plentiful supply of tourists - either ignorant or foolhardy - and you have a recipe for disaster.

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Update: from the RNLI website: and still it goes on...

'We were called just after 8:15pm this evening, Sunday 27th August 2017 to attend reports of people in the water off Sully Island. 

When we arrived on scene the people who had been in the water had made it ashore but a further 4 people (3 adults, one child) required lifeboat assistance to return to the mainland.'

They that go down to the sea in blow-up dinghies (Part 2)

A matter of days after the RNLI fished out a couple of lads adrift with their beer cans in the Bristol Channel, another rescue took place off the Kent coast (apparently a favourite spot for maritime Darwin Award hopefuls, as a trawl through the Tavern archives shows).

A dad has told of the terrifying moment he and his family lost control of their dinghy and drifted out to sea.

In this case, the accidental seafarer was accompanied in the 6ft dinghy by his wife, their nine- and seven-year-old children and their seven-month old baby.

The Gillingham resident, who has asked not be named, said his intention was to “go back and forth” in the shallow water near the beach.

“Families all the time take a dinghy out and have a paddle with their children, we were just unfortunate."

Unfortunate, perhaps, in the fact that the engine failed - although they only bought the boat two days before and were unlikely to be familiar with its management - and the subsequent breaking of an oar, but to set out with a full load and (to judge by the photos) only two life jackets between them was surely unwise, to say the least, especially with an outgoing tide (easily checked online) and a steady offshore wind (according to the RNLI).

“The funny thing is that when the oar snapped, I could have jumped out and pulled the dinghy towards shore because we were so close; it’s hard to explain, but the panic just set in."

Instead, they called for help as they drifted a mile out to sea in worsening conditions - the accompanying video shows the craft riding hazardously low in choppy water - using the mobile phone they had with them. This last precaution absolves them, perhaps, of seeking full Darwin Award Hopeful status despite entrusting themselves and their progeny to a fragile and unfamiliar vessel.

Stung by social media criticism, the father contacted the local press to give details of the rescue, including a gratifyingly thorough tribute to the RNLI crew, and a statement that, somehow, has Zeitgeist written all over it:

“In hindsight, we definitely shouldn’t have done it, trust me the lesson has been learnt. But it was never our intention to go anymore than a matter of feet from the beach, events just took over."

They that go down to the sea in blow-up dinghies

As the coastal Darwin Award Hopeful season continues, we have the slightly baffling story of two would-be mariners picked up by the RNLI off the Somerset coast.

The lifeboat crew, scrambled from work when the Coastguard spotted the child-sized boat drifting a mile out to sea, arrived to find the leaking 5ft dinghy occupied by two full-grown men 'oblivious that they were out of control and at the mercy of the very strong tides'.

The intrepid amateur seafarers had been at sea for three hours already, having drastically underestimated the distance to their intended destination of Steep Holm, a rocky island five miles offshore in the Bristol Channel.

What they expected to do there is, it has to be said, something of a mystery:

It is a nature reserve and a Site of Special Scientific Interest famed for its beautiful May-flowering wild peony. It is home to the remains of a 12th century Augustinian priory.

While it also boasts the remnants of wartime military installations and a Victorian barracks (now a 'Visitor and Education/Exhibition Centre'), it is hard to see this plethora of aesthetic and intellectual stimulation appealing to the bare-chested duo - one sporting abundant tattoos and a back-to-front baseball cap - pictured in the RNLI report.

Even if I am wrong and their motives were of the loftiest, they chose an odd way to go about it. Regular day trips are on offer and, given that Steep Holm is 'in the middle of a busy shipping channel, isolated by brisk tidal currents and a difficult landing place', it takes a special sort of mindset to purchase a toy boat from a beach shop and set off merrily into the blue.

Sadly for the men and women of the RNLI, there's a lot of it about.



Update: The Mail has since got hold of the story - claiming in its inimitable style, that they were 'five miles out' and 'without a paddle', despite the oars clearly visible in the accompanying video and the article stating 'a mile'- and identified the pair:

Mr Hole - a tattoo artist - said: 'It was going well until we got a small puncture and the boat started slowly going flat. We were miles from where we set off. I'm not sure how we got the puncture, but I think it might have been off one of the beer cans cutting the inside.

Cnuttery? There's an app for that...

With the onset of warmer weather around these shores, we are girding our metaphorical loins to document the usual quota of beach rescues.

Along with the foolhardy who either fail to appreciate the lunar influence on our seas or believe that the laws of physics apply only to other people, those calling upon the skills of the maritime rescue services can often include the hubristic unwary who think they can walk on water - or rather, water-saturated mud.

Those members of my family who grew up within spitting distance of the Sands of Dee were, to a man (and woman) reared on the poetic fate of Mary, who chose the wrong time to fetch the cattle home across the estuary and thereby met an untimely and soggy end; 'And never home came she...' Such cautionary tales have, for countless generations, been used to teach impressionable youngsters the dangers of coastal mud and a rising tide.

Now, however, with schools more likely to teach the exploits of Anansi the Spider (spelling amended - see below) or Rama and Sita than the sad story of Mary and her cows and with easy travel bringing droves of unwary landlubbers to the seaside, the rescue services have their work cut out.

This weekend brought a particularly up-to-date version of the problem, thanks to a mobile-phone based craze doubtless conceived by urban technophiles who don't see much of Mother Nature in the raw, so to speak:

The coastguard had to be called out after 15 people got stuck in mud while taking part in a hi-tech seaside treasure hunt.

Someone appears to have had the bright idea of hiding the 'treasure' near the low water mark during a spring tide on a stretch of coastline notorious for quicksand. According to the coastguard Operations Officer:

"We have since discovered that they were undertaking the hobby of geocaching. This was in an extremely dangerous place and we would not encourage others to search in these areas because there are complex tidal patterns and deep mud."

Geocaching is, as I understand it, running around with a GPS-enabled smartphone looking for clues; self-preservation, it seems, is optional. The impressive supporting cast called out out by concerned passers-by (and credited in full in the Telegraph) consisted of:

Clevedon Lifeboat, the coastguard helicopter from Portland, a search and rescue helicopter from RAF Chivenor, the Portishead RNLI inshore lifeboat, teams from the Weston-super-Mare and Portishead Coastguard Rescue and the Somerset Fire and Rescue Firefly Hovercraft.

Along with one for the ultimate selfie fail, it's probably about time they set up a special Darwin Award category for those who, abandoning all common sense, may blithely follow their own pocket-sized Pied Piper into oblivion.

Messing About In Boats

This year's coastal inadequacy season appears to have got off to a flying start with a 25-ft yacht crashing into rocks just off the Isle of Wight en route to Plymouth.

The boat had no safety equipment, Mr Trejbal was navigating with one page from an atlas and when he was rescued he thought he was 30 miles away - in Southampton.

Ah yes, the old page-torn-from-an-atlas navigation technique so beloved of Darwin Award hopefuls - though a little outdated now, perhaps, given the availability of car sat-nav systems.

It is not known where Mr Trejbal, who is a Czech national, set off from but it is thought he eventually wanted to travel to Turkey.

Such is the wonder of modern technology that it took me only a few seconds to establish that this would entail a journey of around 3,200 nautical miles - taking well over a month in a boat of that size - including a cut across the notoriously rough Bay of Biscay; a tall order indeed for such an ill-equipped expedition.

It's not the first incident of its kind and certainly won't be the last. What always puzzles me is that the possession of a road atlas or vehicle sat-nav suggests that, while on land, at least, these people fully appreciate the importance of having some tangible aid to navigation.

Truly the incompetence of mankind knows no bounds - especially at sea!

Bells and Whistles

I think it is fair to say that Sully Island, off the south coast of Wales, is never going to be a hot tourist destination for the masses.

For those who like their landscapes unspoiled, however, this former smugglers' refuge boasts an Iron Age fort and a Victorian shipwreck as well as panoramic views out over the Bristol Channel.

There is, however, one small problem: the island stands at the end of a 400m rocky causeway, cut off by the tide for all but a few hours a day, a situation which, regular readers will not be surprised to learn, appears to be beyond the comprehension of some visitors.

Over Bank Holiday weekends in particular, the local Penarth lifeboat crew must barely get a chance to sit down to a nice cup of tea and a slice of bara brith.

“We are repeatedly called out to rescue people cut off on Sully Island, despite constant warnings about the dangers of the incoming tide"

In  bid to cut down the number of incidents - and enable the crews to get on with the rest of their lives - the RNLI installed a pilot scheme in mid-June using tide powered traffic lights:

The traffic lights will use a tide gauge and indicate when it is safe for people to cross, when time is running out and when it is unsafe to walk along the causeway.

The yellow phase provides a countdown on how much time is left on the causeway as a return trip takes about 40 minutes on foot.

So, over two months on, was the scheme a success?

AN RNLI text service warning visitors about safe crossing times could be introduced to the Sully Island causeway in a bid to stop visitors getting stranded on the island.

Er... that'd be a 'no', then.

A sound warning system, and another traffic lights warning system based on the island, are also being considered by the RNLI in an effort to cut the number of call-outs to the volunteer lifeboat crew.

In fact, the number of call-outs this summer appears to have been basically unchanged, with stranded walkers claiming not to have seen the lights - the suggestion that they might, of their own initiative, have ascertained the tide times beforehand doesn't appear to enter into it - although evidence elsewhere points to a minority who feel such warnings somehow do not apply to them.

So the RNLI are planning another set of lights on the island - somewhat to the detriment, one feels, of this scenic Site of Special Scientific Interest - and a sound warning, as well as sending tide times to anyone who texts them to ask.

And when that doesn't work, and Mr and Mrs Cnut and their little dog still end up marooned, what then?

One reassuringly certain thing about the tide is that it goes down again. By my calculations, it's never going to be more than about seven or eight hours until the causeway is passable again, and, if they were fit enough to undertake the 20-minute walk across the rocks, a night in the open isn't going to kill them.

The problem is that their stupidity just might:

“People are unaware off just how quickly the tide comes in and when they realise they are being cut off, they tend to panic and try to make it over the causeway to the mainland."

Which, given the depth of the channel and the fierce local currents, is a seriously bad idea. It's the perpetual problem faced by the RNLI; manpower and resources diverted from real emergencies into rescuing people from the consequences of their own foolhardiness or ignorance.

And it's horribly symptomatic of a society in which we are all subjected to ever more interference because some people cannot or will not accept responsibility for themselves.

'I must go down to the sea again, for the call of the running tide..

...is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.'

Well, we expected this week's unusually high tides to bring some interesting examples of Man (and Woman) failing to grasp the fact that the sea goes up and down and we certainly weren't disappointed.

Coastguard and RNLI reports show a predictable host of unwary day-trippers managing to get cut off in a variety of scenic shoreline locations but special mention must go to the woman stranded at the old breakwater in Lyme Regis with her six children, potentially making somewhat belated amends for having contributed so generously to the gene pool.

Also worth noting are the two cars which had to be extracted from the sea at Redcar yesterday. In one case, rather than wading to shore through a few inches of water, the occupants scrambled up to the roof of the vehicle and sat there in state like two latter-day King Cnuts.

Similar automotive woes awaited an unfortunate fisherman whose boat broke down off Dunbar. Finally rescued by the RNLI, he returned to the harbour to find his car under five feet of water (in the great tradition of local headlines, The East Lothian News gives us 'It's park and tide').

Forget the dour east-coast stereotypes, Dunbar's finest are clearly compassionate souls...

Gary Fairbairn, coxswain of Dunbar RNLI, said: “We didn’t have the heart to tell him about his car until we got back to land." 

...well, either that or they are veritable connoisseurs of Schadenfreude and wanted to savour the look on his face when he saw his submerged vehicle:

"To say he wasn’t happy is an understatement.”

 There was less sympathy, however, in the comments:

'A full moon, highest tides, and he leaves it on the slipway to get in the way of other users? Sell yer boat son and stick to dry land.'

Meanwhile, we've become familiar with youngsters outsourcing their thinking to phones which, in some cases, appear to be smarter than their owners. There is certainly a growing tendency to rely on the things at the expense of common sense, as three holidaymakers from Essex found out when they set up a barbecue on a remote part of a Devon beach.

They had no idea of tide times, so it must have come as something of a shock to find themselves marooned on a fast-diminishing patch of sand at the foot of a sheer cliff. It was at that point that they realized - oh, the horror! - that they had no mobile signal to call for help.

Natural selection was thwarted by some distant observers calling out the rescue teams who airlifted them to safety, but even these Darwin Award hopefuls are presumably more of an asset to the gene pool than a group of teenagers from Norfolk.

With a high spring tide and a surge predicted, Hunstanton's Environment agency teams spent Tuesday night checking their flood defences. Patrolling the beach in the early hours of the morning, they found a cheerfully coloured tent pitched well below the expected high-water mark and containing five happily snoring teenage boys.

As anyone who has ever given houseroom to the species will know, teenage boys can sleep through alarm clocks, ringing phones or determined hoovering - almost anything, in fact, except the smell of frying bacon - so it's highly likely that without intervention, the youngsters would have been swamped inside their sleeping bags.

I hope their parents - and future progeny - are duly grateful.

Risking life and limb

'Against stupidity', says a character in a Schiller play, 'the gods themselves contend in vain.'

What hope is there, then, for the men and women of the RNLI and coastguard service, faced with this sort of thing?

Warnings about the dangers of boozing and swimming have been issued after a man was found clinging to a post in Swansea Bay as darkness fell.

The 24-year-old was eventually found holding onto an outfall post, which at high tide is around half a mile out to sea.

One hopes he has learnt a valuable lesson; in any case, given where he was picked up, I doubt he'll be socialising at close quarters with anyone for a while.

More recently, the much-publicised tail-end of a hurricane last weekend caused organisers in Cowes to postpone the start of a round Britain sailing race because of the poor weather conditions in the Channel and led to 41 cars being damaged on a ferry to Guernsey.

Such dramatic weather conditions, naturally, sent Darwin Award hopefuls scurrying in search of their surfboards and inflatables:

Coastguards rescued dinghies, kitesurfers and windsurfers as strong winds blew along the Jurassic Coast.

Sunday turned out to be quite a busy day there; in between fishing out several wind- and kite-surfers who had lost control of their contraptions, the coastguard, RNLI and ambulance were all needed to help an adult and child who had been blown out to sea in a small inflatable boat. Two more people in a second inflatable boat had to be rescued soon afterwards when it started shipping water.

Even on land, the stupidity continues unabated:

Safety warnings have been issued after a weekend of risk-taking on Dorset’s beaches. Beachgoers still continue to risk their lives near unstable cliffs – sunbathing just metres away from a warning sign.

While we are all familiar with the many unnecessary warning signs that clutter up our green and pleasant land, cliff collapses are surely sufficiently frequent and serious to give any rational beachgoer pause for thought, especially after a spell of wet weather. The Darwin Award contender, however, clearly feels the laws of nature should not apply to him (or her).

The same mentality is doubtless responsible for the situation reported by an exasperated Brixham coastguard last month, after a woman with a broken ankle had to be rescued from a closed-off section of coastal path:

“It was noted during the course of this rescue that more than a dozen people ignored signs and climbed over barriers to use this section of the coast path which is closed due to safety reasons.”

While once could argue that these people should be free to endanger themselves in any manner they think fit, it would be a very good thing if they could be brought to realize that the rescue services do not have the choice.

Darwin's selfies

It is a truth universally acknowledged that, if you give Generation X-box a hand-held device capable of taking and instantly transmitting photographs of what is in front of them, they will use it the wrong way round.

All over the world, in places where our forebears would stand and gaze in awe, visitors now turn their backs on the monument or landmark and grin inanely for the benefit of a phone held at arm's length in front of them.

Some have gone further; on a recent trip, I noticed that many of the younger Far Eastern tourists carried small extending poles which enabled them to snap their own faces from a greater distance. How many selfies do you have to take for it to be worth investing in a gadget like that?

Meanwhile, such is the ubiquity of the genre and its more dubious spin-offs that schools are now devoting entire lessons to explaining to children why it is inadvisable to photograph one's genitalia and send the results to other people, a practice which I don't recall being mentioned back in the days of the Kodak instamatic.

Since the idea of taking endless photographs of oneself is likely to appeal most to the immature and the terminally narcissistic and the process is far from foolproof, the internet abounds with examples which mine a rich vein of idiocy.

'Is this the most dangerous selfie fail?' asks the Telegraph, reporting on the man who tried to take a selfie in front of half a ton of angry pot-roast at the bull-running in Bayonne last week. Well, no, actually; a sad little collection of Google entries testifies to the foolhardiness of photographing oneself on the edge of a cliff or at the wheel of a car.

And at the weekend, in what should be a shoo-in for a Darwin award, a Mexican managed to shoot himself in the head while posing with a loaded gun; his intention, apparently, was to load 'cool' pictures of himself with the weapon onto facebook.

When ET and his chums show up a few millennia hence and study what remains, it's quite likely that they will date the decline of what was once human civilization to the invention of the phone camera and social media.

That sinking feeling (again)

Another day, another car. The search and rescue team at Brean Beach must be getting sick of having to dig out the stranded motors of people who think the laws of physics don't apply to them.

The driver of the latest unintentionally amphibious vehicle had taken it half a mile down the beach heedless of warnings to the public not to approach the water's edge at low tide because of soft sand and mud.

"I'd just been driving along the beach with my daughter enjoying the sunshine and didn't think I could get stuck."

This is, presumably, the same mindset that causes school run parents in 4x4s to pull out across two lanes of traffic without looking; the hubristic sense that your vehicle makes you somehow indestructible.

Fortunately for the driver and his daughter, they didn't get the opportunity to qualify for a multiple Darwin Award by discovering that quicksand is more than just a handy plot device in adventure films.

Connoisseurs of Schadenfreude can find photos and some highly satisfying video footage at the Burnham news site.

All at sea

It is, alas, no surprise that the warm weather has, once more, brought the nautical Darwin Award hopefuls out in force . Exmouth RNLI, for example, were roused from their beauty sleep at 5am on Sunday when shouts for help were heard from the river:

A coastguard spokesman said: “The guy had been to the pub in the evening and decided to go kayaking in the middle of the night. 

“The tide was coming in and he was taken up the river which wasn't the direction he wanted to go. He capsized and the inshore lifeboat found him holding onto a moored boat at Pole Sands.”

A few hours later, the Exmouth crews were out again, this time delivering a stern lecture to one of those parents who, having already contributed to the gene pool, appear to be attempting to remedy the fact with the help of an inflatable toy,  an outgoing tide and an offshore wind.

And RNLI crews on the Tamar have quite enough on their hands without having to deal with the likes of the Plymouth man reported missing by his wife when he failed to return from a fishing trip by 10.30pm on Saturday night; emergency services finally traced his mobile phone to the restaurant where he was having dinner, though the news story sadly fails to say with whom.

Elsewhere, Man's (or, in this case, Woman's) battle against the tide has claimed yet another automotive victim; since it's clear that individual responsibility is never going to be enough, perhaps the authorities at Brean Beach car park should look into some way to alert motorists to the rising waters.

A few pence on the cost of parking could, with a bit of imagination, furnish a brightly-coloured paper wristband stamped with that day's 'leave-by' time, though personally I rather like the idea of firing a cannon from the nearby fort as the water approaches.

After all, if people need to be protected from the consequences of their own lack of forethought, the rest of us ought to be able to get some fun out of it where we can.

"The tide rises, the tide falls, The twilight darkens, the curlew calls..."

I know, I know.... it's been a bit quiet around here recently. Still, however severe the demands of real life and the blogging fatigue, sometimes a news story comes along that is simply too good to let go.

Here at the Tavern, we try to do our bit in chronicling Man's battle against the elements and, in particular, his lack of even the most basic grasp of tidal dynamics so we were naturally most diverted to learn that:

Jedward, the Irish pop group, has been rescued by the Irish Coast Guard after they became trapped by the incoming tide in north Dublin.

For those who managed to escape it thus far, Jedward is a pair of twins - John and Edward (are your toes curling yet?) - gifted with truly astonishing hair and dress sense. It plays the guitar and, arguably, sings and burst onto the music scene some years ago in series 157 of 'Britain's got X-rated Opportunity Knockers' before becoming Ireland's secret weapon to avoid having to host the Eurovision Song Contest again.

A quick trip to Youtube may help to account for the delicious sense of Schadenfreude elicited by this tale of Jedward and its cousin stranded amid the rising waves:

"The boys were getting more and more desperate as the water was coming in. Thank God the Coast Guard sent the helicopter up and it found them trapped on sands near Malahide."

So was Jedward airlifted to safety, plucked from the rising waters in the nick of time? Reader, it was not:

The helicopter crew spotted the stranded Grimes family members and used a floodlight to point out their location to rescuers on the ground.

Skerries coast guard members reached the group on foot shortly after midnight and reunited all three with the rest of their family.

This escapade was, it appears, the result of a late evening stroll along the beach in blissful ignorance not only of the incoming tide but also of the fact that night follows day.

The Irish Coast Guard received a report that the three had become "disoriented in the area due to the falling darkness and unusually fast incoming tide".

Such a startling lack of self-preservation instinct should surely qualify for some kind of award. Still, it all ended happily and, being well-brought up, Jedward had the good grace to thank its rescuers publicly and exhort other Darwin Award hopefuls not to follow in its soggy footsteps.

Sadly for the rescue services, past experience suggests that the appeal is likely to be in vain.


My thanks to those of you who have turned up and rattled the Tavern door during my absence - the bar should be opening for business on a more regular basis for a while so please drop in and join me for a virtual pint.

Darwin's Cupcakes strike again!

If you're the sort of person whose idea of a treat is a miniature sponge cake topped with a mound of piped buttercream and a liberal sprinkling of glitter, then you probably wandered here by mistake.

Cynicism we have in abundance, along with satire and acerbic comment occasionally seasoned with song parodies and asteroids, but, if sparkly cupcakes are your thing, you're not going to find much to interest you here.

And you certainly aren't likely to want to know that, according to tests carried out by West Yorkshire Trading Standards on certain 'edible' cake decorations:

When the plastic glitter was placed under a microscope, it was shown to be made up of hexagonal fragments with jagged edges.  

In one case, the glitter was made of finely powdered brass.

Mmmmm, yummy! The findings were released eighteen months ago but, the legal system being what it is, the case has just come to court.

A businesswoman has been landed with a £13,500 legal bill for duping customers into buying “edible” cupcake glitter made out of shredded plastic - which ended up in the food chain.

Unlike the standard edible variety, which is based on gum arabic, the glitter in the samples tested was made from the same plastic as drinks bottles - polyethylene terephthalate (PET to its friends) - and was originally intended for craft use. The hearing was told that its effect on the human digestive system is unknown and it should not be eaten.

I should have thought that most rational beings, confronted with multicoloured glitter, would not naturally assume it to be edible, but there are clearly people out there willing to tuck in with gusto - Oooh, shiny! - and even feed the stuff to their children (on the plus side, the inevitable consequences should add a certain interest to potty-training).

Of course, one might argue that it's Darwin in action again; if you are fool enough to consume sparkly plastic flakes in a range of startling artificial colours, you probably deserve all you get.

Meanwhile, the boss of the firm has neatly sidestepped the issue by insisting that, despite selling the products to cake decorating shops and bakers, she had never suggested that they could be eaten. As for the homophonous company name printed - rather haphazardly - on the labels:

Protesting her innocence, Ed Able Art Ltd boss Margaret Martin claimed the name of her firm was inspired by three animated mice characters called Ed, Able and Art.

Nope, me neither. In fact these alleged mice are, as far as I can ascertain, conspicuous by their complete absence from the world-wide web - although I admit I was briefly sidetracked from the search by a fascinating scholarly article entitled:

Mice as a Delicacy: The Significance of Mice in the Diet of the Tumbuka People of Eastern Zambia

Ed Able Art products, however, are out there in abundance, offered for sale by cake decoration suppliers; I could even, if so inclined, order a pot of black and silver 'Asteroid Disco Glitter' for a mere £2.50, one of a range of 94 Disco Glitters including 'Neon Flamingo', 'Laser Blue Hologram' and 'Remington Steel'.

The £13,500 fine - surely a mere slap on the wrist in modern business terms - and 12 charges dropped out of a total of 24, combined with a number of previous unheeded warnings suggest that Trading Standards lack the teeth required to prevent inedible decorations reaching the market.

This means we are back to caveat emptor - and Darwin. To quote from my original post on the subject:

'Trading Standards warn that they do not know what the effects of eating glitter might be - I can see some interesting lawsuits pending when Yummy Mummies find out what they've been feeding their little darlings - but we can be fairly sure they will, by and large, be confined to that sector of the population prepared to throw common sense to the winds for a sparkly, self-indulgent treat.'

I'm sure you'll agree that, should the ingestion of plastic glitter prove to have negative consequences, this will ultimately benefit the human race.


Update: A brief tour of online retailers suggests that, even after buying clearly-labelled 'non-edible cake decorating glitter' - how is that supposed to work? - consumers are happily leaving comments about how much they and their children enjoyed eating it.

I'm starting to think that, if you ran up to them and shouted "Soylent Green is PEOPLE!", they would just smile and say "I know, but it makes lovely cakes!".

Toast of the week - a Herculean task

In the previous post, I mentioned a man dressed as Santa Claus on behalf of a Canvey Island charity, whose sleigh was undeservedly run out of town at the behest of some over-zealous citizens (JuliaM has the story too).

He is, in fact, the chairman and founder of the charity 'The Friends of Concord Beach', an organisation formed with the laudable aims of maintaining the salt-water pool there and promoting 'good citizenship, civic responsibility and good habits' in those visiting the area and using the facilities.

The group are also busy arranging for sponsored benches along the front and a pool-side shower, together with murals to cover unsightly graffiti and some very polite notices:

But it doesn't stop there; these valiant souls have a far more challenging objective in their sights:

To promote the education of those who visit the beach in sea water and beach safety as it applies to the tidal estuary of the River Thames.

One has to admire their ambition; as a trawl through the Tavern archives makes abundantly clear, Britain's coastline is the destination of choice for an alarming number of Darwin Award hopefuls every year. In fact, an appropriately seasonal example was reported this week:

Two men who were in a toy inflatable boat and wearing penguin and Santa costumes have been taken to a Cornish harbour by the RNLI after they were seen drifting out to sea.

These intrepid mariners set out to paddle across Mount's Bay from Marazion to Penzance, a distance of about 4km, in voluminous fancy dress and without the benefit of life-jackets or a seaworthy craft; what a good thing we've been having such calm weather recently!

If the Friends of Concord Beach seriously intend to tackle the Augean stables of public ignorance of even the basics of beach safety, they certainly have their work cut out, which is why we are raising a glass to them and their endeavours.

Friends of Concord Beach, your very good health!

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside!

For a supposedly seafaring nation with a strong maritime tradition, it's odd how many people each year get into trouble because they have failed to grasp the idea that the sea goes up and down twice a day and that waves generate considerable force.

And that is without the extra hazards of water-borne stones and debris caught up in rough seas and propelled with enough force to cause serious injury or kill.

This week's tidal surge, unsurprisingly, brought out the Darwin Award contenders in droves. One particular example sticks in the mind; according to a policeman in Southwold (quoted in the BBC live coverage):

"We had to drag a photographer off the prom that was laying there with his legs wrapped around a metal railing, photographing the waves going over the top of him."

And amid the myriad examples, as I've said before, there really ought to be a special category for those who, having reproduced, appear to be doing their best to rectify the situation by disposing of themselves and their progeny in one fell swoop:

Police in Yarmouth urged 'sightseers' to stay away, saying they were placing themselves at 'significant risk'. 

They said crowds, including people with small children on their shoulders, had been seen gathering close to the seafront.

Meanwhile, in Scarborough, a photographer recording the predictable foolhardiness of White Van Man scooped an unexpected bonus; yes, that really is someone pushing a pram along the notoriously dangerous seafront in a storm.

(photo: Reuters via Daily Mail)

And finally, if you will forgive a bit of uncharacteristic whimsy, amidst the formulaic coverage by tired reporters who already knew that, even if they gave their all, the results would be eclipsed by the media Mandelafest and relegated to an edited slot on the local news, this was a welcome breath of fresh air.

Be patient - the presenter doesn't appear until 30 seconds in - and do watch to the end for a charming display of incipient apocaholism.

(credit to Sky News for the discovery)

A deluge, viewed from afar

It is amazing to think that, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I can sit in the Tavern and watch events unfold miles away; in this case, the impending flooding of Jaywick in Essex.

Firstly the emergency services are out and about; the expected tidal surge is bad news for a low-lying coastal community, so all 2,500 residents have been asked to evacuate their homes.

Not everyone has cooperated, though:

BBC Look East's Gareth George says: "If the householders say they staying, they are asked to sign a declaration saying they have had the risks explained to them." 

But he added most residents he spoke to were "staying put".

Which seems distinctly unwise in the face of the Environment Agency warning of 'danger to life' but might be explained by this tweet from the Gazette:

Also just been stopped by a diligent @EssexPoliceUK officer who said there are reports of ppl driving around Jaywick looking for empty homes

There is something particularly despicable about the idea of opportunistic looters converging on the scene of a reported emergency evacuation - who would ever have thought this would one day be the use to which mankind would put mass media and the internal combustion engine?

As a result, the police have stepped up their patrols, so, all in all,  the place must be getting pretty crowded, what with the local news reporters out in search of a good location shot or human interest story - though perhaps the official warnings will mean they are excused the usual piece to camera standing ankle-deep in water.

And, just to add to the confusion, there's another bunch of people wandering around too; the prospect of a record-breaking storm surge has brought the Darwin Award hopefuls out in force, to judge by the weary tone of this late-night announcement:

WARNING: Residents are urged to stay away from the flood risk areas as they could be putting themselves in danger.

Police are receiving information people are going to the area to watch the flooding. The high seas and rising water is unpredictable and the emergency services do not want to have to rescue people who have put themselves in potentially dangerous situations.

And to think that all of this rich tapestry of humanity is being relayed live for the benefit of a potential audience of millions (including one insomniac blogger who really should stop and try to get some sleep)! In a way, it's reassuring that what happened in 1953 can never be repeated, thanks not only to improved coastal defences but also to abundant and detailed information about the threat.

But it's also frustrating that, along with preventing (one hopes) loss of life, this mass communication has brought out the imprudent, the foolhardy and the downright dishonest.

It all sounds like a cross between 'Assault on Precinct 13' and 'Dawn of the Dead' with a touch of '2012' thrown in for good measure - I'm very glad to be heading for a quiet night a long way away.

Darwin meets Archimedes

While we're familiar with the role the rising tide plays in assorted manifestations of human error, sometimes it's the receding water that causes the problem.

Take, for example, the case of the young man rushed to hospital in Cardiff on Tuesday night with what appears to be a very nasty ankle injury after jumping off a 20ft wall into less than 3ft of water.

If this comment from the Barry Coastguard facebook page is genuine, at least the boy made a good impression on the people who had to deal with the consequences of his foolhardy behaviour:

"I was part of the ambulance crew that took this young man to hospital and he was very polite well mannered and thanked us for everything we were doing for him which is more than we get from most of the adults we pick up."

Given that he must have been in considerable pain at the time, this suggests a degree of presence of mind and character, which makes it all the more baffling that he was doing something quite so stupid.

It's a truth universally acknowledged, not least by the operators of theme parks, that a generation wrapped in Health & Safety-approved cotton wool since babyhood will seek thrills wherever it can, and the adrenaline experience du jour is 'tombstoning'.

It's been around for a while, but, under the guise of disapproval, recent media coverage has ensured that every impressionable youngster in the country knows that jumping feet-first from a bridge or sea-wall generates an adrenaline rush and, equally important for today's teenagers, looks spectacular in the (abundant) accompanying photos.

And, since these youngsters have been constantly bombarded from their earliest years with dire official warnings covering everything from road safety to healthy eating, the Coastguard's admonitions about water depth and currents become just so much background noise.

With ultra-safe play areas and constant monitoring of their environment, today's children are relatively inexperienced at judging risks and woefully ignorant of the way nature behaves. And, as the forthcoming GCSE results will doubtless show, many of them have a less-than-perfect grasp of the laws of physics.

Add a touch of typical teenage recklessness and some peer pressure and you have a recipe for disaster.

That sinking feeling

Just when I thought it was going to be a slow news day (except, of course, that a young woman has had a baby and the media seem to have gone collectively insane*), two entertaining stories come along at once.

First there was last night's asteroid, and then this:

Beachgoer's car is ruined after being swamped by turning tide

And, as if that were not enough, it was followed by this:

Three further vehicles rescued from incoming tide in Burnham area

Once again, the sea has demonstrated its dominance over mankind. In fact, it makes you wonder whether we ever intended to leave the oceans in the first place; perhaps, four hundred-odd million years ago, our distant aquatic ancestors were happily foraging in unfamiliar tidal shallows when the water went away.

You can almost picture them, left high and dry, gaping at each other in baffled confusion. Much the same expressions can be seen on today's beaches among families who, having set up a vast and intricate encampment a few feet from the water's edge and gone for a paddle, return to find the waves lapping merrily round the cool-box and their belongings drifting out to sea.

It would be interesting to know whether such incidents are becoming more frequent; presumably the wider availability of cars and better roads have led to more day-trippers from inland whose lack of familiarity with the sea could explain an increase in the number of tide-related emergency call-outs.

And that's not the end of the seaside idiocies either:

Solent Coastguard said it had received about 40 emergency calls in one 10-minute period over reports of adrift inflatables along the Hampshire coast.

A man, who had been aimlessly adrift in the Solent on a child's inflatable dinghy for well over an hour, has been rescued by emergency crews.

To quote a previous post; 'you may have been told at school that there's no such thing as failure, but when you're blundering about in the shipping lanes with a freighter bearing down on you at speed, I think you may find there is'.

And let's not forget this Darwin Award hopeful:

A man who attempted to sail to Ireland from Dorset in an inflatable dinghy has been rescued by coastguards. 

The man, believed to be American and in his 40s, was picked up south of Durdle Door having drifted eastwards from Osmington Mills on Wednesday afternoon. The 6ft (1.8m) inflatable boat had paddles as a mast and rudder and a plastic sheet for a sail. 

The Irish coast is more than 300 miles (480km) from Dorset.

Admittedly, as an American, he may well have grown up further from the sea than it's possible to get in our island nation, but that's not much of an excuse.

And frankly, we don't need his sort here; we've got quite enough home-grown maritime incompetents as it is!


*Not to mention Marks and Spencer; within minutes of the announcement, they were sending out e-mails with links to buy baby clothes and gifts, champagne, flowers and a 'delightfully illustrated commemorative tin' of biscuits.