Don’t feed the Seagulls!

We British do love our seaside. It has a special place in all our hearts and childhood memories of buckets and spades, bright striped canvas wind-breakers, collapsing deck chairs, Punch & Judy shows, candy floss, knickerbocker glory ice creams, crazy golf, the lido and the feel of sand between your toes. But if you go down to the beach today in our mythical Essex coastal town of Charlmont-on-Sea, you’re in for a big surprise!

This upmarket art deco seaside enclave and its snobby residents are the vociferous custodians of the last operational traffic podium in England, but they are blissfully unaware that there is high level skulduggery taking place in their civic nerve centre, the Mayor’s Parlour. Their deliciously slippery ‘Citizen Mayor’ known as KYJ and his sexually frantic paramour, end-of-pier palmist/clairvoyant Madam Palm are illegally trafficking farm workers from far-flung parts of the world.

This nice little earner is suddenly frustrated by the inconvenience of having the only road in and out of town closed by the local constabulary. They are in blue-light pursuit of a fleeing bullion robbery gang who decide to hole-up in the old gas works. The Chief Constable subverted by the rakishness of yet another KYJ back-of-a-fag packet master plan, ‘innocently’ engineers their escape back to The Big Smoke. Suddenly the mayor’s immigrant running racket is back on the rails, but with equal swiftness from out of left field we have washed-up on the beach of a couple of errant and very dangerous WW2 sea-mines. These are hotly followed by the Bomb Squad, could things get worse?

Our two rogues are desperate to find a solution and in the luxurious surroundings of his mayor’s parlour, KYJ is informed by his co-conspirator Madam Palm that his self proclaimed strategic planning ability has all the quality of the kindergarten. Reluctantly he’s forced to rely on a working-class, Morris dancing, wrecking ball of a man known as Chicken Joe to get him out of trouble.

This story is not for those who are too clever by half, nor has it been written for intellectual dissection or in furtherance of some deep social/political message. It’s been written purely for the enjoyment of everyone with a sense of fun and frolic. Continuously poised as is it between cliché and indiscretion, the reader is encouraged to enjoy the ridiculous embellished with exaggeration as he/she flashes through the saucy rudeness and redneck humour, that could once be found in an old fashioned seaside postcard.