WHEN I first moved to this stretch of North-west coastline a few years ago, I was excited to think I was once again going to live by the seaside.

was brought up in a town on the South Coast, which had a steeply sloping pebble beach with fishing boats and impressive tides, and there was a pier which stretched out over deep water where you could fish for sea bass, grey mullet and plaice.

I loved looking at the sea, especially when it is angry, with foam-flecked breakers crashing onto the shore in a stiff breeze. And when the weather is calm, there’s nothing like a refreshing swim in salt water.
Then for many years I lived in landlocked isolation from the briny delights of the seaside.

What a disappointment then, to arrive in Southport, to find the beach a dull expanse of flat grey sand, and where the sea is most days just a distant smudge on the horizon.

Great for sand yachting and kite flying, but not much else.

With all this talk of Southport as a classic resort and plans for improving the beachfront area, why is no-one thinking big about the beach itself, which surely should be a seaside resort’s best asset?
Here we have people complaining about sand extraction companies taking the stuff away, as if there isn’t enough to go round.

If I was in charge, I’d pay them to do it.

I’d want a massive mile-wide channel dredged out of the shoreline so the tide could come in and create a proper swimming beach.

I know it sounds like an implausible engineering feat, but if you can create beaches by bringing in loads of sand, like has been done in Bournemouth – and on a massive scale in Dubai – would it not be possible to get the same result here by taking sand away?

Funfairs and conference hotels are all very well, but let’s get the basics right.

If the building companies don’t want the Southport sand, perhaps it could be taken  down the coast to Formby, where apparently the dunes are receding at an alarming rate.

Perhaps I am living in Wonderland like Lewis Carroll:
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
“If this were only cleared away,
They said, “it would be grand!”
“If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose,” the Walrus said
“That they could get it clear?
“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
Just a thought…
m.montgomery@champnews.com

IF there’s one word  guaranteed to elicit a snort of derision from me, it’s ‘designer’.

The notion that a product suddenly acquires enormous cachet, justifying an equally enormous price premium, by prefixing it with ‘designer’ seems an outrageous stretch of credulity.

As the father of  three boys, one just entered into his teenage years, I know all about peer pressure and street cred.

I have had to endure those rows in shops when all efforts to steer, cajole, threaten and bribe youngsters into accepting a sturdily functional and reasonably priced item of clothing or footwear are met with sulky stubborn insistence on the latest blinged-up, overpriced product hyped by celebrity endorsement and/or TV advertising.

“No, Dad, it’s not that they cost £90 or that Ronaldo wears them, they really are much better that those £25 football boots you made me try on.”

Yeah, right.

For teenage boys (and probably girls, too), it’s all about showing off. Having the most expensive or flashiest gear gives you some sort of status among your mates, not least, I suppose, the inference that you have your parents well and truly cowed into submission.

But they’ll grow out of it soon enough, when they have to pay for stuff themselves, won’t they?

I used to think so, but I’m not so sure any more.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that in this ever more homogenous and over-regulated society, the more people are forced to conform, the more they seek the cult of individuality, and never mind the cost.

They’d rather eat rubbish food and stay in than be seen out in anything less than top bling.

Designer gear lifts them above the common herd, doesn’t it?

Well, no, actually. You still end up looking like everyone else in your peer group, but at much greater expense. And then when the common herd get on your track, you have to move on. Consider the Burberry chavs of yesteryear …

And I think the conceit of manufacturers sticking their logos and labels on the outside of their garments is just a con in the emperor’s-new-clothes mould.

A brilliant con, mind you, as we are paying them through the nose to advertise their wares for them, instead of the other way around.

MY view of hospitals has always been coloured by impressions from the media.

I think the first image I had was gleaned from Carry On films, where hospitals were staffed by pompous consul-tants, bungling and randy junior doctors, saucy nurses and everything presided over by Hattie Jacques as the formidable Matron who swept through the wards like a galleon under full sail.

Then there were all those TV medical dramas where earnest and dashing doctors juggled heroic acts of life-saving with precarious love lives, leading up to today’s Casualty stuffed with non-stop life-or-death melodrama.

In fiction, it’s all go, go, go. In reality, it’s dull, dull, dull.

Over the last week I have made regular visits to a loved one who is hospital awaiting surgery on a major injury.

And the main impression is one of isolation and being forgotten.

All those bustling nurses and cheery orderlies on the TV shows? Nowhere to be seen.

Presumably budgetary cons-traints mean staffing is kept to a bare minimum, but having to wait half an hour in intense  pain after pressing the emer-gency call button for someone to attend is surely not right.

It’s not the fault of individual nurses and other staff at the sharp end, they are genuinely conscientious, if harassed.

I suspect the problem is, like a lot of things these days, down to over-management and, ironically, ‘elf ‘n safety’.

Years ago in my home town, there was an independent voluntary organisation dedica-ted to supporting local hospital patients.

It would raise money and spend it on TV rooms, books and other niceties which made hospital stays a bit more bearable, and organise rotas to go round wards with drinks, magazines, sweets, toiletries  and so on or just chat to patients and pass on messages, taking a little pressure off the  overworked medical staff.

I know in many areas the WRVS is in operation and I’m sure it and other volunteers do good work, up to a point.

But judging by the Southport and Ormskirk Hospital Trust’s published policy on voluntary workers, all volunteers have to be recruited and controlled by the management.

This involves filling in long application forms, providing references, attending inter-views, submitting to criminal records bureau investigations and undergoing ‘training’. No doubt this is intended to protect patients against weirdos, but I suspect it merely puts off genuine caring people who might otherwise give up their time to support the sick.

And as for providing TV rooms, well of course we now have Patientline units, which charge patients £2.90 a day for Coronation Street and Pac-Man and an outrageous premium for making or receiving telephone calls.

There’s progress for you.
m.montgomery@champnews.com

Sitting in the pub the other day with my colleague Rob Doyle, helping him with some important research for his excellent Southport Drinker blog and drink -up column in The Champion, it struck me how often well-meaning state intervention can have unforeseen consequences.

I am talking of course about the smoking ban.

Now, I have never smoked and find cigarette fumes pretty unpleasant in very confined spaces – like the car. But I do like good conversation with interesting people from all walks off life, and as a general rule, I find people who smoke and drink tend to be more entertaining company.

I don’t think I have ever been out with a woman who didn’t smoke and drink; but that may say more about me and my vices than people in general).

So smoky pubs and restaurants have never really bothered me. Even the dangers of so-called passive smoking haven’t frightened me away from the ‘craic’.

The presumption is that second-hand smoke must be harmful, but in the context of normal everyday pollution form cars, bonfires, barbecues etc, is it really a killer?

We have all seen how the papers one week tell you that alcohol or certain foods are bad for you, and then the next week declare new research has indicated the opposite (“moderation in all things” my dear old auntie used to say, as she lit up another fag).

I often think of that line in Woody Allen’s hilarious film Sleeper, in which he awakes from suspended animation to find himself in a health-obsessed future where everything is regulated and sanitised, and he is offered a cigarette with the advice: “Have one of these, they’re good for you”.

To get to the point, it is hard to say whether the smoking ban in public places is encouraging people to give up the habit. What certainly is true is that more people are staying at home to drink and smoke, to the detriment of licensed businesses and those of us who enjoy the old-fashioned delights of a few ales and a good chat in cosy surroundings.

I fear that more traditional British inns will have to reinvent themselves as cafés and restaurants, or as those youth clubs with conversation-killing television screens and loud music which pass for trendy pubs these days.

And as for those hostelries that try to carry on catering for their loyal nicotine addicts with outside smoking shelters, we’ll probably find that all that going in and out from warmth to cold and back will see their customers off to an early grave faster than their tobacco habit.

Perhaps the death of the great British pub is the plan all along, to keep the health service free to treat all the people with stress now they can’t smoke or drink or have a chat any more.

The curse of dog poo on our streets is back.

When I started my journ-alistic career on provincial papers, it was one of the issues that most frequently vexed councillors and letter-writers.
It seemed to flare up and die down again every few years and polarised the doggy and non-doggy camps to entertaining effect. There was even an amusing debate, in the late 80s I think, into the mysterious arrival and subsequent disappearance of white dog poo.

In recent times the intro-duction of fouling by-laws and poop-scoops saw a reduction in the problem. But now it’s back with a vengeance.
The other day, I found that everywhere I walked in town I encountered mess on the pavements every 25 yards or so. Parks and playing fields are becoming no-go areas for children again.

But I can’t say that I see significantly more people with dogs on the streets. So what’s going on? Are they sneaking out at night and in the early morning?
Now, in general I quite like dogs and they seem to like me, but I’ve never really got on with the whole dog ownership thing.

I have no problem with working dogs on farms and country estates, and if there is open land on your doorstep, what’s the harm?

But urban areas are another matter. A dog needs exercise and somewhere to poo, and parks and pavements are simply not fair game.

Yes I know there are plenty of responsible owners, but for every one that carries a poop-scoop there are half a dozen that don’t.

By-laws are pretty useless. Who’s going to march up to a tattooed thug and say: “I’ve just seen your pit bull foul the footpath. What’s your name and address so I can report you to the authorities?” Does anyone know of any successful prosecutions?

But why do people want dogs in urban settings anyway? OK. the tattooed thug’s pit bull makes him more intimidating, weedy oiks trying to boost their limp machismo might also want one, and lonely old ladies might want companion-ship and security, but what’s in it for ordinary family folk?

There’s vet’s bills, the (admittedly slim and over-hyped) danger of dogs turning bad and the bother of what to do with them when you go away.

Perhaps it’s hen-pecked husbands who want a pal that doesn’t answer back but offers brown-eyed loyalty and devotion. And an excuse to go to the pub.

So I’m not a pet person. Anyone who can send me a good justification of why they need a dog in the town will receive a copy of my Korean cook book.

In the meantime, pick up your pet’s poo, please.