Stories of buried treasure

A girl keeps her hands warm in the sleeves of her cardigan.
This morning she read about a man who died last week.
He spent every morning on the beach with his metal detector
his obituary was written by his dad
a retired Front of House manager.
There used to be a theatre here.
These beaches are emptier than they used to be.

A man tells his postman
he’s spent his life on the waterways of Britain.
He worked on the canals
and before that on the docks.
He tells stories from the shipyards
that he’s still in contact with all the old boys
all of them in their eighties
who all still go by the same nicknames.
He’s always felt so much safer near the water

This is their 14th time in their static caravan in 15 years.
They were married in 2004
wedding guests clubbed together to book them
a Mediterranean cruise
the best ten days of their lives.
They’ve still not got the caravan quite how they want it.
A life’s work: choosing the right
Pictures for your walls.

The barman loves telling stories of the seaside.
There are no regulars not to have heard him say
‘You should have been here in the last few weeks of the sixties.
We’ll never party like that again.
I did so much LSD I didn’t realise
I’d missed my own birthday until two weeks later.
They were the last days of the sixties!’ he says.
Wistfully. Nostalgically. Again.

The little boy has heard stories
That the churchyard has a ghost of an ice cream man
if you listen carefully you can hear the jingle of his van.
These stories are embellished with each generation.
‘Pirates buried their treasure here,’ he tells his school friends
when they go exploring in the caves.
‘It’s true,’ he adds. As proof.

The postman used to be a policeman
but decided he’d had enough of patrolling Old Compton Street
so moved to the seaside
to paint Lord of the Rings figurines
on the table in the spare bedroom.
That bed was the comfiest in the house
‘too good for guests’ he liked to say.
His grandsons moan about the pebbly beach
and who can blame them.
He quite likes it though.