Visit Norfolk, where the beaches are made of cocaine. There’s only one subject of discussion in my neighbourhood: the £50m worth of cocaine washed on to the shores of Hopton, previously best-known as the home of the World Indoor Bowls Championship.
As jokes fell as thick as snow on social media – “Viking berserker powder found close to the Fens,” quipped Donaeld the Unready. “DRAIN THE FENS!” – I dreamed of “going for a beach stroll”. What if I chanced upon a holdall stuffed with drugs? Where could I hide it? Ah, my stinking compost heap, that’s a brilliant place. When someone told me the compost heap ruse was a Coronation Street plotline, my criminal nerve collapsed. Never mind the ethics, if the smugglers traced me and my children we’d have no succession of safe houses with swimming pools like Pablo Escobar in Netflix’s Narcos.
So I never took that stroll. And most people must have drawn similar conclusions, because the story of an unusual number of walkers on Norfolk’s coastline last weekend is fake news.
This is surprising because the looting of wrecked goods is one branch of criminality where popular opinion consistently supports robbers over cops. In 1941 the SS Politician ran aground off the Hebridean island of Eriskay. On board were biscuits, bicycles and 264,000 bottles of whisky, destined for America.
When official salvagers failed to save the whisky, islanders, askance at the waste in an era of alcohol shortages, illicitly liberated thousands of bottles from the wreck. This inspired Whisky Galore, a comic novel and film by local resident (and looter) Compton Mackenzie. His hugely successful tale feted plucky islanders against ridiculous wartime bureaucracy.
There’ll be no Cocaine Galore. Why? Obviously cocaine is illegal, unlike whisky, and while alcohol might arguably be as ruinously addictive, no one is going to get shot over looted booze. Perhaps it’s also to do with plenty. We, the potential looters, are more comfortably off today. There’s less interest in what the tide brought in.
An eye on Sandringham
Last August, a satellite tag belonging to a goshawk showed this rare, legally protected bird perched in a tree 185 metres west of the Queen’s Sandringham residence. Three days later, the now dead goshawk was apparently incinerated by staff, its tag posted to the British Trust for Ornithology. A police investigation found no suspicious circumstances.
In 2007, two hen harriers were killed by shots coming from the Sandringham estate. Prince Harry, a friend and a gamekeeper – the only folk shooting on the estate that day – were interviewed but denied any knowledge of the illegal persecution. The matter was not pursued as the birds’ bodies were never found.
There’s no evidence of criminality on the royal estate. Still, my PR advice to Sandringham would be to open its gates to British Trust for Ornithology researchers during the shooting season so everyone can see that there’s nothing to worry about. Can’t hurt, can it?
Free the trees
As I regularly chisel pigeon poo off my car, I sympathise with the people of Kinoulton Court, Grantham. Their vehicles have been pebble-dashed by starlings after trees on a nearby walkway were cut down. Everyone should probably curse the birds and live with them, but there the council promises to hack away more vegetation “to alleviate the issue”.
They have soulmates in Sheffield, where councillors wage war on street trees. To combat a revolt, they convened a panel of arboreal and engineering experts. It recommended reprieving 67 trees. The council agreed to save just six.
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