Chapter 70 In which the Cote de Westphalia gears up for the summer and welcomes back the prodigal son

Spring in Westphalia-on-Sea was always a time of mixed emotions for the residents. On the positive side the sun occasionally came out and the days grew longer, but this was always tinged with a feeling of apprehension: would it be a good summer? Would the visitors come back? Would they like what they saw? And would the roads all be dug up in time to make the place look like a building site before the tourists arrived? Of course, this year it wasn't just Westphalia-on-Sea that was in danger of economic meltdown - it was the whole country, and in times of national strife the one thing a country needs is effective leadership. Britain might look very different today were it not for the rousing speeches of Churchill. He talked about fighting on the beaches, and stuck barbed wire and land mines on them just to show everyone he was serious. The council in Westphalia-on-Sea hadn't quite gone that far, and had just stuck up a few 'beach closed' signs and half-heartedly cordoned off a few beaches with what looked like bits of junk someone had found at the back of their shed, but the sense of pride and patriotism that it inspired in the locals was just the same as it was during the dark days of the blitz. Impressed by these bold acts of leadership, the residents of Westphalia-on-Sea rallied around their illustrious mayor, Dr Pangloss, as things began to get tough. However bleak the future looked, the residents never wavered in their belief that Dr Pangloss and his band of merry commissioners would lead them from misery into the promised land. Once things got tight and savings had to be made from the public purse the people were thankful that it was the layabouts who helped in schools and picked up the odd bit of rubbish that bore the brunt of the cutbacks. It seemed only right and proper that the CEO, the mayor, his deputy and those aforementioned commissoners were not penalised in the pocket, because they were the unsung heroes who slogged away at their desks day-in day-out and applied Solomon-like wisdom to everyday problems, and were largely responsible for making Westphalia-on-Sea such a wonderful place. Hot on the heels of all this mayoral euphoria was the wonderful news that that old political warhorse, Ahmad Hatter, was back with a steady hand on the tiller leading the Tories again. Yes, he was truly the missing link, in the sense that he was back in place and part of the 'dream team', along with the mayor and the councillor For Unbelievable Cock-Ups. Not the missing link in the sense of an ape-like creature who seemed to have jumped off the evolutionary scale a bit too early. It seemed that Ahmad Hatter's problem in the past was that he had not been soft and cuddly enough. This time he promised to be as soft and cuddly as a cardboard box full of abandoned kittens. As you can imagine, dear reader, this news caused most Westphalians to shed tears of joy and hold impromptu street parties, because the one thing they craved more than anything during these dark times was a soft and cuddly deputy mayor.

While the unwanted deputy mayor had been away in the political wilderness the mayor and the councillor FUC-U had been extremely busy. The mayor had hired yet more consultants to grapple with the thorny subject of branding. Apparently what was keeping the tourists away from the Cote de Westphalia was not the crap weather or the lack of facilities, but the name. It might be wrong and might need to be changed, but nobody could be 100% sure until further surveys, meetings and brainstorming sessions had been carried out, but one thing was certain - these consultants would finally, once and for all, get to the bottom of this bloody name business, even if it meant they had to bill the council for an extra six months. At the same time it would finally be decided whether Westphalia-on-Sea wanted old tourists who came by coach, working-class tourists who came by car, or rich tourists who came by boat. And then they would decide whether they wanted more hotels or fewer hotels, and whether they should be cheap hotels or expensive hotels. The mayor had a good feeling about these consultants, and he should know, because he had an ever-growing knowledge of consultants and their hefty fees. He felt this bunch were really on the ball, and would come up with some good findings. While the consultants were busy coming up with revolutionary outside-the-box thinking that would bring the tourists back, a firm of architects was busy sketching a 21st-century landmark for the harbour. Apparently it had been decided by the locals that what they really wanted at the harbour was another hotel/luxury flats complex, but this time one which towered above the tatty Victorian monstrosities below. And at ground level they wanted more shops and another cinema. It was a genius idea, and the residents were supremely lucky that the mayor had appointed a firm which could deliver this combination of building and engineering on a scale that would have filled Brunel or Wren with pride. As the locals looked at the plans in wonderment they could almost hear the tourists on the A38 saying: 'A four-storey hotel and apartment complex with retail outlets and a cinema? I don't believe it can be done! Why let's make a detour and see this wonder for ourselves, and then stroll along the harbour eating caviar and lobster thermidor from pages of Tatler magazine.'

But let us not allow these mighty mayoral achievements to overshadow the dilligent work of the councillor FUC-U. First he had been busy sticking parking meters everywhere, because he said people would be attracted to the town if they knew it was expensive to park. Then he decided to reduce the cost of the car parks, because he said people would be attracted to the town if they knew it was cheap to park. Some people said he must be clinically insane, but others contended that he was a misunderstood genius, and pointed out that even Einstein had never really got to grips with the concept of parking meters. They said that with this system everyone was a winner - the tourists could choose whether they wanted to park where it was expensive or cheap, and the council and the traffic wardens were happy because nobody really understood when the charges applied and they could carry on throwing parking tickets around like confetti. Yes, when Ahmad Hatter looked at the confused mess around him he could see his two colleagues had been very busy, and that he would really have to pull out the stops to make his mark the second time around.