“It’s the same every year,” say Wivenhoe old-timer Keith Secateurs with a lone tear welling up in his remaining working eye, while remnants of his lunchtime Bakewell tart still reside in his short scruffy beard, “As soon as we have the first weekend with even the tiniest glimmer of sunshine every knobhead, fartknocker and arsehat from far and wide comes out to play on the river. Last year we lost three members of the Wivenhoe Women’s Water Skiing display team as some twerk in a powerboat obliterated their carefully constructed pyramid, and the year before loiterers from Brightlingsea’s Naturalist Aqua-aerobics Society ensured that all the pleasure was taken from Wivenhoe Blind School’s annual Touch and Feel riverside adventure day. Someone needs to put a stop to this nonsense and soon. The sooner that bloody Minogue woman gets back from her holidays and does some proper mayoring, the better”.
Mr Secateurs talks, of course, of Wivenhoe’s long-standing mayor, Dame Danni Minogue, who has ruled over the North Essex cityscape for 25 years with an iron fist and a decidedly laissez-faire attitude to how much time she actually spends in Essex. We approached Ms Minogue for a comment, only to be informed by her press officer that: “Dame Dannii is still busy carrying out some important fact-finding mission in Saint Lucia with her masseur Sven or something. She will return once the weather turns nice, but assures people of Wivenhoe that if she were there, she’d definitely give a shit and would be doing the right thing.”
As Winter slowly evolves into Spring, like a dog walker pulling a poo bag from a twisted roll, the number of imbeciles clogging up our water ways has slowly started to rise. As Mr Secateurs rightly points out: “Back on Saint Switherns day, the only thing in the river was a smashed Lucozade bottle from 1982 (with the yellow cellophane still desperately clinging on to it) and a shopping trolley full of Police Academy 3 videos. Now there’s a bit of sunshine and Brad Pips is out in his boat, George C. Loony is paragliding and her from Eastenders is jet skiing up and down like it’s Brands Hatch on a Tuesday afternoon”.
If you too are fed up of the action of these selfish individuals, the Wivenhoe Liberation Front is having its weekly get together by the bins behind the Rose & Crown pub tomorrow night at 7. Be sure to wear your mask to hide your identity and to bring waders and a tool belt.