My first treat of the morning, other than it not raining when I took the girls around, was a sky dotted with celestial bodies. Due to a combination of a bright gibbous moon and the impending dawn, I think that I could only see the bright stars and planets, but it was still splendorous, regardless. 

I had to wait for daylight to see the exciting spectacle of the sea in full fury, although I could do nothing but hear it earlier. Most of the bay was covered in strings and patches of foam, rolling deeply with the waves moving in multiple directions. Waves were coming over the Harbour wall in great lumps, launching up Aire Point and Creagle opposite and dancing on top of Cowloe that was just a mess of white water.

Into this churning maelstrom came a lone person on a surfboard, paddling out from what little beach there was left by waves pounding and running up the sand. It was hard to see what he was trying to achieve because there was not one surfable wave in the bay. All he succeeded in doing was getting a sound thrashing with every wave he encountered and a couple of times parting company with his board. Maybe he was trying to cure a hangover.

It is hard to tell with the tide out, but it looks like there is a bit of an incline at the top of the beach. While I looked this morning, there was a couple, in swimsuits, standing on the slope letting waves lump into them. This looked like fun until one was knocked off their feet and had to be hauled up by the other as a wave threatened to pull them out. The sea state was really quite severe and, I think, even standing on the sand inside its reach was not the best of places to be.

The Lifeguards were apparently late on parade or were just looking for enough sand on which to place their red flag. When I looked a little later, there was a group of around fifteen people lined up looking at the sea not far from the Lifeguard hut. They were fully dressed, so clearly not there to catch a bit of sun. Much later, they were still roughly in the same spot, although more gathered around than in a line. I could not see what they might have been up to and will have to make enquiries later. If it was a litter pick, it was all in the same, now very clean, ten square metres.

Late in the morning, we started to see a little action in the shop. It was busier than it had been all week and consisted of quite a lot of going home present buying. As the afternoon drifted on, we actually became quite busy with an almost continuous stream of people passing through the shop. We even sold some posh mugs, which was a pleasant surprise and as things were going so swimmingly it was high time for an upset.

It came in the form of a response to a query I had placed with the ‘Exchange for Change’ people. This is the jack-booted body that is inflicting on the retail world unimaginably draconian conditions related to the collection of plastic and aluminium used drinks containers. The dreaded DRS – Deposit Return Scheme.

I had previously reported that rural stores under 100 metres squared were automatically exempt and had breathed a sigh of relief. It now seems that I had been misled. The lasts missive from the organisation countered that information, so I wrote to ask for clarity which I had back in spades.

The message I had back was very clear that rural stores under 100 metres squared must still register on the system and subsequently apply for exemption. I was pointed at the guidance that had been drafted, suitably entitled “Return Point Exemptions Criteria”. It is thirteen pages long. Since we were relatively quiet during the afternoon, I read it.

There are two routes to salvation. The first is by having a willing party within ‘reasonable proximity’ who will be taking in the bottles and cans. More than half the pages of the document are dedicated to the criteria defining the other store and ‘reasonable proximity’: its size,; the opening hours; the public transport around it; walking routes to it; the relationship to the hours; and location relative to the store seeking the exemption. Once all that had been taken into account, it was still a subjective opinion by someone who almost certainly had no knowledge of the local area or the nature of tourist areas.

The second route is premises-based. If it is not reasonable to host a return point because of the characteristics of the building, I can apply for exemption on this basis. This is our best hope and the one that we will be applying under. We will be required to jump through far more hoops than we were for the pavement licence and some of them may cost money. Scale plans must be submitted, fire safety reports by a certified fire assessor, ventilation constraints certified by a suitable assessor of some sort and so forth. If I felt there were questions over the parentage of the pavement licence people, these guys had been spawned from the combined offspring of Machiavelli, Marquis de Sade and Genghis Khan and Vlad the Impaler. I suspect that if we are to attain exemption – which we are told can be revoked at any time – we would need to sacrifice our first born and sell our souls to a deity of their choosing.

All we can do at present is register and mark the box to indicate that we wish to apply for an exemption. I must then wait for the boys at Exchange for Change head office to decide the rules and the process for exemptions all while with big sack of rusty pop cans hanging over my head – swords hanging by horse hairs have been condemned as an unacceptable health and safety risk, apparently.

While I fretted over how I might deal with bags of dirty cans and bottles while serving pasties, the weather changed on us. The blue skies and bright sunshine we had during the morning disappeared while I was distracted and was replaced with a blanket of grey, albeit light grey, cloud. I do not think that we were expecting any rain, but the temperature dipped a bit and, eventually, our customers ran off. Never mind, it was undoubtedly one of the better days of the week, if not the best. It was just a shame that the devastating news on DRS had taken the shine off it.

A good Lifeboat launching would have made all the difference after that but with the sea state being unhelpful, we had a presentation to take part in instead. We had been subjected to the introduction of Human Factors a while back by a wandering head office refugee. It is the collection of soft skills that the Institution has embarked on imbuing us with. Things like communication skills that negate misunderstandings, learning new terms, like ‘authority gradient’ and ‘plan continuation bias’, and being aware of deficiencies in previous things we had learned. 

Tonight, we had one of our own, a member of the very excellent Shore Crew, telling us more. It is testament to the obvious skills of the team that the Institution thought to poach one of us for such an important role. It goes without saying, of course, it was a textbook presentation and led discussion and we all learnt big things – and far too many to mention. 

We are, after all, a very multi-talented, very excellent Shore Crew.