The mysterious Whitstable bait diggers…

Well, first off, they’re probably not mysterious at all, but something very spooky happened..

These two chaps pop up throughout Jenks and both have a minor speaking role with one of the main villains in the story. I remembered them from many years ago when my mum had a house in sight of the beach in Seasalter, which is right next to Whitstable, in fact it’s really part of Whitstable, but a lot quieter.

I noticed them many times over the years, and the men here are probably not the ones I used to see, but who knows.

One day fairly recently it looked like a storm was coming in and I thought it was an opportunity to take a few photos of the beach and moody sky to use as the basis for the cover of the paperback version of JENKS, so jumped in the car and raced down to the beach. That idea didn’t work out so they found their way onto the back cover, courtesy of an oil painting by my wife.

Literally as soon as I set up to take the photos, who should come walking down the beach towards the mud but the two figures from my memory. I confess I had an urge to walk out and say, ‘Hey, guess what, you’ll never believe this but..’ However, they were suitably booted up to walk out onto the mud and do what they do, and I had flip flops on, so it was a non starter.

Here they are walking down the beach when I first noticed them and almost had a heart attack.

On that day the sky was the most amazing colour, reflecting on the mud to make it look as if the whole scene had been coloured in with various shades of a good quality graphite pencil. You can make out the bait diggers just beyond the remains of the old wreck.

I’ve no idea who these men are – in the book one is called Syd.

And here’s part of the painting that ended up on the back cover.