One of the UK's few remaining top quality waves is under threat. This picture gives a hint - but no more - of the glory that is the Fleetwood Funnel. I first heard about the Funnel this summer, during the three week flat spell that saw grown men taking to skateboards and grown skateboards taking to pavements, rather in manner of the clerk in Pawel Huelle's intriguing novel Castorp (he pioneers an academic theory of pavements only to remain a prophet without honour in his hometown, the surf-haven of Gdansk). Anyway, during said flat spell, from which some of us have yet to recover, the talk turned to the one true gem of UK surf culture: the Fleetwood Funnel. I listened, awestruck, as seasoned funnel-surfers spoke of a reef formed by discarded shopping trolleys which, bombarded by south-westerly swell, lights up to produce A-frame lefts and rights of unparalleled beauty.
A picture exists of the Funnel and it was possibly once seen in a surf shop, somewhere. Despite its near-mythical status, funnel-surfers are not possessive - they welcome all comers to their slice of oceanic paradise in Lancashire. But they are angry. They're angry about a lot of things, from the price of cacti to the unreliability of formica desks, from Gordon Brown's pre-budget statement (where was the humour?) to the environmental, not to mention socio-cultural, impact of having John Prescott at large in Hull again, but most of all they're angry about plans afoot in Fleetwood to decimate the famous Funnel with the creation of a marina.
The marina would ruin the Funnel forever. No Mundaka miracle here: it would gone, lost, destroyed. So help the Funnel surfers now. Just say 'The Fleetwood Funnel is the best wave in the UK and must be saved' if anyone asks. And check out the charts and head to Lancs one day - this wave is a classic.
Of Team Hillary and Barack 'Get Involved' Obama, who would you choose? Which one knows a slash from a cutback? Or a gouge from a slab? Who would you trust to say 'no' to Monica, 'yes' to point break perfection, 'maybe' to buying a longboard when your shortboard days are over and yet still be able to be The World's Policeman? 
