Baywatch meets Shameless: A day with lifeguards on a UK beach

It's an idyllic day by the British seaside - albeit with slight anarchic undertones. We're on the beach at Viking Bay in Broadstairs, Kent: a satisfying crescent of dirty blond sand sandwiched between sheer chalk cliffs and a horseshoe of water. It's a Wednesday morning in early August and the temperature is already in the early 20's with just a light breeze. On the sand, for the modest sum of £1 per child, the children laugh while Mr Punch chases the crocodile with a stick. Older people sit outside the pastel colored beach huts (perhaps a little smug?) sipping tea. Groups of teenage boys carefully ignore groups of teenage girls, and vice versa. A faint aroma of fried sea creatures and not enough SPF30 fills the air.

And people are digging holes: big, deep, ambitious trenches in the sand. Not all, but most are the proud work of fathers and sons, and at any given time there could be half a dozen major construction projects around Viking Bay, as if a treasure map had been drawn with an overabundance of X points, or there has been a flurry of lost car keys. The tools, typically, are the beach staples of the bucket and spade, but the real pros bring a garden shovel from home. One of them, Matt from Chingford in east London, searched at 10 a.m. up to a meter, just below the waist of his 10-year-old son. Why does he do it? "My boy likes to sit in the hole," he says, "he finds it soothing." Matt is so absorbed in the task that he doesn't notice that a gull has run off with half his breakfast.