There’s a lot of big metal diggers on the beach at the moment. This is partly because of the developments next to the remains of the West Pier* but also, for a more seasonal reason, as this is the time of year when many seaside resorts rearrange their beaches. Alongside the knickknack shops and cafés getting their annual face-lifts, the stones themselves are being groomed. Some years ago I saw several bulldozers in a line combing the shore between the Palace Pier and the marina and, viewed from the upper promenade, they looked like mechanical Buddhist monks raking a huge Zen garden.

This practice seems cosmetic but is in fact entirely sensible. After a heavy storm, Hove promenade can be buried under beach rubble and many of the groynes become so banked up with stones on the western side that they spill over on to the walkways themselves. And the tides don’t just go in and out, currents also move vast amounts of matter in different directions over time. It’s a constant struggle to stop Brighton beach ending up in Newhaven, while Newhaven’s ends up in Eastbourne. So, while every year, throughout the year, the tides wash stones along the coast, every year in February, contractors are employed to gather up these migrant beaches in great lorry loads and put them all back where they started.

I have seen a more extreme example of this annual ritual in Minehead, a seaside town on the North coast of Somerset, but that’s another story…

* We are to have a new tower of Babel sprouting on the shore, a rotating vertical replacement for the derelict one that, ahem, accidentally burned down a few years ago.