Lyttelton benches offer ‘splinter risk’ adventure by the sea – Joe Bennett

Viewer beware in Lyttelton, says columnist Joe Bennett, about two new sitting benches. Photo / George Heard

Here in Lyttelton we have a fine new Coastguard building. As you’d expect it stands close to the water and from its windows you can see out through the heads to the open sea. Kipling called the open sea the great grey widow-maker, and it’s hard to conjure a better phrase.

Time was when people put to sea only out of necessity – to trade, or to fish or to wage war. We still do all these things but today we do so in ships so mighty that they rarely come to grief, make widows or call on the Coastguard.

Instead the Coastguard exists to serve another form of sea-goer, the evidence of whom is in the sheds and lock-ups, the slipways, the haul-out areas and the hard standing that surround the Coastguard building. Here are the yachts and the dragon boats and the jetskis and the motorboats and the paddleboards and the trailer-sailers and the windsurfers and all the other paraphernalia of recreation.

None of these vessels needs to put to sea. None serves a purpose other than pleasure. And the pleasure is in the thrill of taking on the great grey widow-maker and wringing excitement from the risk. It’s as if we crave the danger that modern life has largely excised.

Now, on two sides of the Coastguard building there are benches. They are simple things, each consisting of a rough-hewn hunk of wood that looks to have spent a long time underwater. I am guessing they were sawn from the thousands of piles in Lyttelton port that were damaged during the earthquakes of 2011.

I doubt the benches were installed to accommodate people queueing for Coastguard services, so I can only imagine they are for the benefit of those who cannot or do not wish to disport themselves on the widow-making water – the very old, the very young, the infirm, the nervous or the mere landlubber – who need somewhere to wait and watch while others go at it. So far, so pleasant.

However, affixed to each of these benches is a plastic notice and it’s a remarkable thing. “Caution”, says each notice (and I promise I am not making this up), “Splinter Risk”.

One’s first thought, naturally, is that a series of the old, the young, the infirm and so on have sat on one or other of the offending benches, felt a sudden exquisite pain, leapt from the bench clutching a gently bleeding buttock and marched into the Coastguard building to complain.

But on second thoughts that seems improbable. For if the Coastguard has been made aware of the risk, if a succession of landlubbers have traipsed into its offices clutching a dripping buttock, surely it would be the Coastguard’s responsibility to mitigate that risk to the extent it is reasonably able to do so. That would mean, at the very least, sanding the timber, and if this led to a slight loss of architectural effect, well it was a small price to pay for the safety of the public bottom. And if sanding proving ineffective, then a coat of marine varnish or polyurethane would surely be called for. But neither of these things appeared to have been done.

Ever willing to sacrifice my wellbeing for the sake of investigative journalism, I sat on one of the dangerous benches, right next to the warning sign. Nothing. No sudden piercing. No hint of sharpness. Gingerly I ran a hand along the timber. Nothing.

Now, it is possible that the sign is an example of ultra-caution in this litigious age, like the sign on a bottle of toilet cleaner warning you not to tip it on your cornflakes of a morning. But is it also possible that the sign is a subtle act of kindness? That its purpose is to give the bench-sitters a little of what their friends at sea are getting, a sense that by sitting on this perilous bench they too are taking a risk, giving them a sniff of the danger that modern life effectively eliminates? Is it? If so, I think the Coastguard should be congratulated.