The Sandy Island Problem

I was woken at 6.30 one morning by a hammering my back door. ‘Who can that be at this early hour?’ I wondered.

I quickly threw on some clothes and headed downstairs at full speed. It was Alun.

“It’s Sandy Island Jed, it doesn’t exist.”

“Doesn’t exist?” I said, confused. “But we’re twinned with it. We’re about to set off to the island for our twinning ceremony, remember?”

The mainland council is obsessed with town twinning, with the mainland councillors frequently enjoying jollies to twinned towns on the coasts of Spain, France and Italy at taxpayers expense. A few weeks ago Alun had woken me early (by hammering on my back door) to inform me that the council had arranged for our island to be twinned with Sandy Island, an idyllic isle just off the mainland of Australia.

Alun and I had been really excited at the idea of twinning and even more enthused when the council announced that they planned a trip to the island as part of an official ‘twinning agreement’. As the sole residents of Happy Island Alun and I were asked to accompany the councillors on the trip. We were due to leave later that day, hence my confusion at the sudden anti-discovery.

“I don’t understand,” I said “it must exist, it’s on the map. The council would hardly have organised a twinning with a non-existent place, they’re not idiots.”

“There’s been a terrible cartographical error, Jed. It’s all over today’s papers, look,” he passed me one of the mainland papers that the boatman had brought with him. Undiscovered Island’ said the headline.

“Scientists had planned to use the island as a base for their study into plate tectonics Jed, but when they got there, there was no island. They had to abandon their research write an article about the missing island instead.”

“If it never existed how did they know it was sandy? It could have been pebbly island, or rocks-only island.”

“That’s the author’s prerogative Jed. Whoever made up the island, clearly decided to invent an unspoiled idyll rather than a barren, rocky shithole.”

“But who would invent an island in the middle of nowhere?”

“The CIA Jed! The cartographers have delved into the issue and found that the islands first appeared on maps produced by the CIA, before spreading onto other maps.”

“This sounds like a mad conspiracy theory, people trying to spite our attempt at island-twinning.”

“It’s real Jed, it’s in the Guardian.”

Alun was right. The Guardian never lies. However how strange it seemed it must be true.

That’s a real shame,” I said, “I’ve been looking forward to the trip.”

“So had I Jed, I was all packed and ready to go. But we can’t twin with a non-existent place, that would be foolish. We can just be thankful that we didn’t get to the other side of the world only to find that the island wasn’t there.”

“And it would have been my first trip abroad. It would have been terrible to travel for the first time only to find the entire trip wasted. We’d better let the council know, we don’t want them to set off to the other side of the world for no reason.”

“There’s no need Jed, the story’s all over the news, there’s no way they wouldn’t have heard about it.”

Alun was wrong! The councillors were all so excited about their latest freebie jaunt to a sunny isle, thus escaping the British winter where they’d be besieged by council tenants wanted their heating fixed, they didn’t bother to check the news. They also didn’t wait for us or try and find out why we hadn’t turned up. Thus, in the true spirit of elected officials, they went to twin absent islanders with a non-existent island.
It’s been six months now. They should have been there and back in three weeks, somehow they must have got lost trying to find an island that wasn’t there.

I was woken unexpectedly at just after 6.00 this morning by a hammering on my back door. It was Alun. “I’ve been thinking Jed,” he said, “without the council interfering our island is enjoying a boom time, it’s been good for trade, for tourism and for the environment. We should become independent from the mainland. As soon as the council returns we should hold a referendum on independence. It could become the most important political decision of our time.”

“Well whatever it is Alun it’ll have to wait ‘til the next story, this one’s finished.”