Grey and withered, this old man, this prophet, he lives at the edge of the moor and the sea, in an old caravan the colour of sour milk. He's lived there for long enough that he's stopped counting the years, and he's forgotten his name and his age and he doesn't know the date or the name of the prime minister either. During the time he's been there, on three occasions he's had to push the caravan a few hundred yards further away from the creeping water. Recently the sea defences at the pleasure beach have pushed the force of the tide further north, and now his piece of shoreline is falling faster. The prophet accepts this, with grim satisfaction, as proof of society's animosity. One day, he knows, they'd learn the truth, and they'd regret everything.
       He stands for hours looking out at the ocean, his body cut to the bone by the icy wind. He feels God in this wind, uncompromising, harsh and fierce and fearsome. He knows God, knows Him better than anyone, out here beyond the chatter and clutter with which people endeavour to shield themselves from His presence. The prophet writes his testament, in neat, caligraphic handwriting, on thick rich paper, and he never makes an error. He knows he is not worthy, but he also knows he's a damn sight worthier than any of the rest of them. He is Chosen, his are the visions, the pain, the glory and the light. And God is the old God, the Old Testament God, He takes no excuses and He is not overly merciful either, or rather He will not be when the time comes. And it's coming, swift and strong. For the prophet, the call of every bird signifies it, every piece of trash washed onto the stony shore is an omen.
       And the tide creeps like a plane of blood-red spiders. Each spider's mouth an open river bursting through candyfloss stalls and RSPB outposts and empty crisp packets like a haemorrhage. And the moor is an ugly mask, stretched until broken over the face of a festering Medusa. The old man sees all this and knows its prophecy. His face rings in the chill breeze. His arthritic body throbs as the wind bites at his face and his bones, testing the steadfast reserves of his soul. The man's breathing is so slow as to suggest that he doesn't breathe at all. He moves with the power of a trembling glacier.
       Each day, after his surveillance, the man returns to his caravan and records his Testament in his rich ornate caligraphics. Nobody knows what he writes in those books. Few have ever seen their mellow leather-backed spines. The caravan sits in the slop and filth at the edge of the mire, like the moor's aborted child. It is slick with grime and pigeon shit because the old man has stopped counting the years since he last washed it. The caravan kneels and groans in the wind.
       One day, the old man wakes up and things have changed. Great school buses, like dusty-yellow bricks, have washed up upon the shore. Nobody troubles them for a few days. Undisturbed on the sands they slumber, vast and curious. Their presence is troubling, but in such a way as not to warrant comment. People stare, yet their presence is such - so undeniable - that that is all they do, and no one takes action to move them. While all the while, the great ridges of pebbles shunted up in arcs around each bus steepen and entrench the buses ever deeper in the sand.
        Three long days pass while the buses lie undisturbed until, on the fourth day, hundreds of men walk up to the buses and start wrenching their doors off. They call themselves teachers but this title is misleading. These teachers are just long-faced tracksuited men who used to work at the pleasure beach machines. The skin on some of them is dyed yellow from nicotine. With great crowbars they jack open the doors and a torrent of children bursts forth. An exodus of children caused by the tide of school buses washed up on the shore. Kids with inhalers; kids with freckles on their ears; kids with ponytails; kids with snotty noses - all of these kids spew forth from the buses and onto the shore.
       The teachers go into the towns; they tell the people that the children must have a museum at which to be educated. They say it is a civil liberty. The people can't argue with that, the children have to be educated. From thin, white houses the people emerge to sign petitions and donate small change. The teachers are threatening in their tracksuits and long hair and grumbling can be heard from many of the houses about how, with the teachers around, things aren't like they used to be. Hushed angry whispers can be heard from post office queues and parking lots and art galleries all over the towns. Their voices say that things aren't as safe now that the teachers are around.
       The old man watches the museum being built from his caravan at the edge of the moor - the lorries unloading their heavy cargo of bricks and mortar. Arms like driftwood by his side he stands and watches. Nobody knows how long the museum will take to build as the only museums in the towns were built a hundred years ago and everyone alive then is now dead or too senile to trust. The teachers collect artefacts for the museum from the beach and the edge of the moor - mostly interesting shells and grasses but occasionally they find empty crisp packets and other pieces of litter, and one even says they found a lizard. The children follow the teachers in a long procession, each with a clipboard underarm.
       The museum is now nearly finished and the teachers regularly take the children up to see the old man in his caravan. The old man is reluctant to answer questions and won't let the children into his caravan. He already has a reputation in the towns for being an old miser and a crackpot. The children ask the old man questions about coastal erosion and planning permission and long-shore drift, then they record his answers in big, messy handwriting in their notebooks. The old man answers the questions sensibly and forthright, but when the ritual becomes too much for him he shouts at the children and the teachers and tells them to go away. Then the teachers drift back into the towns and the children occupy themselves with hide and seek and wooden toys and building castles in the sand until the next day, when the ritual resumes and the questions are taken up again.
       Bothered by the children and the teachers, the old man has far less time to record his testament. The great tomes lie heavy and undisturbed on their shelves, only summoned occasionally in the hours where the children are asleep - the teachers far away amongst the towns. In these periods the voice of the Creator seems less distinct that it was before - softened and transfigured, as if murmured wetly from the moor's thick mouth. Below the sounds of syllabuses and education quotas God's words are bubbling.
       Led by the hand of a small freckled child, the old man is taken to the museum for its grand opening day. Outside the museum two children are playing with a string telephone but the string is slack so that one cannot hear the other. From outside the museum seems a shiny armoured vehicle - a smooth and slippery exfoliate shed by some tremendous reptilian. Hot glass flanks its walls, impervious to any outward resistance. Inside, glass cubicles grasp the secrets of the moor's ungodly births. Under the exhibits are suspended immaculate descriptions in small print of all those processes that are working together to help destroy the old man and his home. The placards neatly splutter out their indignations against hydraulic action and corrosion and attrition and all the other processes that help toward defeating groynes and breakwaters. The old man reads that he too is shattering under the ice of a modern age.
       In the centre of the museum stands a placard bigger that the rest. On this placard lie the words of Chinese philosopher Lao-Tse and they read:

      The old man is led to this placard and to a man standing by the placard in a suit and pressed trousers. This man introduces himself as a Teacher of the Children and tells the old man he has been very useful in helping the teachers and the children set up their museum. The children are going to use the answers the old man gave to their questions in case studies which will be turned into a permanent display in the museum's east-wing. The teacher tells the old man how his help was invaluable and that the old man is recognised in the community as being a great representative of mankind's eternal struggle against the destructive force of nature. "But the tragedy is" the teacher tells the old man, "The tragedy is that man can never win against these forces." He indicates the central placard with a smile."You understand this and the knowledge you have imparted to these children has been invaluable." The man in the grey suit and the pressed trousers offers the old man a job at the museum. The old man is now very old and very frail. Worn down by the terrible rigours of the daily grind, he accepts the position - the Prophet in the Museum imparting his knowledge to all those who will listen. And he works at the museum until he dies, and they pay him £5.81 an hour and the tide breaks upon the shoreline and the tide breaks upon the pleasure beach, and the waves die and grow, and God closes and opens his eyes.