Everyone who comes to Folkestone, everyone who picks up a tourist pamphlet on the town, buys a postcard, Google’s Folkestone, or sees Folkestone on the internet or TV is always greeted by scenes of a colourful seaside town, but at the heart of that messaging for more than a decade has been a Mermaid.

A real mermaid - well as real as it gets.

You see we grew up with Georgina Baker, went to the same school, we were even cub scouts together (yes George was a cub and an amazingly cool one too). And during the Triennial she applied to be, and was chosen from a list of applicants, to be the lifecast for the bronze Folkestone mermaid that sits atop a large granite boulder on Sunny Sands. For tourists and other folk she is absolutely hand in glove part of the Folkestone diaroma. Every time Dan or I walk past her (which is regular as we are so tight as to park on East Cliff and walk to town) we have to smile, with a mixture of huge pride and hubris, that our George is sat on the rock. My eldest, Christopher, now 14, met her a few weeks after the lifecast was put in place but was tiny in a pushchair, and they’ve grown up me telling them about this amazing girl who became an amazing principled woman and mother and who is forever Folkestone’s Mermaid.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr Daniel File and Ms Georgina Baker.

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