Surely, I argued to myself, only a hard-hearted authority would refuse a vehicle in its hour of need?

Until I realised that the word wasn't 'refuse' but well – ahem – 'refuse', if you get my drift. Which got me thinking about words with more than one pronunciation and meaning.

Some words change merely by giving them a capital letter; Name me two (you have ten seconds). Here's a clue; they both have a geographical reference.

Time's up. The words are reading and polish.

Give them caps and they become a town in Berkshire, and an increasingly common type of plumber.

In similar, if not identical vein is Stan Laurel's brilliant piece of nonsensical wisdom, "you can take a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead."

They do say on certain nights, with the wind in the right direction, Stan's statue in Dockwray Square, North Shields, can be heard to whisper said witticism.

Meantime, that cornucopia of information, the letters column last week, had an offering from Trish Coles of Newcastle, on the state of the Tynemouth open air pool.

Trish writes vividly about the pool's halcyon days of the '50s and '60s, but on a recent visit confesses: "I felt as if I had walked into a horror movie.

"To see it like it is today is deplorable and North Tyneside Council should be ashamed," she continues.

It is several years since the council decided to turn the pool into 'a rock feature'. This entailed a lorry backing up to the cliff top, and emptying its load of boulders down the slope into the decaying pool, after which the driver enjoyed an ice-cream from the nearby Mr Whippy van.

Visitors now flock to the site, and exclaim, 'gosh, a load of old boulders in a rusting hulk of an open-air pool!'

Birds are also regular visitors, and perch on the boulders without uttering a single complaint.

Let me mention the Scarborough experience. Scarborough had the South Bay open-air pool which closed in 1990, and then fell into dereliction. After 13 years of inertia, the pool was filled in and the area was tidied up in 2003.

In 2005 work started, not on a rock feature, but an ambitious horizontal 'star map' which was officially opened in January 2006.

This was jointly funded by Scarborough Borough Council, and Yorkshire Forward, and also involved Scarborough Urban Renaissance Public Space Group, Create, and Scarborough and Ryedale Astronomical Society.

You can walk right across the star map, (it's made of concrete and asphalt) or you can stand on the cliff above it, and from the special chart, locate the 42 brightest circumpolar stars (ones that never set), as seen from Scarborough itself.

The map also marks the position of sunrise points over the North Sea for various dates in the year.

This star map is the largest in the EU and possibly Europe, and something of which Scarborough is rightly proud. Who is proud of our 'rock feature'?

It is another aspect of a northern seaside town (admittedly much bigger than Tynemouth or Whitley Bay) which, while retaining its Victorian appeal, had pulled itself into the 21st century.

Scarborough seafront has been imaginatively renovated and gleams with paint and new fixtures.

In summer the lively resort has the right mixture of charm and vulgarity, and still attracts that species mainly vanished for our own seafront, the family group.

You can still see Kiss me Quick Hats, beach donkeys and Donald McGill-style postcards, but Scarborough's not trapped in the past, nor rotting away.

Our own council apparently has invited entrepreneurs (who else?) to come up with ideas for the Tynemouth pool, and is 'now evaluating the responses'.

Here's one suggestion; as we stutter and stumble along with our endlessly changing plan for seafront regeneration, why not send a delegation of councillors for a few days to Scarborough?

This might be more constructive and useful (and cheaper?) than the same council's latest jaunt – despatching three delegates to the 'jolly' of world-wide property developers held in – wait for it – Cannes.

PETER MORTIMER