Saltcoats
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Saltcoats is a small town located on the west coast of Ayrshire, Scotland. It has a population of around 10,000. Its name comes from its history as a salt mining town, and is a shortened form of "The Salt Workers' Cottages".
Saltcoats is a popular holiday destination for Glaswegians during the summer months. Principal characters include Sir Caoimhin Mac Cormaig, or 'Lance Longhorn Wellington' as he now prefers to be known, a member of Scotland's highly successful Karate team whose career was tarnished by alcohol problems, and Scoatt Mac Coavy, a local singer and entertainer who achieved a short period of success throughout the South West of Scotland as a James Brown impersonator.
Since the writing of this page, Sir Caoimhin has progressed slowly, if painfully, out of his slump. After a short spell, when he reached the gutter levels of heroin addiction and prostitution, he has made a determined and gritty rise back to respectability. Aided only by his 'keen lance of hatred', he has started a punishing training regime of running up nearby Kaim Hill daily, swimming and karate. Early of a Sunday morning he may be seen on the beach practising 'kata', naked, toned and with mongoosian focus.
The town itself, however, continues its steady decline. Since the heady days as Scotland's prime holiday resort in the 60's, she has now descended into a backwater of nothing more than pound shops, a Woolworths and a cheap toyshop or two. Government attempts at economic regeneration continue to fail, and recently the town appeared in a Sky TV documentary of 'Britain's Toughest Seaside Resorts'. Scoatt Mac Coavy is standing as the SNP candidate for the north of the town in the next election and, he quotes, 'I'm gonnae gie this toon a spark, a boot up the erse it needs. I'm gonnae make this a toon we can a' be prood o. The councillors methodology to revitalisation is being questioned by the town's elderly though, who fear such initiatives as building the world's largest James Brown theme park (built on the site of the old Anderson drive, personally raized to the ground by prospective councillor Mac Coavy two years ago while dressed as Darth Vader following to much alcohol during on of the Quinn's famed halloween parties), and transforming the harbour area into 'a modern day hive o' scum and villainy to rival onyhin' Blackbeard could produce', could damage the town's already suspect reputation.