MARITIME mascot Horatio Herring finally netted his perfect catch this week after his mail order bride returned to Great Yarmouth following cosmetic surgery.

MARITIME mascot Horatio Herring finally netted his perfect catch this week after his mail order bride returned to Great Yarmouth following cosmetic surgery.

The mystery Mrs H returned from her makers, Costumes with Character, following surgery to make her face look less scary. The marriage - at the altar of advertising for Great Yarmouth's 10th maritime festival - had been postponed after her eyes were deemed too narrow, making her look more brute than

cute.

But surgery has since

been carried out to make

her eyes wider, while

small dots have been placed

in between her eyelashes

to soften her facial

features.

Festival chairman

Aileen Mobbs told the Mercury last week Horatio had been a bachelor for too long so the time had come to find the popular mascot a wife.

Local company Seajacks agreed to pay the �1,200 needed to help Horatio

find love in time for

the festival on September 5 and 6.

And talented readers have been letting their poetic thoughts flow on a maritime theme by entering poems about the sea to be read out at the Maritime Festival's closing ceremony.

Mrs Mobbs was

impressed with the

standard of the 27 entries, which spanned the age groups.

The winning poem was A Seashore Stroll, by Pearl Allard, of Jema Close, Great Yarmouth, who receives complimentary tickets to visit the Grand Turk frigate at the festival and a Maritime Festival goodie bag. Her poem is printed on this page.

The runners-up, who will receive festival goodies, are Ivy Nichols, Julie Staff, Denise Mayman and Jon W Carter.

“The entries were

extremely good. The winning entry we just thought read very nicely. It flows nicely and it is easily understood, but the runner-ups were really good as well,” Mrs Mobbs said.

This year's festival boasts

an impressive line-up of attractions along South

Quay including three tall ships, the three-masted barque Artemis, the

Grand Turk and the Jubilee Trust's Lord Nelson, one of only two boats in the world designed for wheelchair users to man.

Families will also be

able to look around the

Lydia Eva, the last steam drifter.

Gorleston-based author Ann Neve will also be at the festival, at a stand run by A Novel Idea bookshop.

She will be promoting

her latest book Footsteps

in the Sea, the sequel to

her first novel Ride Upon

the Storm, which spans

the second world war

and focuses on the Yarmouth area.

The characters from the first story are now grown up and serving on Arctic convoys, on the motor torpedo boats of HMS Midge, based at Yarmouth Fishwharf, and

on the high-speed launches of No 24 Air Sea Rescue Unit, RAF, at Baker Street, Gorleston.