This Is Jersey

CHEZ Clement is now getting back to somewhere near normality after one of those fortnights that, when it’s over, feels like half a lifetime.

No doubt I’ll get one of those looks when you know who reads this but that’s just another way of saying that Herself’s family once again decided that they wanted a cheap holiday and so, at what felt like about ten minutes’ notice, four of them descended upon us.

Obesity isn’t the word for this lot – give them a slice and they’ll eat the loaf, if you get my drift, and when it comes to drinking tea (an exercise I always consider to be a waste of valuable stomach space), the kettle was always on and you couldn’t get in the kitchen for dirty cups.

Sadly, the weather over the last couple of weeks has been quite nice, which has meant that they’ve either come in just as it was time for more food, having traipsed half a beach worth of sand in with them, or they’ve ‘coincidentally’ arrived at the breakwater about ten minutes after I’d cast for the first time.

Put simply, individually and collectively – the two brats were just as bad as the parents – they have managed to cock up half of what might otherwise have been a quite pleasant month of June and, as Herself and I made sure they were getting on the Commodore Clipper the other evening (they use that because there’s plenty of time to have a good meal on board, they told me), I remarked that once again that’s one fortnight I won’t forget in
a hurry.

Idon’t know whether it was a bit of a peace offering or what but the following day Herself arrived back from the metropolis with a couple of these new-fangled phones that you can walk about with – not mobiles – which, along with counsellors and personnel departments, must rate among the most uselessly annoying things ever put on this earth.

Having explained the ins and out of the machine – like the electronic abacus and typewriters with a television screen, these things take some working out for simple country boys like me – she instantly lifted me out of the family hangover from which I was suffering by telling me that it would even work in The Shed.

I needed no second bidding and within a minute or so was chatting away with my mate in Guernsey – the one who went on a day trip to see the Muratti years ago, met one of the female carrot crunchers and has been there ever since.

In fact, and I digress for a moment, both his parents went to their graves thinking that he’d gone to work somewhere in the north of England, so frightened he was to admit that he was living in the colonies.

Anyhow, for some strange reason he started talking about cricket, a game which, I’ve always believed, took about as much time to complete as I take to land a couple of snipe and a mackerel or two and, to my mind, is nowhere near as exciting as fishing.

Apparently, according to him – and he assured me he was only on his first slug of calvados – there was some big cricket competition here a few weeks back and the paper over there sent someone across to watch it.

To cut a long story short, the colony’s eleven either didn’t play or were despatched into well-deserved oblivion early on and the final was between us lot and, I kid you not, Afghanistan, of all places. The fact that Jersey lost is neither here nor there for the purpose of this tale – what really upset my mate was reading in the paper over there that the bloke they’d sent to report on the match said that he couldn’t bring himself to cheer for Jersey.

Actually, given the source, the statement doesn’t surprise me one little bit, despite the fact that I’ve always reckoned that I’m fair-minded enough to cheer for Guernsey if they’re up against anyone but us.

Indeed, I can remember being pleased to be a Channel Islander when two Guernsey girls – I’ve a feeling they were called Lisa Opie and Martine Le Moignan, but I can’t be certain – used to do very well against world-class players at squash. Similarly, I don’t exactly throw teddies out of the pram when anyone from there gets a medal at the Commonwealth Games, so why is it that they all seem to have this massive chip-on-the-shoulder (the size of Castle Cornet on occasions) hang-up when it comes to us doing well at anything?

I have often said that I and fellow crapauds share a lot of common ground – not to mention values ( a dirty word, these days, it seems) – with the fictional character Ebenezer Le Page, and it genuinely saddens me when I hear of people from there taking what used to be fairly friendly, if intense, sporting rivalry that step too far.

Indeed, it reminds me of a conversation I had once with a couple of Australians. They chatted while I was fishing and inevitably, them being Australians, the conversation got round to sport. Thinking that they would say England or Britain, I asked them who they’d shout for if Australia weren’t involved and in chorus, just like the Luton Girls’ Choir, they both said: ‘Anyone playing New Zealand.’

I’ve always regarded Guernsey people as cousins – distant ones, perhaps – but having heard my mate I am now tempted to say what Ebenezer Le Page’s aunt said when she stormed out of her sister’s house after a quarrel.
‘We are no longer relations!’

And finally . . . A bouquet from this bolshie little crapaud is now being lobbed in the direction of Deputy Carolyn Labey for her sensible observation that this place should think long and hard before applying to be a world heritage site. There’s a flip side to every coin, no matter how attractive it seems.

Article posted on 30th June, 2008 - 3.00pm