AS Herself got into the car – actually she hadn’t got into it, she was watching me load bags into the boot – she told me that ‘with everything falling down and going to pieces’ around me I had to find something positive with which to start my next column. So here goes.

Almost since I can remember, the Seymour family have been an often solitary beacon of optimism in an increasingly pessimistic tourism industry. They started with George Seymour – the present chairman Robin’s dad and the grandfather of the family’s current ‘face’, David – and what was, from memory, the Merton guest house at the top of Halkett Place. And by giving the punters what they wanted at a price they could afford, the oaks of the Merton, Pomme d’Or, Tams down at St Brelade, the Portelet (I’ve probably forgotten one or two along the way) and now the Watersplash have grown.

I am delighted that the family plans to develop the Watersplash, and not only because of the fond memories – some of which cannot be repeated – I have of the place and the people I’ve met there. Reference was made in this newspaper to Ronnie Hilton, but I recall that with him at the top of the bill that year was comedian Joe Baker, who also had a fine voice. I remember, too, a very nice fair-haired young woman dancer from that year and, hoping that I’ve got the name right, someone behind the bar called Cindy. But I’m digressing just a bit too much for my own good, I fear.

I remember also Malcolm Vaughan and Kenneth Earl – there were frequent references (which looked like weekly football scores) to the latter and impresario Dick Ray in the JEPs of that era. I wonder what that was all about?
And of course the whole shooting match was presided over by Harry Swanson, whose perhaps better-known brother Tommy owned and ran the Opera House and Swanson’s Hotel – another first-class cabaret venue of the 1960s, as were Les Arches (I saw Jerry Dorsey – better known as Engelbert Humperdinck – there one year), Jimmy Muir’s Sunshine Hotel, the Plaza at West’s and the Rainbow Room above the New Era Cinema.

Of course, as those with long memories will recall, Harry Swanson also had exciting plans for the Watersplash. Indeed, for their time they were probably just as exciting as are those of the Seymour family. Unless my memory has really gone totally haywire, I think they included the provision of an Olympic-standard swimming pool – and this a full decade at least before that lot in the Big House finally removed their collective digit and built a smaller one at Fort Regent, only to box it up (and, surprise, surprise, regret it almost immediately) less than a generation later.

The Big House of the day – about on a par with their successors in being, on occasions, about as useful as a chocolate teapot – appointed what was then known as a special committee, and that august body was in office for years while achieving just about zilch.

In the end, unless I’m hugely mistaken, Harry Swanson got so fed up with what I would describe as wilful obstruction from our elected representatives that he declared that other than give the place the occasional coat of paint, he wasn’t going to do a damn thing to the premises. And I’d hazard a guess that there were thousands among the great unwashed like me who had more than a touch of sympathy with him.

Whether the Seymour family will get any further with their plans for the location remains to be seen. Quite frankly, the mere mention of turning a sod of earth anywhere between Corbière lighthouse at one end and Ken Vibert’s place at Grosnez at the other usually heralds one of those suspiciously spontaneous letter-writing campaigns – about as spontaneous as me expressing a liking for Calvados, I suspect – from the dog-walkers and tree-huggers who more often than not are fortunate enough to live in or close to the location I have described.

As I write, so I raise a glass with a finger or four of the aforementioned liquid in the fervent hope that the nimby brigade will not get their selfish way and the Watersplash will be developed for the future benefit of residents and visitors alike, just like Harry Swanson wanted to do almost half a century ago.

MUCH as I’d like to continue in a positive vein – and I don’t expect the nimby brigade to agree it’s positive, but there’s no pleasing some of them, particularly those who complain about the smell when liquid manure is spread on nearby fields – this week’s episode of ‘The Shambles in the Big House’ precludes it.

The police thought that an edict signed by Home Affairs Minister Wendy Kinnard gave them the power to detain people indefinitely, and lawyers apparently thought the same. Yet the minister, faced with that, and, from what I read, a number of her colleagues sharing that view, effectively shrugged her shoulders and declared that she was the only one marching in step.

Frightening? Not half. Almost as frightening as the disclosure by former St Helier Constable Bob Le Brocq that he and his then Chef de Police Ted Gallichan were searched, had their possessions removed and were banged up for more than eight hours, apparently by officers from the Wiltshire police but here in Jersey.

Those who put the Home Affairs Minister on the spot were absolutely right to do so. As a matter of urgency, the question of the circumstances under which people are deprived of their liberty needs to be debated fully, with perhaps the onus being placed on the police to justify their actions rather than the detained person having to challenge the detention.

AND finally . . . So, handing over an alleged skull fragment to the States pathology department means releasing it, does it? Interestingly convenient, some might say.