IT all happened in a flash. One minute perched with pruning shears among the branches of a decaying pommier in what passes for a garden in my Southern France retreat, the next, spread-eagled in the cabbage patch, vaguely aware of a crescent of questioning eyes.

Then, and I can’t tell you how long after, to the accompaniment of the flat two-tone horn – they still have them in France – a bumpy dash in a rustic ambulance to Hôpital Robert Boulin in Libourne, emerging  a day later with a bump to the head, a stiff back and a bandaged gash to my left thigh.

Let me quickly reassure any potential pilgrims to my bedside, the incident occurred a good two years ago with a full recovery, but the point is, immediately I became a casualty in a foreign land, I was whisked away to receive the best Gallic medical attention, with no question of ‘Are you going to pay for this?’
In days of living in the UK, I’d always ensure I carried my E101 form every time I ventured across the Channel, and, in any case, had underwritten my trip with foreign travel insurance.

Well, you do it for your car, so why not your body?

Channel Islanders, by the way, have long learned to examine the small print.  And there’s the rub. Although we can see it on a clear day, France is, after all, foreign, isn’t it? Due north, bound by allegiance, lies the mainland of our kith and kin.

So the prospect of the Department of Health ending the reciprocal agreement that provides comfort and succour if you fall sick on each other’s soil, is understandably painful. Far from being a ‘nice to have’, it’s a token of mutual respect and brotherhood for all those living under the same monarch and flag. As it happens, there is nothing to stop the UK ending the agreement.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that there’s precious little reciprocity in it. A couple of hundred doses of summer sunburn cream in Gloucester Street Outpatients can never match sophisticated cancer treatment across the water. It never was going to be a business quid-pro-quo agreement, more a ‘duty of care’ provided to the smaller, more vulnerable member of the national family.

Back in the 1970s, when the ‘understanding’ was entered into, we were a far less materialistic bunch; the NHS was then not patrolled by the ‘target police’; relations between the UK health providers and our own establishment were relaxed and fraternal.

Indeed my former GP in London did a turn on the wards in St Helier as part of a teaching/experience regime.

The problem is, of course, the NHS has fallen victim to health tourists milking its ever-dwindling resources with every budget-blowing malady under the sun, blown in on each successive wave of unrestricted migration.

Compensation payouts are leaching its reserves to the point where every cut becomes more unkind, and now even its friends are at risk.

In the end – as with so many things these days – it’ll come down to costs, priorities, and the ability to pay.

Recent experience sadly suggests it will be those in most need who will be furthest from the benefit trolley. Some are already experiencing hardship as a result of the ‘20 means 20’ welfare readjustment.
Will the States, having first pleaded Business Plan poverty and restraint, then found extra resources to fund costly pre-election amendments, be in a position to underwrite expensive treatment in UK hospitals for those Islanders incapable of paying?

Our good relationship with our UK friends depends on a background of positive ‘understandings’. It’s the climate in which successive generations of the Island’s young men and women have enlisted unquestioningly to fight for monarch and country. Our athletes compete as fully representative members of ‘team GB’. 

For better or worse, we are thoroughly bound into UK practices, attitudes, economy – even weather forecasts – though perhaps we should not say too much about the last two!

Not surprisingly, we learned recently that kilometres of ugly security fencing is about to be erected around the Airport perimeter. Not because it’s particularly necessary here, but because the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority wants it for ‘security reasons’.

We are, in effect, UK in everything but name. Last week’s referendum on an extra hour of summer time was a case in point. Whatever its merits, to adopt CET would have been bizarre unless the UK chose to do as well.

During a recent seminar on independence at the Arts Centre, speakers contended that the UK is tilting its emphasis away from the Channel Islands to the EU, so stretching traditional links with us.

That’s not immediately going to inspire me to vote for independence from the Crown. I remain convinced that a lot of little self-serving fish swimming around in a deepish pond quickly get ignored – or eaten.
But it might lead me to question which allegiance to be associated with – perhaps even to favour one which already has that extra hour of daylight.

Whether or not it promotes increased road safety, in France it is against the law not to offer aid to another traveller who may have been involved in an accident or injured by the wayside – that dates back to Napoleon, not known as a particularly friendly chap.

Just think, if HRH Princess Anne had suffered anything more serious than a stumble during her Guernsey walkabout last year, a bill might even now be winging its way to the Palace.
But let’s not go anywhere near pointless retaliation. Our healthy display of patriotic Elizabeths on public buildings, road signs and maps is secure – for the moment.