WHENEVER there’s an ‘occasion’ at Chez Clement – Herself’s birthday or something like that – you will always find me ready to push the boat out and give her a bit of a treat.

Because that particular anniversary is in the summer months, what I usually do is get the passion wagon out, go for a spin in it – usually spending a nice hour or so trying to find those bits of this small rock that haven’t either been developed or earmarked for it – and finish up getting some fish and chips from Gorey Village and eating them down at the nearby pier.

That liking for a nice feed of cod in batter and a bag of chips means that I was more than a little interested in the story published a week or so ago about a new chippie out west at Les Quennevais that is attracting the punters in their droves.

Contrary to the habits of your average crapaud, who usually frowns at the prospect of someone making a few bob through a combination of a good idea and some hard work – how many great entrepreneurial ideas have been killed stone dead by this attitude when displayed by that lot in the Big House? – I am never jealous on such occasions, but actually applaud them.

That said, it wouldn’t surprise me one little bit if co-owner Paul Little is regretting his admission that all his fish and the spuds they use for chips are imported from the United Kingdom because the quality is better than that available locally.

A word in your shell-like, pal, just in case you intend making any more such statements to a wider audience. Your ability to shoot yourself in the foot with consummate ease suggests to me that at the end of 2011 you might well be an ideal candidate in the elections for Senators and Deputies.

Putting to one side for a moment the fact that there’s nothing like the taste of freshly caught fish – and believe me, you can tell the difference – I don’t know whether you are aware that potatoes other than the famous Jersey Royal are grown here.

They’re called maincrop and a number of varieties are grown, including something called Estima which, in this humble crapaud’s opinion, is a spud which in quality, taste and everything else that matters is at least as good as anything I’ve tasted anywhere in the UK.

If Mr Little thinks that I’m picking on him unfairly, can I point out the significant number of people who have commented to me about what they describe as a somewhat unwise statement attributed to him about the quality of Jersey produce. That alone suggests to me that perhaps he should think a little about the community in which he lives before slagging off what is grown and caught here.

I DON’T know about anyone else, but I winced a little when I read the report that former motor racing world champion Nigel Mansell had bought a canine bodyguard, an alsatian apparently trained in personal protection, because he feels that this is necessary to discourage those who trespass at his home at Beauport Battery.

My disquiet centres on two matters: the fact that Jersey needs national publicity like this, in newspapers such as the Sun and the Times, like it needs a hole in the head right now; and the fact that Mr Mansell apparently feels that life in Jersey is so uncomfortable or, indeed, dangerous that he needs to spend thousand of pounds in acquiring an animal which, it is reported, would stop a bullet to save its owner’s life.

While Mr Mansell may well feel that any publicity is good publicity, most people in the community in which he has chosen, rather than been forced to make his home, will find the reports in the two national newspapers just a mite distasteful.

Indeed, they may well be forgiven for thinking that his acquisition of such an animal for protection of life and property, along with other measures he has taken in the past because he has allegedly been subjected to ‘physical abuse and attacks on his pets’, places a huge question-mark over his decision to make his home here.

I have met a fair number of Mr Mansell’s confrères, people who, for one reason or another, have been permitted to buy homes here, and I have yet to come across one who has been forced to resort to the measures he has in order simply to enjoy the use of a home and what goes with it.

I have no idea of the reasons behind his decision, but if it really is a fact that he has been forced into barricading his home and acquiring this dog in order to address physical abuse – I presume by that he means being assaulted – and attacks on his pets, then I’d have thought that the proper course of action would have been to inform the police.
After all, assaulting someone and attacking animals both remain criminal offences and, therefore, punishable in the courts.

That seems to me to be more sensible than building 8-ft fences and buying a dog that would stop a bullet. I say that simply because I worry about what Mr Mansell’s next preventative measure will be if these fail. Electrify the perimeter fence, perhaps?

AND finally . . . now that the folly of closing the nurses’ training facility and importing staff is finally coming home to roost, I wonder if those in plush offices in the former nurses’ home at the General Hospital will be vacating them for a use which most residents would agree to be much more important.