HERSELF is not in the best of moods, although when I ask what is wrong – a stupid move, as any man will tell you – I get the inevitable ‘nothing’ snapped back at me at a speed not far removed from that at which light travels.

It was my own fault, of course. I’d been fishing with a mate who lives up the road and we’d then ensconced ourselves in The Shed from which we emerged some time later – each with a couple or five Calvadi (for the benefit of the uneducated, that is the plural of Calvados) on board.

He walked down the garden path and, all things considered – not least the measures used in pouring drinks at Chez Clement – he made a pretty good fist of it. On the other hand, I chose to walk on Herself’s lawn – the path isn’t wide enough to take two abreast – and because it was a little damp, managed to slip.

Despite what I told Herself later was a desperate attempt to save myself from injury, I managed to land on what I call my dodgy hip – something which she unfairly suggests kicks in only when I’m sitting in front of either the idiot box or a warm fire (or both) – and thus spent much of the following day lying on the settee, moving only when food was on the table or nature called me to the bathroom.

Of course, I’m aware that it was my own fault and, if the truth is to out – as it invariably does – that’s probably the case on two grounds. First, I might have been a good deal better able to look after myself had I kept to the path and not walked on a damp lawn which slopes away from The Shed.

Second, and probably more important, the dreaded Calvados was a factor and I daresay that I probably wouldn’t have slipped had I limited myself to two sniffs at the cork and nothing to dampen my lips. In mitigation, as I would say to Herself if I had the bottle to argue the point – a course of action which would do my case no good at all, while I’d had too much to be at the wheel of the passion wagon (thankfully the days are long gone when the only motoring offence you could commit in some parishes was that of not knowing a Centenier) I certainly was not incapable.

As I lay on the settee feeling sorry for myself, I read the comments by Deborah Holdridge, the young woman who badly injured her spine when she fell 15 feet from a wall near Kempt Tower on the Five Mile Road. Like me, Ms Holdridge had had a few drinks but ‘was not drunk’.

We never are, sweetheart, we never are, but as you get older you may well come to understand that you don’t have to be legless to have your judgment impaired. That impairment can lead to all sorts of things, like silly old fools like me walking on a damp lawn which slopes away from me and luckily finishing up with nothing more serious than a few bruises and an aching hip.

However, it can also lead to the false confidence which makes some people get behind the wheel of a car, sometimes with disastrous consequences, or indeed to someone swinging her legs over a sea wall at three in the morning in the mistaken belief that a walkway was just below her feet.

Ms Holdridge is suggesting that our elected representatives should consider putting railings on the sea wall along the Five Mile Road, presumably in the belief that the railings might well have stopped her falling.

The trouble is that she didn’t fall in the accepted sense of the word. In her own words, she ‘sat on the wall and swung my legs round and hopped off the other side thinking that the walkway from the Splash to Big Vern’s was there, but I hadn’t realised there was a 15-ft drop on to the concrete slabs’.

I somehow doubt that railings would have stopped her thinking there was a walkway. I also know that had I not had a couple or three Calvadi I would probably have thought twice about walking down a damp, sloping lawn.

Quite what effect Deputy Paul Le Claire’s little sound-bite promise at the mass rally of States employees to give his £1,000-a-year pay rise to charity will have on anything is open to debate, but seldom have I read of a more obvious attempt at a bit of electioneering.

It reminded me a bit of Sir Dick from the Docks in his heyday when he use to identify a relationship between a questioner and one of the candidates at election meetings. I heard him once suggest to the late Ralph Vibert that he should bring one of his family to all the meetings ‘because he asks good questions’, the ‘for you’ which followed being scarcely audible.

I have a measure of sympathy with States employees as regards their pay freeze but I have to say that I have more sympathy for those in the private sector who have been made redundant or had their pay frozen, hours (and therefore pay) cut or drastic changes to their occupational pensions imposed on them.

I can’t remember the last time a States employee was made the subject of compulsory redundancy. I’d be grateful if someone could tell me. None of them are on short-time working and their index linked pension scheme is the envy of all but a very few (and I mean very few) of their private sector confrêres. Perhaps they should count their blessings.

And finally … It’s a shame that Franz Zonta is upset by flies and rotting seaweed down at Havre des Pas.

A quick perusal of the picture illustrating the point also shows a number of lithesome bodies sunbathing just a few feet away, apparently unconcerned with the stench.