HERSELF and her mate sloped off last week for what they described as a few days of retail therapy – otherwise known as hitting the sale rail in Southampton.

Now, unlike me perhaps, Herself is not one of the world’s moaners. Indeed, there are occasions when she winces when she reads this column sometimes when I have ever such a gentle dip at someone or something which has raised my blood pressure a fraction during the previous seven days.

Nor can her level of sobriety ever be questioned, although I do recall that on one occasion in the dim and distant past she did have a glass or two of a particularly subtle Medoc while we were being royally looked after by my mate with the calvados trees not that far from Avranches. As a consequence, her memory of events, and particularly prices, can rarely be faulted.

It follows, then, that I was somewhat taken aback when, almost before she got in the passion wagon at the Airport on her return laden with ‘bargains’, she launched into a scathing attack on all manner of things about the aforementioned Airport.

Actually, her complaint centred on just one thing: the cost of a packet of Polos.
It appears that just prior to her departure she decided that she wanted a newspaper, and while in the emporium she decided also to splash out and get a packet of Polos, offering a £1 note to the shop assistant in payment. Not enough for the paper and mints, she was told; the Polos are 66p.

I am old enough to know – and so is she, although I’ll get no thanks for broadcasting it all across the Island – that prior to the middle of February 1971, 66p amounted to a little over 13/6d or, for those who don’t know what the forward slash and ‘d’ stand for, thirteen shillings and sixpence. Thirteen and six for a dozen or so sweets that probably cost a small fraction of that to make and which sell elsewhere than to a captive audience at the Airport for roughly half that amount.

I know we’ve all got to make a living, Mr WH Smith, but there are ways of doing it that don’t leave a nasty ‘I’ve been ripped off in Jersey’ taste in the mouths of the travellers who either live here or are visiting for business or pleasure.

I doubt very much that the all-singing, all-dancing whizz kids now running the Airport can or are even inclined to do anything about this, but if they care even a jot about the impression it gives departing passengers about Jersey then they damn well should.

If this is the price that we have to pay for encouraging retail outlets such as this to set up business over here, then quite frankly the sooner they become departing passengers, the better.

Iread with interest, not to mention a measure of agreement, Chantal Gosselin’s recent letter on the future of the Plémont headland – Stan Parkin’s holiday camp is how I remember it – and while I don’t agree with saddling the public purse with yet another Heritage Trust loss maker (for, sadly, that is how I fear it will finish up), I respect her right to promote the idea.

However, where I part company with her is over the manner in which she chooses to criticise (insult might be a terminology closer to the truth) the land owner, Trevor Hemmings. For all we both know, he may well have got involved in countless public-spirited projects that have ‘warmed the cockles of his heart and made him want to sing and dance’, as she so sarcastically put it.

I doubt very much that Mr Hemmings would feel inclined to list his philanthropic activities, which for all we know could be many and varied, because people like him rarely do. They prefer to give anonymously.

The late Sir Billy Butlin – an appropriate analogy, this, given the holiday camp link – gave £100,000 in 1963, which was an enormous amount of money in those days, to kick off what became the Police Dependants Trust following the brutal murder of three police officers in London’s Shepherd’s Bush, but his involvement was not made public until very many years later.

I would respectfully suggest to Ms Gosselin that what Mr Hemmings does with his money is his business and certainly not hers. I strongly suspect that she wrote what she did merely to have a pop at him. Had she really believed that he might take up her idea, she would have given a good deal more mature thought to the phraseology she used.

I see that the former Prime Minister has emerged from his first year of retirement by sticking his head very prominently above the parapet by suggesting that both we and the colonies should appoint a foreign minister to look after the islands’ increasingly complex relationships with other jurisdictions.

That bit was always going to get Frank Walker a bit of publicity – a good deal more than his other suggestion that, in words used elsewhere in this newspaper, both Jersey and Guernsey leave trivial rivalries where they belong – on the football field – and work together much more than they seem to do.

I get criticised for having the occasional pop at the donkeys over in the smaller island, but my mate who lives there tells me that rarely a day goes by that Guernsey’s daily newspaper doesn’t seek to draw some disparaging comparison between them and us.

I would be happy to stop talking about their need for evening classes for revolving doors and escalators and going down to the Co-op to watch the bacon slicer for a bit of excitement because there’s little else to do over there, if they would agree to do the same.

AND finally … To all those who contribute to the contents of this weekly offering, either willingly or otherwise, as well as The Reader, I wish you all you wish yourselves this Christmas.