IT’S funny how you say something and almost immediately something happens to demonstrate just how wrong you are.

The other evening Herself and I were walking along the promenade between Bel Royal and St Aubin and saw about a dozen teenagers on the beach skylarking, with the young lads clearly trying to impress their female counterparts.

The tide was in and there was as much ribaldry being splashed about as there was water and, not surprisingly, two or three out of the group got seriously wet.

We walked on and I remarked upon how nice it was to see them enjoying themselves, and particularly so having – I assume, because I have no reason to keep abreast of such happenings – just completed either their GCSE or A-level
examinations.

We’d only walked a few yards when Herself – probably with some justification – suggested that there was a time when I’d have pulled a face, or even thrown a wobbly (as she succinctly put it), in similar circumstances and she concludeded that I was getting to be less of a bolshie little crapaud than I was, and mellowing with age.

I agreed, if only because when she’s in one of her ‘I’m telling you’ moods it’s pointless to argue, and besides, she might well have had a point, although when that lot in the Big House have been programmed to do their petty little worst, usually flying in the face of logic and common sense in the process, I reckon I can still be as bolshie as the next Jerseyman.

I must have been in a pretty good mood last week because the following morning I suggested that instead of me managing to blacken toast and over boil two eggs – it was my turn to do the breakfast – I should take her out and let someone else do the cooking (and, if the occasion arose, take any flak that might emanate from the female occupant of Chez Clement).

I won’t identify the place we went to but we had a really great breakfast – the full English with two of everything that mattered, a nice big cup of coffee and toast which certainly wasn’t blackened by someone like me, who manages to produce it looking like two bits of flattened coal with consummate ease.

In fact, had it not been for a couple of brats in the kids’ play area, the occasion would have been as close to perfection as it was possible to get.

On several occasions I looked around to see if I could spot a parent with cheeks red with embarrassment. Had the offspring been anything to do with me you could have made toast on my cheeks. But no one fitted the description.

Before I get accused of not being child friendly, to use a term that the trendies who always manage to find an excuse for bad parents of naughty children will understand, this wasn’t simply the noise of a couple of toddlers playing.

This was a noise which made it almost impossible to have a normal conversation with someone sitting across the table. However, as Herself remarked as we walked out, having scoffed what we’d ordered faster than was good for the digestion, it was probably just as well that I didn’t manage to spot the parent(s) because, as she added, ‘you’d have probably gone into child rage mode and you’d have found me sitting in the car waiting for you’.

And, as a bit of a coup de grace, she gave me one of those looks that only wives can give husbands and said: ‘What a
difference a day makes.’

I see that lot in the Big House have been debating the Island Plan, which gives me a nice little opening to say that they – or, to be more precise, the Department of the Environment – are looking for a natural environment officer/warden and the successful applicant will be placed on a pay scale that rises to some £37,098 a year.

According to the advertisement I read, the job will involve public liaison and enforcement duties with a role in monitoring access and biological management projects and applicants should hold a relevant qualification in ecology and have experience in enforcement duties.

In other words, it will suit a tree-hugging former disco bouncer with a GCSE in nature studies.

That lets me out then. I’ve only got the standard two City and Guilds certificates for thickos – metalwork and embroidery.

On that same page of job vacancies – I thought young Philip Ozouf was telling these departments to save money and stop recruiting, but I suppose old habits die hard – there was one from the Transport and Technical Services Department (which used to be called the States Main Roads Department until they stopped doing anything about main roads) who are looking for a vehicle technician.

I asked a few people in the trade what this involved and the general consensus was that they want a mechanic, only like so many things these days, everyone seems to get a fancy title and, if you work in the public sector, a wage packet to match.

For a brown envelope which will eventually contain £624.13 every Friday lunchtime, they are offering the widest variety of work in maintaining vehicles and plant. They are looking for a technician with truck and plant experience or specialist knowledge in auto electrics (or was that electronics, it’s so long since I saw the advertisement) enabling the post holder to maintain commercial vehicles.
If they offered me that I’d bite their hand off. By the sound of it they want someone able to change an indicator light bulb because anything more
complex and they just whack vehicles up to Maillard’s and flog them at the next auction.

And finally, I’m told that such were the bargains to be had at a recent school fête that you couldn’t get near the bottle stall because of the queue of teachers from a next-door school. Alas, there was no Calvados.