Weekend Musings

Recently I visited the new Cantina style El Tico, with a friend all the way over from Australia. She had a cooked lunch quite early, and this was around 4 pm in the afternoon. As she had a flight to catch at five back to the UK (where she was based), all she wanted was a sandwich, as she might might not eat again until quite late. I had been assured by John Le Fondré (the owner) that the El Tico did do baguettes, but contrary to what I had been told, there was only a cooked menu available, or various cakes on the counter. The staff gave very much an attitude of take it or leave it, with no apology, and my friend certainly formed the opinion that while the building was nice, this was a place to avoid if she comes back to Jersey with the rest of her family.

One disgruntled tourist! What one really wants from a beach cafe is the option of a sandwich, which we found at the cafe at Braye slip, freshly made. While she was eating it, she told me that she thought El Tico seemed more like an restaurant going up market. I wonder how many holiday makers will go there, when they just want something light, cheap, and possibly to take on the beach if sunny? Sunday breakfasts do seem busy, but be warned, they finish early. This is not a place for all day breakfasts either, like most other beach cafes!

The Jersey Hospice Charity shop is looking for new premises because of the volume of stock. I went there on Saturday, or tried to. Apparently it is only open 10 to 4, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I appreciate the difficulty of volunteers at a weekend, but for an out of town charity shop, I would have said it was a necessity, at least once a month. Unlike the Salvation Army shop, by Minden Place, which is in town, no one is really going to commute to the wilds of St Ouen in their lunch hour. Nobody working can get there. I suspect the real reason they are looking for new premises is not because they are doing especially well, but because all the stock which is donated in the clothing bins outside just doesn't get a look at by most of the general public.

I watched Derren Brown on Friday night, and the scariest part of the show was when he used "mirroring" to put a member of the public in a cafe in a trance, then primed him to steal a TV set when he came across a shop with a small girl dressed in pink holding a pink balloon outside. The good news is that two people he tried the technique on were not susceptible, but it is still amazing what he got the third to do, on impulse, with no thinking that this was illegal! Uncomfortable viewing.

The previous week, Derren attempted and appeared to succeed at using the "collective unconscious" of a group of people to guess the winning numbers of the National Lottery. Live, as it happened, he read out the numbers and wrote them down, then moved over and turned a display of white table tennis balls (seen before) round to reveal the numbers, and an unseen crowd clapped. That was a clever touch. Whenever you hear a crowd clap, you assume there is actually someone there who was watching him, who would have spotted anything as simple as an assistant replacing the balls with correctly numbered balls while the camera focused on Derren writing lottery numbers down - and calling them out.

Cliff Richard is persona non grata for Radio presenters like Chris Evans, according to him. That seems grossly unfair, as Cliff has some great songs, and has mellowed in his faith, telling Piers Morgan that he was in favour of same-sex civil partnerships, because he could see the commitment in friends of his. Cliff is celibate, and of course has had the accusation levied at him that he is gay, which he says is not true, and doesn't hurt him anyway, and why are people so hung up about sexuality when there is so much more to life than that. Walking around St Clement's Green Lanes this weekend, watching the birds, finding the Millennium Standing Stone, enjoying the wonderful views from those heights, and having a tasty sausage roll at the Le Hocq beach stall, while watching boats on the water, I was inclined to agree.