Power to the People

Jersey is running on back-up generators after a major power failure overnight. Chris Ambler, from Jersey Electricity, said connections with both submarine cables to France had been lost. He said engineers had been working to restore supplies and find the cause of the power cut.  Mr Ambler said some off peak electricity and heating supplies were disabled after the power cut which affected thousands of islanders at about 23:30 BST. "Supplies are rather tight in the island, we are bringing in more generation in order to fulfil that demand," he said. "What we are saying to customers is just as a precautionary measure just to give us a little bit more headroom we have taken the decision to disable some of the off peak tariffs and off peak heating." (1)

ISLANDERS were this morning being asked to use electricity wisely after a major power cut plunged Jersey into darkness overnight. The power cut, which was caused by faults in the two undersea cable links with France, happened at around 11 pm and lasted up to three hours for some customers. This morning all of Jersey's power was being generated in the Island at La Collette but some of the generators were not expected to be up to full power until later this afternoon. As a result Jersey Electricity suspended its off-peak water and heating supplies and asked Islanders to limit their non-essential use until supplies are at full capacity. (2)

It is fortunate that the Jersey Electricity Company has maintained a system capable of local power generation. What must be considered, however, is how much capacity this has, and the time that it takes to bring every part of it online. Clearly, at times, the short-term capacity balance between expected electricity supply and electricity use was strained while the slower systems came on line, and that's in June, where the use of electricity is not great.

In winter time, the demand would be considerably greater, and there might be a longer hiatus before being able to establish full supplies. Heating is important in winter. In cold weather, residential buildings quickly lose their heat after an outage in the heat supply.

When the outdoor temperature is close to -5C, it takes about 48 hours for the temperature in the average 1970s home to drop from 20C to 5C. Jersey does not have that often have that degree of cold weather, but near freezing conditions were experienced this year, and while the time would be longer for the temperature drop, it would still occur.

The last reports on the Jersey Electricity Website are a few years out of date, but there is a note in the 2009 report that:

The highest load in Jersey this year was 153.1MW in January 2009, just slightly less than our largest ever peak of 156.8MW, which occurred in December 2007.

This puts us more or less on a par with Gotland, which also imports power via a cable link - a recent report that:

The backup power capacity is excellent, and consists of gas turbines and diesel units. The capacity of the gas turbines equals the maximum load on the electricity network, 160 MW.

The Gotland site also notes that:

The availability of sustainable backup power is limited, but GEAB keeps enough fuel in stock for four days' backup power which is estimated to be more than enough with the world in its present state.

This brings me neatly to several questions about the current situation in Jersey:

1) What is the maximum load that the network can support from backup power?
2) Has this even been exceeded while on the French link, especially in winter?
3) How close are we to reaching the limit? The increasing population, of course, has an increasing energy requirement.
4) How many days can Jersey run on backup resources?

The Gotland linkage to the mainland of Sweden, by the way, uses what is known as a HVDC transmission due to the long distance (90 km) across the sea.  This is an acronym for "high-voltage, direct current" - it is an electric power transmission system which uses direct current for the bulk transmission of electrical power, in contrast with the more common alternating current systems. For long-distance transmission, HVDC systems may be less expensive and suffer lower electrical losses. For underwater power cables, HVDC avoids the heavy currents required by the cable capacitance.

It would be interesting to know if Jersey uses that, as the total distances of cables are not far off. On the technical side, if you have ever wondered exactly how the cables are laid down and protected etc, this report from ABB gives the details:

In 1998 ABB was awarded the Channel Islands Electricity Grid Project, which reinforces the power supply from France to Jersey and, for the first time, connects Guernsey to the European mainland grid. The submarine part of this project was completed in July 2000. The main components delivered for the project were:

- Submarine cables between France and Jersey and between Jersey and Guernsey (approx 70 km)
- Underground cables on Jersey and Guernsey
- GIS substations
- New transformers and reactors

The two submarine cables are of the same basic design, i.e. three-core, separate lead-sheathed, and with tripleextruded XLPE insulation. Each has a fiber optic cable with 24 fibers integrated in it for system communication and inter-tripping. The cables have double wire armor (ie, an inner layer of tensile armor and an outer, so-called rock armor) to protect them from damage that could be caused by tidal currents and fishing. The cables have a diameter of approximately 250 mm and weigh about 85 kg/m in air. Both cables were delivered by the factory in their full lengths . Because of the risks posed by fishing activities, the cables between Jersey and Guernsey and the fiber optic cables between Jersey and France were jetted into the seabed for extra protection.

Jersey is underway for a third link to France. As the JEC website mentions:

We continue to make progress with the third interconnector between Jersey and France, which we aim to bring into service in 2013. This cable is necessary for three reasons. Firstly, the first interconnector is now 25 years old and our specialist advisors suggest it is approaching the end of its life.

Secondly, there are widely predicted shortages in the availability of heavy fuel oil and the specialist ships needed for safe docking in the Channel Islands, which could reduce the dependability of almost half our standby generation facilities that use this fuel.

Thirdly, we are currently unable to supply the Island's full requirements with low carbon, imported electricity
from the competitive European markets during the winter peak.

The third point is somewhat worrying, and is rather ambiguous. Does it mean that the winter demands may exceed capacity?

Incidentally, Gotland has now an infrastructure which includes electricity from wind farms. They have developed what are called "smart grids" to balance the demands and loads. Here is some background:

During the past years, there has been a considerable increase in wind power production. It started in 1984 and reached 15 MW by 1994. Today there are 48 MW installed producing about 100 GWh. On the southern part of the island, where the peak load is only about 17 MW, there is approximately 37 MW of wind power installed. The infrastructure built for existing consumption cannot receive the increasing production. The system is presently used to its limits at full wind power production.

Wind power production does not conform to consumption. The network must be dimensioned to withstand the transmission of production when the load is low, i.e., about 25% of the peak load. The electrical system is built for existing distribution and not for large distributed generation .

Wind power production of this size results in considerable consumption of reactive power, which ought to be compensated in a reasonable way to retain voltage quality while minimizing net losses. Production varies randomly, which puts considerable demands on voltage regulation. For the successful expansion of wind power, the electrical system must be adjusted so that it can regulate and retain voltage quality in regard to reactive and active power, and other phenomena that that arise in an electrical system with wind power production.

With the call for Jersey to look at wind generation from offshore wind farms, it is helpful to note that Gotland has been developing Gotland HVDC Light technology to allow for the variations in power from wind. Jersey is unlikely ever to have the winds that Gotland does, and it is a much smaller Island, but there may still be techniques and technology available that we can appropriate to improve our electricity generation in the long term.

Links:
(1) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-18484552
(2) http://www.thisisjersey.com/news/2012/06/18/power-cut-prompts-appeal-to-islanders
(3) www05.abb.com/global/scot/scot271.nsf/veritydisplay/8e1e666b438c7dffc1256e46004609d8/$file/abb%20special%20report%2011_03.pdf
(4) /library.abb.com/GLOBAL/SCOT/scot221.nsf/VerityDisplay/0364E3861597E488C1256FDA004C8CA9/$File/ciredgot.pdf

A History of A Power Cut in 50 Tweets

Daleks: We will get our power. We will get our power. We will get our power. We will get our power. We will get our power. We will get our power.
First Dalek: Turn back the power supply.
(Dr Who, Power of the Daleks)

Here's a timeline of tweets.... amusingly, Judith Curry pops up talking about economic and security impacts - just when our power was off. And Lauren on Big Brother was saying how wonderful Jersey was - but of course, hardly anybody would have been able to watch her! By the way, I've removed the identification of the Twitters, apart from official organisations.

Jean: Well we can't all swan about ordering toast. Some of us have personal problems.
Jane: I know we do! But we don't bring them to work! I lost 8 tropical fish last week in a power cut!
(Dinnerladies)

One thing that never crossed my mind when the lights went out was to call the police. I looked out the window, and ascertained that no other lights could be seen, apart from a dull glow of night pollution to the south  where La Moye Prison was - and presumably on reserve generators. No Great Escape there! Why on earth call the police? The psychology of the panic stricken Islander is sometimes beyond my comprehension.

Scientist: [After a power cut] Oh no... Its probably those Anomalous Materials people again. Always pushing their equipment too hard, dabbling in who-knows-what. I'd be surprised if there's one good brain among them
(Half Life)

What am I doing up? You may well ask. I have a dimmer switch on my light, with on and off just by pressing it in or out, so you can't tell if it was on or off. I couldn't remember, and thought it was off. Until suddenly, bright lights came on and woke me! Off to bed now!

---

@channelonline power back on in trinity

Power gone again at esplanade!

Jersey Electricity ‏@electricjersey
Power is already coming back on in parts of the island, we are expecting to be able to restore all power later this evening #powercutjersey

Jersey Electricity ‏@electricjersey
JE is experiencing problems with submarine cables to France. Engineers r working to restore supplies using local generation #powercutjersey

Jersey Electricity ‏@electricjersey
Power is already coming back on in parts of the island, we are expecting to be able to restore all power later this evening #powercutjersey

RT @electricjersey: Please tell Jersey Tweeters to follow @electricjersey or #powercutjersey for latest news on power supply problems...

@channelonline still no power at Five Oaks!!

@channelonline guess I need a few more hamsters for the ups on my servers as power still out in aubin lane #powercutjersey

@channelonline yep I'm in St Brelades with no power. Can see the airport & the genny is on

@channelonline @electricjersey St Saviour/Trinity 1st cut an hour ago 2nd cut 35mins ago and still in the #dark #powercutJersey

Oscar Puffin ‏@oscarpuffin
If the weather wasn't bad enough, power to the puffin hot tub has gone. My plumage is in a right old state. :>\

@CJChateau @channelonline @electricjersey Hurrah St Saviour/Trinity lights are on! #powercutJersey

@channelonline longueville still down and I-phone running on vapor for golf.

@channelonline No power still at St.Brelade lucky i have 3G from JT and fully charged devices

Jersey Electricity ‏@electricjersey
A reminder: We've had a problem with our cables to France. Engineers are firing up generators at La Collette. #powercutjersey

Judith Curry ‏@JudithCurry
Economic and security impacts of climate change in the Arctic

bbcjersey ‏@bbcjersey
It's just gone half past midnight & the latest we have is parts of the island are still affected by the latest #powercutjersey more ASAP

Jersey Electricity ‏@electricjersey
@kevinpamplin @electricjersey is Jersey Electricity's official account and will keep islanders up-to-date with any JE news #powercutjersey

@bbcjersey Still in the dark & not happy out here at Corbiere #powercutjersey but TY for updates :-)

@bbcjersey Still no power in St Clement

@bbcjersey still off in St Peters @electricjersey #powercutjersey

@bbcjersey Still off in St Brelade. Would normally just go to sleep but school uniform in tumble dryer! Still wet!

@bbcjersey @electricjersey power's back on for sometime now round the general hospital area..thank goodness :)

@bbcjersey @electricjersey Let The Force Be with You Tonight #powercutjersey

Power back on @PommedOrHotel area been back for while now

St Ouen still out... Fridge and tropical fish not happy @bbcjersey

bbcjersey ‏@bbcjersey
Thank you for your tweets from around the island during the latest #powercutjersey @kevinpamplin will be LIVE at 6am on 88.8fm with updates!

Channel Television ‏@channelonline
Power appears to have come back on in some parts of Jersey. But it's still off in places like st brelades. Are you affected? Let us know.

bbcjersey ‏@bbcjersey
@channelonline @DunellsWines Ha who said anything about bed! Sleep is for wimps! And we are on air from 6am with LIVE update from JE #coffee

We're back baby... Electricity on in St. Clement... Thank you JEC... @electricjersey @channelonline

@bbcjersey #powercutjersey we have the power... JCG/Mont Millais area. #timetoputtheguitarawayandputoutthecampfire

bbcjersey ‏@bbcjersey
RT from @electricjersey Engineers continue to bring power supplies back up to full output. All island supplies expected back overnight.

@channelonline hamsters alive and kicking here around Aubin lane. Ie. Power is back :-)

@channelonline still dark in St Peters! @electricjersey

@channelonline yes we have been stuck in darkness while at work now send all home leaving big mess for tomorrow

Big Brother Live ‏@BBUKLive
1.18am: Lauren is rhapsodising about Jersey life. She makes it sound so lovely. Channel Island Tourist Board - sign her up. #bbuklive

@channelonline totally feeling left out here! No power cut in St Lawrence...

Channel Television ‏@channelonline
Can't believe we're writing this, but do not call the police because the power is out!! See next tweet.

States of Jsy Police ‏@JerseyPolice
@electricjersey Hi any news on how long this powercut is going to last please? We are being inundated with calls. Thanks

Kevin Pamplin ‏@kevinpamplin
@JerseyPolice @electricjersey I will be on air on @bbcjersey from 6am with LIVE updates 88.8fm & online http://www.bbc.co.uk/jersey #jerseypowercut

bbcjersey ‏@bbcjersey
RT @DunellsWines We're back on in St. Brelade!!! Thank you #jerseypowercut thank goodness for your washing! Sleep well!
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@bbcjersey power back, St Brelade

0153 hrs Power just restored in St Mary. Daughter, who hates power cuts, and knackered Daddy very grateful. Goodnight peeps #fb

We've left some lights on @cafebreakwater just so we can see if we get another #powercutjersey! Thank you @electricjersey for allthe updates

‏@tony_theprof
Power back La Moye, St Brelade, at 2.00am

And so to bed...

I like to finish each day by posting a memorable quote on Facebook. This has to be something a bit different, something that, I hope, gives a fresh insight into our world. It's not especially religious, and it's not a quick sound-bite platitude either. But it is often poetic, though it is not poetry. And it may be something unusual from a well known author, best known for other writings and subjects. I've posted one selection on my blog before - here's a second selection to enjoy.

DENNIS POTTER

Dennis Potter, from the last interview he gave when he was dying of cancer, and knew he had only weeks to live:

. . . at this season, the blossom is out in full now, there in the west early. It's a plum tree, it looks like apple blossom but it's white, and looking at it, instead of saying "Oh that's nice blossom" ... last week looking at it through the window when I'm writing, I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it.

Things are both more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn't seem to matter. But the nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous, and if people could see that, you know.

CHARLES WILLIAMS:

"The image of a wood has appeared often enough in English verse. It has indeed appeared so often that it has gathered a good deal of verse into itself; so that it has become a great forest where, with long leagues of changing green between them, strange episodes of poetry have taken place.

Thus in one part there are lovers of a midsummer night, or by day a duke and his followers, and in another men behind branches so that the wood seems moving, and in another a girl separated from her two lordly young brothers, and in another a poet listening to a nightingale but rather dreaming richly of the grand art than there exploring it, and there are other inhabitants, belonging even more closely to the wood, dryads, fairies, an enchanter's rout.

The forest itself has different names in different tongues- Westermain, Arden, Birnam, Broceliande; and in places there are separate trees named, such as that on the outskirts against which a young Northern poet saw a spectral wanderer leaning, or, in the unexplored centre of which only rumours reach even poetry, Igdrasil of one myth, or the Trees of Knowledge and Life of another. So that indeed the whole earth seems to become this one enormous forest, and our longest and most stable civilizations are only clearings in the midst of it."

J.B. PRIESTLEY

"To show a child what has once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own, so that there is now a double delight seen in the glow of trust and affection, this is happiness."

C.S. LEWIS

"The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them,and what came through them was longing. These things-the beauty, the memory of our own past-are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."

C.S. LEWIS

And how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back - if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?

And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes.

J.R.R. TOLKIEN

I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human misery all over the world at the present moment: the millions parted, fretting, wasting in unprofitable days - quite apart from torture, pain, death, bereavement, injustice. If anguish were visible, almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapor, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens! And the products of it all will be mainly evil - historically considered.

But the historic version is, of course, not the only one. All things and all deeds have a value in themselves, apart from their "causes" and "effects." No man can estimate what is really happening sub specie aeternitatis. All we do know, and that to a large extent by direct experience, is that evil labors with vast power and perpetual success - in vain: preparing always the soil for unexpected good to sprout in.

RAY BRADBURY

One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like great black bears in their furs along the icy streets.

And then a long wave of warmth crossed the small town. A flooding sea of hot air; it seemed as if someone had left a bakery door open. The heat pulsed among the cottages and bushes and children. The icicles dropped, shattering, to melt. The doors flew open. The windows flew up. The children worked off their wool clothes. The housewives shed their bear disguises. The snow dissolved and showed last summer's ancient green lawns.

Rocket summer. The words passed among the people in the open, airing houses. Rocket summer. The warm desert air changing the frost patterns on the windows, erasing the art work. The skis and sleds suddenly useless. The snow, falling from the cold sky upon the town, turned to a hot rain before it touched the ground.

Rocket summer. People leaned from their dripping porches and watched the reddening sky.

The rocket lay on the launching field, blowing out pink clouds of fire and oven heat. The rocket stood in the cold winter morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty exhausts. The rocket made climates, and summer lay for a brief moment upon the land....

G.K. CHESTERTON

The street they threaded was so narrow and shut in by shadows that when they came out unexpectedly into the void common and vast sky they were startled to find the evening still so light and clear. A perfect dome of peacock-green sank into gold amid the blackening trees and the dark violet distances. The glowing green tint was just deep enough to pick out in points of crystal one or two stars. All that was left of the daylight lay in a golden glitter across the edge of Hampstead and that popular hollow which is called the Vale of Health. The holiday makers who roam this region had not wholly dispersed; a few couples sat shapelessly on benches; and here and there a distant girl still shrieked in one of the swings.

GEORGE MACKAY BROWN

Gypsy, if this horrid, cold mist-bringing East wind goes on much longer, I shall be very angry.

"Oh," cries the wind, "I love to blow from the East, I'm like the ram-horns of Genghis Khan sounding - I'm like the shouting Celtic tribes wave after wave, all war-cries" Oh, I could blow for ever!"

That foolish wind, little does it know that it curdles the marrow in the bones of man and cat and makes us quite ill . . . Especially delicate creatures like you and me . . .

Whereas, when it blows from the West - which is after all, the airt it loves best - it brings music and magic to us, seal songs and the breath of mermaids and the merry splurge and dance of whales. And more, it brings aromas of the magic isle in the west, that people have known was there for thousands of years. The Gaelic-speakers called it Tir-nan-Og (which means 'the land of the young'). Once we're there, believe me, Gypsy, we'll never be old and sick and weary - for pussies there'll be a silver fish on a plate every day, and a nice stone - emerald or lapis lazuli - to sit on always in the sun, and no dogs and no bad-tempered householders who 'shoo' pussies off their doorsteps.

There, in Tir-nan-Og, even the East wind is gentle and full of scents and sweet sounds. But you have to be good to get there.

The Queen of Wands

The Queen of Wands

 

The lady sits upon the throne

Her future open and unknown

In calmness, serene with dignity

Her eyes gaze out and meet with me

Sunflower growing not far behind

Mirrors her aspect, gentle, kind

Her staff of rule, of silent power

To open up, embrace and flower

The black cat is sentinel before

Her love within her hidden lore

Upon her head a gilded crown

And clad in simple golden gown

She gives forth life, calls forth love

In sweet harmony, my ladylove.

A Writer's Tale

For me it's mostly a question of rewriting. It's part of a constant attempt on my part to make the finished version smooth, to make it seem effortless. A story I've been working on - "The Train on Track Six," it's called - was rewritten fifteen complete times. There must have been close to 240,000 words in all the manuscripts put together, and I must have spent two thousand hours working at it. Yet the finished version can't be more than twenty-thousand words. (James Thurber)

I've recently come across an edition of "The Paris Review" which has an interview with James Thurber. Although in the interview he says he polishes his drafts up to 15 or more revisions before they are in their final form, his literary voice comes across just as strongly in this interview when unpolished; it has the same wry amused look at the world. This is what he has to say about his memory, which was prodigious for recalling all kinds of minutiae:

Well, you know it's a nuisance-to have memory like mine - as well as an advantage. It's . . . well . . . like a whore's top drawer. There's so much else in there that's junk-costume jewelry, unnecessary telephone numbers whose exchanges no longer exist. For instance, I can remember the birthday of anybody who's ever told me his birthday. Dorothy Parker-August 22, Lewis Gannett- October 3, Andy White-July 9, Mrs. White-September 17. I can go on with about two hundred. So can my mother. She can tell you the birthday of the girl I was in love with in the third grade, in 1903. Offhand, just like that. I got my powers of memory from her.

Sometimes it helps out in the most extraordinary way. You remember Robert M. Coates? Bob Coates? He is the author of The Eater of Darkness, which Ford Madox Ford called the first true Dadaist novel. Well, the week after Stephen Vincent Benét died - Coates and I had both known him-we were talking about Benét. Coates was trying to remember an argument he had had with Benét some fifteen years before. He couldn't remember. I said, "I can." Coates told me that was impossible since I hadn't been there. "Well," I said, "you happened to mention it in passing about twelve years ago. You were arguing about a play called Swords." I was right, and Coates was able to take it up from there. But it's strange to reach a position where your friends have to be supplied with their own memories. It's bad enough dealing with your own.

In this little extract gives a wonderful anecdote about a cartoon of his:

INTERVIEWER: You say that your drawings often don't come out the way you intended?

THURBER: Well, once I did a drawing for The New Yorker of a naked woman on all fours up on top of a bookcase-a big bookcase. She's up there near the ceiling, and in the room are her husband and two other women. The husband is saying to one of the women, obviously a guest, "This is the present Mrs. Harris. That's my first wife up there."

Well, when I did the cartoon originally I meant the naked woman to be at the top of a flight of stairs, but I lost the sense of perspective and instead of getting in the stairs when I drew my line down, there she was stuck up there, naked, on a bookcase.

Incidentally, that cartoon really threw The New Yorker editor, Harold Ross. He approached any humorous piece of writing, or more particularly a drawing, not only grimly but realistically. He called me on the phone and asked if the woman up on the bookcase was supposed to be alive, stuffed, or dead. I said, "I don't know, but I'll let you know in a couple of hours."

After a while I called him back and told him I'd just talked to my taxidermist, who said you can't stuff a woman, that my doctor had told me a dead woman couldn't support herself on all fours. "So, Ross," I said, "she must be alive." "Well then," he said, "what's she doing up there naked in the home of her husband's second wife?" I told him he had me there.

INTERVIEWER: But he published it.

THURBER: Yes, he published it, growling a bit.

There's also a wonderful anecdote about his editor, Harold Ross, at the New York Times. He had a strict attitude regarding "low comedy", and four letter words:

Ross had a neighbor woman's attitude about it. He never got over his Midwestern provincialism. His idea was that sex is an incident. "If you can prove it," I said, "we can get it in a box on the front page of The New York Times."

Now I don't want to say that in private life Ross was a prude. But as regards the theater or the printed page he certainly was. For example, he once sent an office memorandum to us in a sealed envelope. It was an order: "When you send me a memorandum with four-letter words in it, seal it. There are women in this office." I said, "Yah, Ross, and they know a lot more of these words than you do."

When women were around he was very conscious of them. Once my wife and I were in his office and Ross was discussing a man and woman he knew much better than we did. Ross told us, "I have every reason to believe that they're s-l-e-e-p-i-n-g together." My wife replied, "Why, Harold Ross, what words you do spell out."

I also love this story about the difference between the novelist and the humourist:

Hervey Allen, you know, the author of the big best-seller Anthony Adverse, seriously told a friend of mine who was working on a biographical piece on Allen that he could close his eyes, lie down on a bed, and hear the voices of his ancestors. Furthermore there was some sort of angel-like creature that danced along his pen while he was writing. He wasn't balmy by any means. He just felt he was in communication with some sort of metaphysical recorder. So you see the novelists have all the luck. I never knew a humorist who got any help from his ancestors.

Thurber never took himself seriously, unlike some of the other writers he came across:

I can remember calling on Frank Harris -  he was about seventy then-when I was on the Chicago Tribune's edition in Nice. In his house he had three portraits on the wall - Mark Twain, Frank Harris, and I think it was Hawthorne. Harris was in the middle. Harris would point up to them and say, "Those three are the best American writers. The one in the middle is the best." Harris really thought he was wonderful.

Once he told me he was going to live to be a hundred. When I asked him what the formula was, he told me it was very simple. He said, "I've bought myself a stomach pump and one half-hour after dinner I pump myself out." Can you imagine that? Well, it didn't work. It's a wonder it didn't kill him sooner.

Well, the characteristic fear of the American writer is not so much that as it is the process of aging. The writer looks in the mirror and examines his hair and teeth to see if they're still with him. "Oh my God," he says, "I wonder how my writing is. I bet I can't write today." The only time I met Faulkner he told me he wanted to live long enough to do three more novels. He was fifty three then, and I think he has done them.

Then Hemingway says, you know, that he doesn't expect to be alive after sixty. But he doesn't look forward not to being. When I met Hemingway with John O'Hara in Costello's Bar five or six years ago we sat around and talked about how old we were getting. You see it's constantly on the minds of American writers. I've never known a woman who could weep about her age the way the men I know can.

Thurber was a writer, but not one of the serious, big novelists, who rather looked down their noses at what he did:

I don't believe, as Thomas Wolfe did, that you have to turn out a massive work before being judged a writer. Wolfe once told me at a cocktail party that I didn't know what it was to be a writer. My wife, standing next to me, complained about that. "But my husband is a writer," she said. Wolfe was genuinely surprised. "He is?" he asked. "Why, all I ever see is that stuff of his in The New Yorker." In other words, he felt that prose under five thousand words was certainly not the work of a writer . . . it was some kind of doodling in words.

Thomas Clayton Wolfe (October 3, 1900 - September 15, 1938) was a major American novelist of the early 20th century.  While acclaimed when alive as one of the most important American writers of equal quality to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner, Wolfe's reputation has been "all but destroyed" since his death... He is often left out of college courses and anthologies devoted to great writers.

James Thurber, on the other hand, is still cited and read. An anthology of his best pieces - "James Thurber: Writings and Drawings" was recently published, with an introduction by Neil Gaiman, who says:

This book, the one you are holding, The 13 Clocks by James Thurber, is probably the best book in the world. And if it's not the best book, then it's still very much like nothing anyone has ever seen before, and, to the best of my knowledge, no one's ever really seen anything like it since.

It was funny in strange ways. It was filled with words. And while all books are filled with words, this one was different: it was filled with magical, wonderful, tasty words. It slipped into poetry and out of it again in a way that made you want to read it aloud, just to see how it sounded. I read it to my little sister. When I was old enough, I read it to my children.

Some years ago, my son Roy, my late partner Annie Parmeter, and myself spent an enjoyable hour or two every week reading various books out loud. Michael Morpurgo's book "Why the Whales Came" is an excellent book to read out loud. But I think our favourite was "The Thirteen Clocks". If I was on a desert island, this slim volume would probably keep me sane. Neil Gaiman again:

Something very much like nothing anyone had ever seen before came trotting down the stairs and crossed the
room. "What is that?" the Duke asked, palely. "I don't know what it is," said Hark, "but it's the only one there ever was." (James Thurber, the 13 Clocks)

Listen: it has a prince in it, and a princess. It has the evilest Duke ever written. It has Hush and Whisper (and
Listen). Happily, it has Hagga, who weeps jewels. Terrifyingly, it has a Todal. And best and most marvelously
and improbably of all, it has a Golux, with an indescribable hat, who warns our hero that

"Half the places I have been to, never were. I make things up. Half the things I say are there cannot be found. When I was young I told a tale of buried gold, and men from leagues around dug in the woods. I dug myself."
"But why?"
"I thought the tale of treasure might be true."
"You said you made it up."
"I know I did, but then I didn't know I had. I forget things, too."

Every tale needs a Golux. Luckily for all of us, this book has one

The 13 Clocks is not a fairy tale. It's not a poem, it's not a parable or a fable or a novel or joke. Truly, I don't know what The 13 Clocks is, but whatever it is, as someone else said of something else at the top of this introduction, it's the only one there ever was.

Memories of the Kitchen

I recently was tidying up and came across an Mensa Magazine from 1985, edited by Ken Webb. Ken was a both a personal friend, and at one time an "accredited journalist". Older Islanders may remember him presenting the sports news on Channel Television's local news programme. We worked together for a number of years on "Thinks!", the name he gave to the Channel Island Mensa magazine, with himself as editor, and myself as assistant editor.

Here's a piece he wrote about his memories of working in hotel kitchens as a young man, and it is interesting that I use almost exactly the method he suggests for boiling eggs - I place the egg in cold water and bring to the boil, rather than placing it in boiling water. The difference is that I used a very clever colour small half-sphere of Perspex, placed to boil with the eggs. It starts off red, and gradually turns yellow, from the outside in, and is graded for different consistencies of boiled egg. I use it along with a circular device which you press on to push in a circle of tiny blades, and which opens the top of the egg perfectly every single time.

I've added one other piece from the page. The magazine was printed as an A5 booklet, and if the text didn't quite fill a page, rather like Reader's Digest used to, Ken would add some small quirky detail to fit it exactly - I've left one of those there too after the kitchen memories.

---

MEMORIES OF THE KITCHEN
By Ken Webb

I was born in an hotel (owned by my great Aunt who died last year aged 103!) and spent the first thirty years of my life in various family hotels.

Naturally I was trained to be an hotelier. Being the son of the boss, training was NOT easy. My father believed that, unless you could do every job in the hotel as well as did the staff you employed, you had no right to call yourself an hotelier: "If the chef throws a tantrum at August Bank Holiday week-end and walks out, you step into the kitchen and the only comment from the guests should be that the food is better than ever."

The staff, naturally, made it hard going for me, knowing as they did, that should I complain to my father I would receive scant sympathy. Training was old-fashioned, thorough, practical and merciless. One example will suffice. The head chef, a small, bad-tempered but brilliant Italian, placed a metal spoon into a pan of boiling fat, took it out, and placed it straight on the back of my hand - I bear the scar to this day!

"You have been burned by boiling fat", said the Mussolini of the Kitchen, "Now you will take good care, that you will never be burned by boiling fat again." How right he was - but what a way to learn!

That is how things were in the "good old days". Nowadays the parents of the kitchen apprentice would rush off to the Police, have the chef arrested and taken to Court and charge with causing grievous bodily harm, or some such nonsense.

When you have undergone training as vigorous as existed pre-war, you do not forget readily all you have been taught and, despite having left the Hotel business thirty years ago, I venture to pen a few little tips- dredged from the innermost depths of my memory which may (or may not!) prove to be of some use.

1. To get that egg yoke just right and to avoid cracking the shell and losing egg white, just place the egg in cold water, bring to the boil, and allow to simmer for three minutes. If eggs are kept in a refrigerator it is better to take them out half an hour before you need to use them in order that they may gradually reach the temperature of the room. (In the boiling of eggs the shell sometimes cracks. This is due to the violent change in temperature causing the air inside the egg to expand too rapidly.)

2. To avoid tears when peeling onions, bite on a large crust of dry bread and breath through your mouth.

3. To make sure you get the best out of your herbs, do not chop them on a board as the board will absorb the juices. Use the bottom of an upturned dinner plate or, better still, snip them finely with a pair of scissors into a glass. What is not used will keep fresh if the glass is placed into a refrigerator.

4. If you wish your mashed potatoes to be really light, never mix with cold milk. Hot milk beaten into hot potatoes with a dash of baking powder or Bicarbonate of soda will ensure success. Incidentally, a piping bag will do wonders for your presentation.

5. To preserve your favourite frying pan in pristine condition (ALL chefs have a favourite frying pan, especially for omelettes), NEVER wash it in water. Wipe it - while still hot  with kitchen tissues. If necessary a small sprinkling of salt on the tissues will remove any stubborn crusting on the pan's surface. Finally a wipe with a fresh tissue on which you have placed a few drops of oil. Ideally, store your favourite pan in a brown paper bag. This will prevent rust as the paper absorbs the moisture and steam found in a kitchen.

6. To ensure your buttered (scrambled) eggs are done to perfection, use a porringer or improvise a form of double cooker. It is most difficult to judge the texture of the eggs if they are being cooked on a direct heat. A pan of water with an upturned dish placed in it will do for a double cooker and has the advantage of your being able to see how the water is boiling. Use for all egg bound mixtures and delicate sauces.

WHAT IS LIFE?

The Russians  as always  are advancing further claims of the longevity enjoyed by those who have the great good fortune to live under the benevolence of the Communist State.

The latest example is of a man who it is claimed, has attained the age of 110. When asked to what he attributed his long life, he  said it was due entirely to the fact that he had never touched drink, tobacco or women. When is he going to start living?

St Helier in 1932 - Elizabeth Castle

A few more extracts from the 1932 Guide Book to the Channel Islands...

This covers mainly Elizabeth Castle, and its more recent history. The Elizabeth Castle of 1932 looked quite different from that today in many respects - the 1940s saw a legacy of German bunkers and gun emplacements which altered the skyline of parts of its battlements, making a much harder, starker silhouette.

The cost of the castle is pretty amazing £1,500. It is difficult to ascertain what that would be today - the Measuring Worth website says:

In 2010, the relative value of £1,500 from 1922 ranges from £63,900.00 to £491,000.00.

Even at the upper end of the scale, that still seems like a bargain!

The history of the castle doesn't mention that there is a gap of around 600 years between the death of Helier, and the foundation of the Abbey on the castle. It is notable that the life of Helier dates from the time of the Abbey, and is mostly constructed from bits and pieces of other Saints lives. It appears to be more of a foundational document for the Abbey, written up so that more might be known of Helier than simply a name.

The historian Charles Grosset noted that the Passion of St Helier, written in the 10th or 11th century, draws upon two very much earlier lives of St Marculf (A and B), and amends them to suit his narrative.

Grosset's conclusion is that the life of St Helier is extremely poorly documented, and like Balleine, he considers it largely fictional. He sees the writer as having "been given the task of writing a life of the hermit Helier, who lived in Jersey and has a few bare facts known about him: the cave where he lived, healing of the sick, and death at the hands of pirates. He discovered a similar sounding name to Helier in the district of Tongres, and also a hermit called Eletus in the Life of St Marcouf. He did not hesitate to identify Helier with the near namesake in Tongres, or to make an identification with Eletus, taking the story of a miracle set on an island whose place-name was not to be found on the map."

The last item in this extract is the West End Bathing Pool. This is sadly neglected and no longer in use, although it has been suggested refurbishing it would be a good jubilee project. Here it is described in its vibrant heyday - probably very popular with young people, because it permitted mixed bathing!

St Helier in 1932 - Elizabeth Castle

Elizabeth Castle.
 
Admission-6d. Open daily, Sunday included.
 
The Castle stands on a detached rock about three-quarters of a mile from the shore. It can be reached by boat or by a causeway, which is completely covered at high tide, but is available about 3 hours after high water, and remains available for about 5 1/2 hours. If the tide is rising, it is not advisable to stay too long, or it may be necessary to remove shoes and stockings to make good one's retreat by the causeway.
 
In 1922 the Imperial Government offered Elizabeth Castle to the States of Jersey for £1,500. The States accepted, and at once began to put the historical parts of the building in a state of repair. The official handing over of the keys took place, with full ceremonial, on May 21, 1923.
 
The venerable and picturesque appearance of the Castle at a distance is not confirmed by a close view, but historically the spot is of interest and should be visited.
 
Close to the rock on which the Castle stands, and enclosed by the breakwater, is the Hermitage Rock, in which the hermit Helerius, or St. Helier, from whom the town derives its name, had his cell in the middle of the sixth century. He was noted for his piety and eloquence. While addressing a band of pirates, he was suddenly attacked and killed by the captain, who feared that his men might be induced to desert him. On the spot -where this occurred a Norman nobleman, Guillaume de Hamon, built an abbey and church in 1126.
 
In the reign of Edward VI the Governor of Jersey received orders to fortify the promontory, but little was done until the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when the greater part of the fortress was constructed. The lower ward was built in 1626, and the tower nearest the causeway, called King Charles's Tower, was added a few years later by the express desire of Charles II, who, as Prince of Wales, had been much interested in the fortifications which resisted his capture by the Parliamentarians.
 
Sir Philip de Carteret, Bailiff of Jersey, strengthened Elizabeth Castle on the outbreak of the Civil War. At his death (1643) the faction favouring the Parliament attempted to seize the Castle, but it was strongly held in the King's name. Mont Orgueil Castle was also stoutly defended by the Dowager Lady de Carteret. On the arrival from St. Malo of Captain George Carteret (nephew of Sir Philip) the attack on Mount Orgueil was withdrawn, and Carteret, assuming his rightful office of Lieutenant-Governor of Jersey for the King, soon suppressed opposition. In 1646 the fugitive Prince Charles arrived at Elizabeth Castle. On February 17, 1649, Carteret caused the Prince to be declared King.
 
Soon afterwards it was deemed prudent that the soi-disant king should retire to the Continent. Lord Clarendon also arrived at the Castle in 1646 and remained two years and one month, during which he began his famous History of the Rebellion. Admiral Blake arrived in 1651, with Parliamentary forces, and in St. Ouen's Bay Sir George Carteret and his Jerseymen fought them for four hours, when the Parliamentarians retired to their vessels and made for other parts of the Island.
 
When the Parliamentary forces landed, St. Aubin's Castle and Mont Orgueil quickly surrendered, but Carteret stubbornly held out in Elizabeth Castle. It was bombarded from St. Helier Hill (now Fort Regent), and an enormous shell "fired at a venture" did irreparable damage by exploding the powder magazine. Forty men were killed, and among the buildings wrecked were the Abbey Church and the residences of Prince Charles, Lord Clarendon and Sir George Carteret. In consequence of the disaster, the garrison capitulated on December 15, 1651, marching out with honours of war. The siege had begun on October 23.
 
Slightly to the west of the causeway is the
 
West End Bathing Pool, or Victoria Lake. It has a sea-water surface of over five acres. Mixed bathing is permitted at all times. The pool is open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays, and from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays. There is every convenience for both swimmers and nonswimmers-rafts, spring-boards and double diving stage (5 feet and 9 feet high). A boatman is always in attendance. As the Pool is covered at every tide the water is renewed twice a day.
 

Policing Behaviour

"Yes," said Oyarsa, "but one thing we left behind us on the harandra: fear. (C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet)

There was a mother on BBC Radio Jersey talking about the Town Park, and how there were "intimidating" groups of teenagers who congregated there after school had finished, and how they were always swearing. This isn't the only place for people to comment on this - here is a comment from Frome, in the UK, which is almost an exact replica of the concerns, though the Jersey teenagers were not accused of drinking:

I AM getting increasingly concerned about how many hoodies and teenagers hang around Victoria Park, Frome, drinking alcohol and intimidating the younger children the park is designed for. It needs a resident park keeper and the council should sort this. When a friend of mine called the police regarding the under-age drinking they seemed uninterested. This park should ensure the safety of our children.

The language from these young people's mouths is disgusting. I want my children to feel safe and happy going to the park and getting their independence without the worry of these juveniles. The council should be monitoring parks for this kind of behaviour and the police should move these teenagers on. I know this is a concern for many parents.

And another comments on teenagers hanging around shops:

There are groups of teenagers that hang around outside shops. some are ok kids , some are little criminals in the making. Point is it can be very intimidating for people trying to go to the shop to buy groceries. it can also be intimidating for other kids who want to go the shop but are afraid of being bullied. It should not be tolerated and it is the parents fault, I will never allow my child to hang on street corners and if i caught her disobeying me and doing so she would be grounded. children should have proper activities to be doing in their spare time (cinema, sports, community work etc) and studying. It is up to parents to provide a proper lifestyle for their children and keep their children out of trouble.

A report on anti-social behaviour notes that:

Hanging about in parks and open spaces or on streets can seem harmless, but can cause other people to be frightened or intimidated. A group of people talking loudly or shouting can cause disturbance to residents, particularly if close to people's houses, and having to listen to people swearing can also be upsetting.

But another individual takes a different line:

When I was a teenager we wanted to hang out with each other and had nowhere to go, so we'd just congregate wherever. We never did anything wrong or got in the way, I don't see the problem.

I think the question is really whether the behaviour is intimidating in a positive sense. If the young people are swearing at other people, or coming up close to them deliberately, that is bullying behaviour.

But a large crowd of teenagers, perhaps with language salted with swear words, can seem intimidating even though the young people have no intention of being so, or of engaging with the people who find them intimidating: it is the psychological reaction of the person with a large, and perhaps noisy crowd, close to hand - and it is a reaction of fear. But the problem may lie more with the individual than the teenagers themselves. Is it really intimidation, or is it just perceived to be? After all, it is well known that many sailors in navies historically have a language well punctuated with swear words.

In a study "Inequality and the Steriotyping of Young People", Maurice Devlin considers how much of this may be steriotyping, and is a gut-reaction, and a false perception. He notes that:

When the topic of how they thought they were seen by adults at a local and community level was discussed, by far the most frequent and spontaneous response had to do with 'hassle' in public places, with high visibility because of being in groups, and with the tensions associated with 'hanging around' and being 'moved on'. This was also consistently linked with the fact that there was little else to do, or at least little else that was attractive and accessible.

While there definitely are troublemakers, it is important not to see all teenagers in the same way. The same study also has interviews with teenagers in Ireland, and here are a few of their comments:

Karen: .All of us get tarred with the same brush. You're a teenager, you hang around in a group, you must be a vandal.

Eamon: Everybody stares at you, there's no where to go like. As adults, they can go to the pub, they've more things to do with their time.We haven't. ..We're just knocking about and you can see us more, we're just kids. We don't have nowhere to go. Adults can hide but we can't. Whatever we want to do we have to do it outside

Susan: If they see us hanging around.but like there's nowhere else to go.they feel intimidated.they write into the local newspaper, but it's not our fault, we have [the youth club] once a week, there's six other nights, like, with nothing else to do but hang around. And we're not always doing bad stuff, we're hanging around, we may just be talking, but it's never seen as 'oh well they may be talking'.[It's] 'oh you're drunk, you're on drugs, you're smoking something, you're going to break into someone's house, you're intimidating

The study has interviews with a "focus group", in which participants frequently returned to the theme that since they enjoy spending time with their friends, in groups ('walking around in a gang, that's what it's all about'), and since there is often nowhere for them to go as a group, they are constantly placed in situations full of
potential for 'hassle' with adults:

Most young people were quite ready to agree that they do often make 'loads of noise' and engage in behaviour which might be seen by many adults as a nuisance, but they tended to think the response was disproportionate, and their accounts were often characterised by humour and irony.

Gary: Sometimes you might be, like at night time you might be making too much noise, like if they have children. But like sometimes it's 4 o'clock in the day.

Angela: It's because you're young. Like, what do they want you to do, sit at home all the time?

The fact that they seemed always to be perceived as trouble-makers (or potential trouble-makers) was very 'wide of the mark' to the young people.

Gemma: Like, you can understand it, but like nothing's going to happen to them. Nothing ever happens to old folk in [area]. If anything we'd probably be looking out like, if we seen anything wrong, anybody getting robbed or anything.

Michelle: Yeah, my own granny lives round here.

In one of the focus groups, a youth worker gave an example of how young people's behaviour, even when they are involved in 'legitimate' activities organised by youth groups and schools, with a community dimension and with adult supervision, can be a cause of tension when they move outdoors.

.It was going to be a community day and we were going to welcome people on stilts and give them flyers and take photographs on stilts. So we had the workshop over in the school two or three evenings during the week. Then [it came to] the first night they went out on stilts and there was great laughter and a bit of craic and excitement and people were falling over and diving and.next of all the police arrived on the scene and they got out and [said] 'Who's in charge here'? and I said 'I am' and he said 'Is everything alright?' and I said 'Yeah, grand' and he said 'It's just, we've had a call that there's been a lot of young people making noise'. And I said 'That's laughter, young people having fun'

Factors such as the facilities available, the nature of public space, the variety of options open to young people for places to meet, the extent to which they are engaged in formal education or in other structured pastimes, and the question of whether they can (and do) travel out of their own area to pursue such pastimes, all appear to be involved.

What it seems that people want some kind of embargo on unstructured meetings. There is a call for young people to "be doing something", and by that is meant either some charitable enterprise, or some structured activity. But that really tells us as much a about the desires of the people making the suggestion to control young people.

The forbidding of meetings of large numbers of people in public places was, for a time, the law in the UK. In 1819, Parliament passed the Six Acts, which allowed that any house could be searched, without a warrant, on suspicion of containing firearms, and public meetings were virtually forbidden. If people came together in crowds, there was a danger perceived by the authorities of riots, so a blanket ban on meetings was the answer. It was a disproportionate response, and one made from fear, and a desire to feel safe by controlling people's lives, and what they could and could not be free to do - including simply meeting together in a public place.

Control makes people feel safe, and that is why the suggestion is made that the parents should be controlling the children, or there should be structured activities which they should be taking part.

At the root may be fear, but it is often an irrational fear, like the fear of spiders. We know that some spiders are poisonous, and our body's primeval defense mechanisms are triggered when we see a spider - our ancestors came from an Africa where spiders were poisonous. But we have to overcome that, and fear of large numbers of young people is also something we have to be mindful of as often an irrational fear.

If they are breaking the law, then the authorities can be called upon; but in the meantime, perhaps a little introspection and mindfulness would be worthwhile. As a character says in one of C.S. Lewis books: " The darkness in your own mind filled you with fear." Perhaps before we look to the policing of young people's behaviour, we should consider the way in which our fears police our own behaviour.

References
http://www.youth.ie/nyci/inequality-and-stereotyping-young-people

Plémont: A History of Failure

We have recognised that moral struggles are frequently between competing goods, rather than between a straight good and a straight evil. (Richard Holloway, Godless Morality)

In 2006, a proposition was brought by the Connétable of St. Ouen to decided whether or not it was in the public interest to preserve the headland at Plémont "as open space for the enjoyment of the public of the Island"

The proposition  also went on to "to request the Council of Ministers to consider all options to preserve the land described in paragraph (a), and to recommend a preferred option to the States with the least possible delay;(c ) to request the Minister for Planning and Environment to defer determination of any application relating to the redevelopment of this site pending States' consideration of the Council of Ministers' recommendation."

The debate of Plémont headland has a long history politically; it goes back at least six years, and it is a record of an inability of the States to find a solution. In October 2006, the States passed the proposition parts (a) and (b) by 36 votes in favour, 9 against, and 5 abstaining to:

( a ) agreed that it would be in the public interest for the headland at Plémont, as shown in Drawing Number 1505/06/101, namely the site formerly occupied by Plémont ('Pontin's') holiday village complex and surrounding associated land, to be preserved as open space for the enjoyment of the public of the Island;
( b ) requested the Council of Ministers to consider all options to preserve the land described in paragraph (a), and to recommend a preferred option to the States with the least possible delay

The National Trust at the time also collected 10,000 signatures in favour of the motion, and speaking to Jo Sargent in Geographical Magazine, in April 2007, the President of the National Trust of Jersey, Mike Stentiford, stated what he wanted to see happen:

What are your main concerns for the coastline's future?

Plémont is our real concern. It's a dramatic headland on Jersey's northwest coast and is the gateway to 22 kilometres of north coast footpaths.
Unfortunately, it's blighted by an empty, abandoned, dilapidated eyesore that, in the heady days of popular tourism, functioned as the Plémont
Holiday Camp. Developers now want to dismantle this awful building, which is good news, but then to replace it with 34 expensive houses and gardens, which is really bad news. Apart from the wild beauty of this part of the coast, the proposed building development would be within a stone's throw of the UK's most southerly colony of Atlantic puffins.

What are you doing to protect it?

In September last year, the National Trust for Jersey launched a petition against any development at Plémont. It was launched online, with full-page advertisements in the local press and volunteers collecting signatures in local supermarkets. It proved to be remarkably successful, and we collected more than 10,000 signatures in just four weeks. The trust believes that if development is granted, Jersey's environmental integrity--or indeed the lack of it--would be seriously questioned. We're asking that the site be purchased by the States of Jersey, returned to its natural wild state and left in its entirety to the people of Jersey. If this happens, the trust and its lands team will happily take on the responsibility of caring for and managing the entire headland for the benefit of future generations. The petition has been given to our chief minister in the States of Jersey and we're currently awaiting a decision from local government.

This was the States under its first Ministerial government, under the leadership of Senator Frank Walker, and in 2008, Senator Len Norman decided to ask Frank Walker what had happened - after all, it was getting on for two years since the matter was raised. The reply was a masterpiece of prevarication:

4.3 Senator L. Norman: Might I remind the Chief Minister again of the proposition to the Constable of St. Ouen which was adopted by the States in 2006 which requested the Council of Ministers to consider all options to preserve the headland at Plémont and to recommend a preferred option to the States within the least possible delay?  Now that 2 years have past I wonder if the Chief Minister and the Minister for Planning and Environment have sorted out who is taking responsibility for this and when we might receive the preferred option?

Senator F.H. Walker: It is not, sadly, as simple an issue as the Senator would suggest and discussions have been taking place between me and the Minister for Planning and Environment and indeed the Constable of St. Ouen in recent weeks, but there are legal considerations which have yet to be fully resolved.  But I would hope some information and perhaps even a proposition would be coming to the States in the not too distant future.

4.3.1 Senator L. Norman: I am pleased to hear that discussions have taken place between the Ministers.  I wonder during the 2 years since the proposition was adopted by the States, have any discussions taken place with the owners of the land?

Senator F.H. Walker: I have not had discussions with the owners of the land and nor would it be appropriate for me to do so.

In 2009, the Senator Frank Walker's "not too distant future" had still not arrived. Deputy Roy Le Hérissier was on the case on what were now termed "active negotiations", but unfortunately Deputy Le Fondré was not the right person to ask, and Senator Philip Ozouf was not available to answer:

3.2.3 Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier: In terms of the Assistant Minister's definition of active negotiations will he say when the first approach was made after the Constable of St. Ouen's proposition was approved on 22nd October 2008?  When was the active part of the negotiations initiated?

Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré: I am just trying to look at a reference.  I believe there was a meeting in early January and it was subsequent to that, that further correspondence was received in, I will say, April or May to be general which has then resulted in the further meeting that is being planned.

3.2.4 Deputy R.G. Le Hérissier: Just a final question.  Would the Assistant Minister comment on a proposal that has been made to the Minister for Treasury and Resources as a way of perhaps dealing with the kind of concern implicit in Deputy Martin's question?  Would he comment on a proposal that has been made for the use, for example, of dormant bank account monies as one of the approaches to this particular project?

Deputy J.A.N. Le Fondré: Unfortunately, I cannot comment because I am purely responsible for property and that is definitely a matter for the Minister.

In January 2010, by a narrow margin, the States voted against buying an area of Plémont headland to return it to nature. They rejected by 23 votes to 19 the Constable of St Ouen's proposition that the former Pontin's Holiday Camp site should be bought by the public of the Island.  Some of the debate was hidden - not for the first time with the States - from the public, as the States decided to go "in camera" for the discussion to continue with further information on cost.

As the JEP reported:

Members chose to vote on whether the States should enter into negotiations to buy the site at all, even though another option was the use of compulsory purchase powers and a large part of the debate was centred on this issue. After rejecting the idea that the States should buy the site, they did not, therefore, need to vote on whether compulsory purchase powers should be used.

Around the same time in January 2010, a working group was also being set up to look at the future of Fort Regent, another long running saga still without conclusion!

In January 2012, the JEP reported on yet another delay in the whole saga of Plémont:

PLANS for a major public inquiry into the development of one of Jersey's most treasured beauty spots may be scuppered. The architects have withdrawn and resubmitted the 2011 plans to build 28 homes on the site of the former holiday village at Plémont after a border dispute with Planning.  But the fact that the plans are new has 'reset' the whole Planning process. That means that the previous decision by the then Environment Minister, Freddie Cohen, to submit the application to a public inquiry for review has lapsed, and the new minister, Deputy Rob Duhamel, will have to make a decision on whether to hold an inquiry. Trust president Celia Jeune said that they wanted help to buy the site to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

The latest move by Philip Bailhache brings the proposals up to date. The Jersey Evening Post reports that two years after the last attempt to save the area from development and return it to nature was narrowly defeated in the States, the Senator is preparing a fresh move:

With a Planning application for a 28-home development on the site heading for a public inquiry, Senator Bailhache's plan could be the final chance to preserve one of Jersey's most beautiful natural areas. Senator Bailhache has confirmed that he is in the early stages of preparing the proposition.

The composition of the States has altered considerably since the last vote. But the arguments for and against probably have not changed much, except the economic situation has worsened. It is perhaps not quite as black as noted in Senator Ferguson's speech, when she alluded to 2012, but the deepening global crisis still make the points she made then as pertinent now:

Senator S.C. Ferguson: Like other speakers, I am sympathetic to preserving the coastline.  After all, I did bring the proposition regarding Warren Farm to the States.  But the main problem with this is funding.  But the other problem is that by virtue of the rules voted on by this Assembly the developer is entitled to expect that he can develop.  Members have commented that the House has general powers to countermand decisions of Planning.  This is not so and the details for those who are interested are in the Planning Law.

The Chief Minister has commented on our previous experiences going into various land propositions.  He mentioned Lesquende.  I would add Les Pas, where the States made a real mess of a planning application in 1989, 1990 or thereabouts and it took us something like 14 years to finish it.  What are the facts?  As has been said in this House before, we are where we are. There is an offer to preserve some two-thirds as public land.  This appears to be in the public domain and presumably would be difficult to rescind. Without prejudice to any negotiations we therefore have a publicly announced gift of about two-thirds of the land.  I think that also must be factored into the discussions.

We have the saving line - holding line - that the quality and limits to any future building being controlled by the Minister for Planning and Environment.  There will be people who will talk piously of the cost of everything and the value of nothing, but I think we have to be practical.

In 2012 we will have a structural deficit.  Members will have noticed the lugubrious comments of the Minister for Treasury and Resources from time to time saying that we shall have difficult decisions.  Like other Members, I read the financial press, I look at economic forecasts and the economies are not yet out of the woods.  I do not know the scale of the structural deficit, but I suspect from the lugubrious comments that it will be chunky. It is a time of prudence.

Members are waxing lyrical about returning the whole site to nature.  Well, I go back to it, where will the money come from?  Will the Minister for E.S.C. (Education, Sport and Culture) be contributing from his budget?  It also seems to me that this particular proposition is applying the nuclear option at too early a stage in negotiations.  It is a basic law of successful negotiation that both sides should be not quite satisfied.  It is a question of balance.  If both sides have not quite got everything they want then that is a successful negotiation.

A parliament blunderbuss at this stage is totally unhelpful.  We cannot tie the hands of any negotiators.  This, for example - a compulsory purchase proposition - would rule out the other sorts of possibilities like a land swap.  Haut de la Garenne?  Possible.  I am sorry, if we agree to a compulsory purchase no other ideas will be able to be considered.  I will not be supporting this proposition.

What we have in the debate about Plémont is a debate about conflicting values, where there is no right or wrong answer, and no calculus of decision making which will make the situation easy. That is probably why it has been the subject of endless delays, meetings, active discussions, and all the paraphernalia of failure - what politicians are good at, like Jim Hacker in Yes Minister - "lots of activity but no actual achievement". One way or another, we do need a decision to be made - and acted upon - rather than substitutes for action which we have seen so often over the last 6 years. If I can end with another quote from Richard Holloway:

In life we are in the business of making trade-offs between conflicting goods and evils, and there is no infallible measuring system for weighing these values against each other. That is why we often reach situations where further reflective deliberation gets us no further and we have no choice but to act.  I am reminded of Denis Healey's statement that in politics one never reaches conclusions, but one must make decisions.

Making Airwaves

In the time of Jubilee celebrations, you probably remember the movie hit a year or two ago - "The King's Speech", starring Colin Firth about George VI and his speech therapist Lionel Logue.

I did a blog posting on that here:
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2011/01/lionel-logue-and-kings-speech.html

But this is something you may not have known. In 1940, Queen Elizabeth, then just Princess Elizabeth, also made a Radio broadcast - and the details are given here, from the BBC Handbook of 1941:

Princess Elizabeth

The most notable day in the year's broadcasts to children was Sunday, 13 October [1940], when Princess Elizabeth broadcast a message in the Children's Hour to children of the Empire. This was Her Royal Highness's first broadcast.

Princess Margaret, who was at her sister's side while she was speaking, also made her maiden speech over the air by bidding their listeners good-night.

The speech was recorded for inclusion that same evening in the first of the new weekly programmes for children evacuated to Canada and the U.S.A.

Look East

A poem of memories, some bittersweet...

Look East    
A moonscape of rocks, just as in memory;
And as if yesterday, I walk along the jetty,
Looking back towards the car. That I recall
So well; facing the bitter cold wind that Fall,
While you watched from the car, smiling eyes;
The wind is strong today, a lament of sighs,
As it whistles over the sea wall. No feeling:
That was my concern, was fading a healing?
Or a loss, the ghosts of past just vanish away,
Like a sea mist, beneath the hot sun of midday?
But it was not so: And indeed, I'm glad I came,
Because there is joy in knowing I am still lame;
Tears of joy and sadness, falling down my cheek,
For I still miss you, I still watch out and seek;
And I munch the hot dog, warm and tasty,
We loved to eat those here, you and me:
Came to watch tidal flow on Eastern shore;
And memory returns, like opening of a door:
Dog walkers upon the sand, of tide and place;
This was our special time, our private space,
But cut short all too soon, on every day;
I can visit the past, but I cannot yet stay;
Happiness comes this way, and so I long
To watch distant memories now so strong;
That's how it was, so fierce and true:
And not a moment do I rue.

The Modern Prodigal

Did you hear the story about two brothers?

Once upon a time there were two brothers. One stayed at home, and got on with mundane tasks, scrutinising his father's accounts, but the other was a somewhat flashy individual who wanted to make a name for himself in the world. He asked to take over the running of his father's business, and his father, let him take charge of the accounts. But he was wild and full of the excesses of youth, and some of the servants who worked for the business didn't like the way he treated them, as hired servants, not worthy of respect.

One left abruptly, saying that he was fed up with being hectored and bullied. Another servant, he said was inept at book keeping, and really incompetent. He said this so that when the servant left, he would be in the right, and the servant would not be able to seek compensation. But the other brother was unhappy with the way the younger brother was handling the servants, so he called in a Quaestor to look into the whole sorry mess and report. The Quaestor said that the younger brother had been a bit of a bully, and had wronged one servant by making him our to be incompetent.

Now the younger brother saw that he couldn't carry on the way he had as if nothing had happened, so he set off for home. When he was far off, his father came out to meet him, and greeted him.

And he said to his father, "Father, I am sorry, I have acted badly, I have bullied people, and I have done wrong, and I admit my mistakes. I have learned my lesson. Take pity on me."

Or he would have done, if it was the parable of the prodigal son. But this is the twenty-first century, and modern prodigals aren't quite as contrite. Here's the modern version:

And he said to his father, "Father, I have been misunderstood, and all I ever wanted to do was save money. And I will be vindicated in my decisions in the end. And please don't listen to the Quaestor, because he doesn't understand the difference between challenging servants robustly and bullying. And I've really done nothing wrong, and have no reason to apologise to anyone or say sorry."

And the father said, "Well, everyone is human. And you've been very stressed. Maybe all you need is more quiet talks with me, and better management of your workload."

Because that's how the Prodigal Son is welcomed home nowadays.

Take any card

Probably the most clichéd of card tricks is the one where the magician asks a member of the audience to "pick any card". It's called forcing a card, making the poor sucker take the card the magician wants them to take. I felt something similar was going on when I chanced to get a glimpse of the Jersey Annual Social Survey.

How it works is this: instead of presenting discrete options, you present paired options, so that there is an inbuilt degree of bias in the question; it assumes the result has to be either / or. Here is an example:

Suppose the government had to choose between increasing taxes and spending more on services, or decreasing taxes and spending less on services, which one should you think it should choose?

- reduce taxes and spend less on health, education and social benefits
-  keep taxes and spending on these services at the same level as now
- increase taxes and spend more on health, education and social benefits


Or perhaps - apply something like John Seddon's Systems Thinking to improve the efficiency of public services without having to make such choices, and looking for ways to get the trading local companies who effectively do not pay tax on profits on an even footing with those who do. But these aren't options we are given, and it is unlikely that many local politicians have ever read "Systems Thinking in the Public Sector: Case Studies: Delivering Public Services that Work (Volume 1)".  These are case studies of public sectors which have been turned around to provide more with less staff. It can be done, but this is not one of the options given in the survey.

And take immigration. One question asks about how concerned you are about immigration - very, fairly, not very, not at all. But the next brings back the paired options once more - choose (for each option) between very acceptable, fairly acceptable, not very acceptable, not at all acceptable.

How acceptable is future immigration to Jersey if it...

- keeps taxes for individuals as low as possible
- helps to maintain businesses and job opportunities
- makes sure we have enough workers to support the ageing population
- means our pensionable age can be kept as low as possible
- leads to better public services such as education and health


If the section on taxes and spending showed some bias, here is naked bias. Those are leading choices, almost designed to bias the recipient into giving the answer than immigration is, after all, acceptable. Who wouldn't want lower taxes, more job opportunities, better public services? But by linking these in a paired option with immigration, the survey is playing the forced card - we are back in magician territory again.

Of course this is nothing new - the same design faults were a major flaw in the Imagine Jersey forums some years ago. But it is rather disquieting to learn that nothing seems to have been learned from that except to follow the same pattern. What it does NOT do is to ask the following questions (which are assumed):

Do you think it is likely that inward migration can provide enough extra taxation to keep taxes low?
Do you think that inward migration improves job opportunities?
Do you think that inward migration provides enough workers to support the ageing population, or more aged people later on (and more pension demands)?
Do you think inward migration gives us more money for better public services, or are the migrants create an extra demand on schools and the hospital?

When we ask these questions, we can see core assumptions and biases made by the survey. Of course it could be answered that there is the option of giving "not at all acceptable" in response to the questions it asked, but the way that they are phrased, the unintentional consequences of each choice is hidden.

For instance, we could see that inward migration may lead to a vicious spiral needing more migration as the migrants themselves age and add to the demands on health services and pensions. That's not considered, or even placed in front of the average individual answering the question. Yet it is a perfectly obvious thing not to overlook - migrants, after all, don't stay preserved in amber at the same age they arrive in the Island. They age. They will be pensioners themselves. They will be an ageing population.

Is this a fair survey? It seems very close to the specimen survey given by Sir Humphrey Appleby in "Yes Minister". Part of that will depend on whether all the questions are published as well, so that the bias is apparent to any reader of the results. But even that is not enough - by using paired options, and by neglecting the possibility that those options might not be paired, the survey is actually excluding what people might think. There is a comment box, however, and I suggest it is used to note that.

Sir Humphrey: "You know what happens: nice young lady comes up to you. Obviously you want to create a good impression, you don't want to look a fool, do you? So she starts asking you some questions: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think there is a lack of discipline in our Comprehensive schools?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think they respond to a challenge?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?"
Bernard Woolley: "Oh...well, I suppose I might be."
Sir Humphrey: "Yes or no?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Of course you would, Bernard. After all you told you can't say no to that. So they don't mention the first five questions and they publish the last one."

Then and Now

Back to more usually blogging tomorrow, in the meantime, for today, a Jubilee themed poem...


Then and Now
 
The rain is beating steady, down
But within the Abbey, all is fine
The Queen in her Coronation gown
With coronet, jewels gleam and shine
 
The rain is beating steady, down
Crowds await, the Queen to see
The joy the weather cannot drown
Now sixty-years, the Jubilee
 
The rain is beating steady, down
The young Queen is passing by
This was a day of Oath and Crown
And from the crowd, a cheering cry
 
The rain is beating steady, down
Still they rejoice in London Town

Anthem for the Land

Bank holiday Monday, and something a bit different today, with a more Pagan feel to it.

Anthem for the Land

Sing gods and worlds unseen
Knights noble and fine in green
In ritual, we convene
Goddess victorious
Titania so glorious
Blessed be upon us
Dance on the green
 
Spirit of air, arise
Scatter the seedling skies
And make them fall.
Blowing the fallen sticks
Currents as deep as Styx
Herein the hopes we fix
Dance on the green
 
Sing lays of ancient lore
Witch song as downwards pour
Here comes the rain
Keeping the Rede and laws
Never meddle without cause
Ritual with heart and voice
Dance on the green
 
From elemental foe
Deadly winds that blow
Spell out a magic screen
Outward the arms extend,
In enchantment, defend
All whom we call our friend
Dance on the green

 

Hymns and Messages

I've been looking at different kinds of hymns, and how they function; it is possible, I think, to provide a taxonomy of hymns, in which a function analysis can tell you about the writers, the audience who sing them, and the kind of society in which they took root.

I'll start with Bishop William How's hymn. Bishop How (1823-1897) is a good example of a typical Victorian hymn. Victorian hymns like this are packed with New Testament imagery. This is a hymn about death, but it is also a hymn which tells you about Jesus, drawing upon images such as captain, and the whole notion of a fight to be fought, a race to be one; it is a call to arms, like "Onward Christian Soldiers". This is a hymn of Empire, calling the singers to strive to be good, and so earn the crown. It's the kind of hymn that helps people to buy into the idea of a society

For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
who thee by faith before the world confessed,
thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Thou wast their rock, their fortress, and their might;
thou Lord, their captain in the well-fought fight;
thou in the darkness drear, their one true light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

This becomes even more pronounced as the verses progress, where the struggle is linked to warfare, and news of distant triumph, and it is a call to be part of this Empire "from earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast", to think of yourself as part of a "blest communion"; religious piety is linked to belonging.

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
and hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast,
through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, Alleluia!

O may thy soldiers, faithful, true, and bold,
fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
and win with them the victor's crown of gold.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Encapsulating Christian theology - Jesus crucified, died to save us all - is also something we find in Cecil Frances Alexander, the wife of the Bishop of Derry, and in this late Victorian hymn there is a call to morality, to be good. This is the reason why Jesus died, so that we might be good, and go to heaven. She doesn't say as much, but there's left the idea that if you aren't good, you won't (and probably go to hell). In its way it is a carrot and stick approach, in which the next life is there as a reward, as much as the victor's crown, and pearly gates of "For All the Saints".

There is a green hill far away,
outside a city wall,
where our dear Lord was crucified
who died to save us all.

We may not know, we cannot tell,
what pains he had to bear,
but we believe it was for us
he hung and suffered there.

He died that we might be forgiven,
he died to make us good,
that we might go at last to heaven,
saved by his precious blood.

But of course, being good, as another of Mrs Alexander's hymns reminds us, is also about knowing your place

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

It is no wonder that Karl Marx was totally revolved by this kind of piety, which he saw as using the promise of a reward in heaven as a means of keeping people in their place in this life; suffering is the path to heaven, and if the poor suffer, great must be their reward. Indeed, it is hard to read some of these hymns, and listen to the preaching and think otherwise - Christian children all must be - mild, obedient, just like he". What is happening is that Victorian culture is being given a Christian justification; it is not a baptism of Victorian values by Christianity, but an adaptation of Christian values to Victorian society. And, of course, a society which had lived with the notion of slavery as ordered by God for many years was quite able to live with the notion of rich and poor being ordered by God. This lingers even today, with a Christianity that becomes bound up with a retreat to personal piety, and leaves social justice on one side, is obsessed with matters sexual (women priests, gay marriage) but virtually ignores the call for social justice.

Which brings us neatly to a modern hymn writer, Graham Kendrick. Here is a subtle change of emphasis. The Victorian hymn tells us what to do, tells us how to feel. But the modern hymn is an expression of feeling that we make our own by singing; it is like a musical creed, but as much concerned with what we feel and how that guides our actions, as giving us theology.

All I once held dear, built my life upon
All this world reveres, and wars to own
All I once thought gain I have counted loss
Spent and worthless now, compared to this

Knowing you, Jesus
Knowing you, there is no greater thing
You're my all, you're the best
You're my joy, my righteousness
And I love you, Lord

Paul Heelas in his study on "New Age Spirituality" refers to this change, which largely happens post-war, as a "subjective turn" from religion to spirituality. There has been a turning away from objective and external roles and "towards a life lived by reference to one's own subjective experiences". This they term a "holistic milieu". It's the same thing that one finds in modern Yoga, Buddhism, aromatherapy, homeopathy, reiki  and circle dancing, but in Kendrick's work, we see its Christian expression. That's not to denigrate it; it is a significant advance from Victorian hymns, and tonally very different. It's not just that Victorian hymns are almost written to be loud, congregational, with the organ in full volume, where these are soft, gentle, almost hymns for a guitar or piano; the difference between the external and internal goes deeper than that.

Now my heart's desire is to know you more
To be found in you and known as yours
To possess by faith what I could not earn
All-surpassing gift of righteousness

Oh, to know the power of your risen life
And to know You in Your sufferings
To become like you in your death, my Lord
So with you to live and never die

It is interesting to see how the notion of "heaven" has receded and is replaced by "never die", and there is here an idea that faith is both something unearned, and a matter of relationship at its heart; it is not about knowing things, but knowing a person. This difference is also apparent in his hymn "First Light". This is, at first sight, a much more "external" song; it doesn't present itself initially as an expression of feeling, and yet it draws the singer into its meaning. It's a much more subtle approach to the Victorian ones, and it is tied in with images of the living world - the sun, new shoots, springtime, trees. Unlike "All Things Bright and Beautiful", this is not a Paley's Watchmaker account of creation, but of creation as a dynamic unfolding of the potential that is hidden there; in a way, it is drawing upon both the modern approach to spirituality - the hidden self, the awakening, awareness - and evolution - this is not creation laid out, but creation unfolding. In "All Creatures", everything has a place in the world; here, everything is in flux:

First light is upon our faces
First light of the morning sun
First sight of a new creation
First hour of the age to come

New life from the earth is waking
First shoots of the second birth
First bloom of an endless springtime
First bud of the tree of life

And unlike Mrs Alexander's hymn, there's not the "everyone know their place", but the whole breaking open of the living world is tied in with the theme of justice. Light is shining into the darker corners of society.

First rays of the sun of justice
First note of the freedom song
First breath of the coming spirit
First shout from the conquered tomb

First light is the Father's glory
First light is the risen one
First born over all creation
We greet the unconquered son

And finally, instead of a moral of "be good, go to heaven", there's an idea of "new creation" starting, and old orders breaking up. One might always say that this is a critique, albeit oblique, on the Victorian hymns, the "winter's breath" trying to preserve a fixed and rigid order. It's not anarchy, it is not socialism, but it is definitely a very "different drum" that is beating in hymns like these, and one that reflects much more the society in which we live today.

First sound of a sacred rhythm
First beat of a different drum
First step of a dance with heaven
First joy of the age to come

Last sigh of an age that's passing
Last chill of a winters breath
Last night of the king of terrors
Last night of the sting of death

First light is the Father's glory
First light is the risen Son
The First and Last of all things
Jesus has risen from the tomb

Three Crowns

Three Crowns
 
Once there were in Saxon times, three crowns,
The sea came in, took coast and so one drowns;
Vikings landed, and there defeat, another lost,
Gold melted down, so precious, such a cost;
But one remained, hidden, buried deep, they say,
And while it stays, it guards the land this day,
Along the wind-swept dunes, beneath the sand;
Now Kings and Queens of England rule the land,
And Coronation ceremony is both a solemn time,
And also now for celebration, when bells chime;
But they will never wear the last of crowns at all,
That which keeps safe the land, prevents its fall;
Bound up in ancient magic, art so finely wrought,
Now lost in the mist of the past, and never sought,
Save with guardians of the past, their secret keeps,
Along the coastal flats, where couch grass sweeps:
The distant sea upon the rocks, waves on the shore,
And the last of Saxon Crowns, of ancient lore.
 
(inspired by M.R. James, A Warning to the Curious)

St Brelade Country Fete

What are you doing for the Queen's Jubilee? In St Brelade, Jersey, I'm going to head off on Sunday to Reg's Garden. It's a great garden to visit anytime, but this day it is going to be a hive of activity. Why not come along too? And it raises money for three local charities, as well.

St Brelade Country Fete

Entry to the fete is FREE

Two days to go to what will be the largest event the Parish of St Brelade has been involved in since the days of the fetes held around St Aubin's harbour.

The main idea of holding the fete in Reg's Garden, was to be nearer to the more populated area of the parish and of course to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee year. The garden is only half a mile from Red Houses.Easy walking distance and pavements all the way.

The fete will be open from 11am till 7.30 pm and all car parking will be in the field opposite Silver Springs, supervised by the ATC and the St Brelade Honorary Police

The fete is aimed at the family, with field sports such as Tug o' War, Egg and Spoon and Sack racing.

The lucky dip will be topped up with a hundred 'Dips' during the day, and children will be able to feed the fish.

The twenty foot high inflatable slid and bouncy castles will be a huge attraction and as will listening to and watching the performers on the stage, some may be as young as Alfie, a ten year old who writes and sings to his own guitar, and his fans.

"St Brelade Youth Project entertainers for St Brelade Fete"' will In most cases, be performing on the stage for the first time.

Official opening will performed by Ian Gorst, the Chief Minister and Miss St Brelade, at 12.30.

While being entertained for seven hours with jazz, folk music and beautiful singing, you can be satisfying your taste buds from the various stalls with hot and cold food.

In an adjoining field there will be car-boot and craft stalls.

To be a bit naughty, there will be stocks to throw wet sponges at, preferably while your favourite politician has his/her's head stuck in it.

The three main recipients of any funds made on the day will be:

St Brelade Youth Club,
Maision St Brelade
Les Amis.