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They have sold a pot of gold for coloured beads
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Devotees of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will know that the answer is 42. However, as the mice put the wrong programme into the computer that was the Earth in the first place, it is wrong. So, after billions of years – and thanks to the construction of a hyper space bypass that necessitated the destruction of the planet – they had to start all over again.
Rather like our own dearly beloved government and politicians, not even super-intelligent alien beings can get it right. Anyway, I digress.
What on earth, you may ask, was I doing in wardrobes? Well, it’s all the fault of CS Lewis for writing The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Ever since I first read the book as a child, I have lived in hope that one day I would find that very same portal to Narnia. Instead of finding myself inside a confined space, I would wend my way through old coats, reeking of mothballs, to step into an enchanted forest.
After a sorry week in which our beloved politicians sold the pot of gold for the sake of a handful of coloured beads and gave the green light for speculative
development, I was in desperate need of escape. Alas, the backs of the wardrobes proved to immovable while the train fuelled by marshmallows and driven by a yeti also failed to arrive to take me, the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost to the coast. So, I had to content myself with Strictly Come Dancing, a glass of a very fruity New Zealand sauvignon blanc and Italian chocolates.
It had been my intention to spend last weekend composing the penultimate column of 2012 on the lines of a pantomime starring our dear States Members. Deputy Tracey Vallois would have made the perfect principal boy; Senator Phillip Ozouf was a cert as Baron Hardup and when it came to the Ugly Sisters, what a choice!
However, after last week’s performance if the Island needs a laugh over the holidays then all we need to do is act out Hansard or ask the BBC to repeat its live coverage.
Listening to the Plémont debate brought back bad memories of the days when – usually against my will and inclination – the news editor had to push me protesting in the direction of town to cover States proceedings.
Apart from dunking Belgian chocolates into fresh coffee, while entombed in the JEP crow nest above the Chamber, hand ever poised over the volume switch for when Members with booming vocal ranges rose to speak, it was – like a visit to the dentist – something unpleasant which had to be endured. Unfortunately, unlike a dental check-up, this tiresome duty came around rather more than every six months.
Give them a subject to ramble on about and like the Duracell bunny on warp drive , off they go. Present them with a piece of complicated legislation laced with big words, lost of figures and convoluted terminology, and it invariably gets passed on the nod without any discussion.
I once had to cover two such examples in the same sitting: relocating a footpath at the Airport and legislation vital to the operation of the Island’s finance industry.
Dear reader, I feel you already getting ahead of me. The then crop of beloved politicians – which it must be said were probably the best of the post-war era – could not resist resorting to type.
They waffled for more than two-and-a-half hours on exactly to where the damned footpath should be moved. Then, before one of their number could say ‘who fancies a swift one in the Cock and Bottle afterwards’, the crucial financial law, years in the drafting, was done and dusted and in the post to the Privy Council for assent.
Such examples fit neatly under the axiomatic umbrella of Murphy’s Law. In fact every time I see Members heading in the direction of the Royal Square – or the Côterie of Ministers converging on Squirrel Le Marquand House – I am consumed with the fear that anything that can go wrong, shortly will.
It is the same as me and lottery tickets. When it comes to raffles then my luck knows no bounds and, even when tickets are sold Islandwide in their thousands, I come away with at least two prizes.
Widen the scope to prize draws, national newspaper competitions to win an idyllic quintessential country cottage or the Channels Islands Lottery and there’s no hope.
Which is why I am getting tired of being asked to partake in the Christmas bumper draw every time I hand over my hard-earned cash in shops, supermarkets and at petrol stations.
Knowing my luck, I would be one digit out on the top prize and doomed to spend the remainder of my days, in despair, at how the cash would have got me off this rock and away before the free reign given to speculative development by the outcome of the Plémont debate, turns this Island into a version of Monaco or Hong Kong, hideously overdeveloped with luxury properties and office blocks.
My theory was proved correct earlier this month when I was handed a free ticket for a prize draw. It was number 41.
Can you guess which number won? 40!
As Del Boy would say: ‘Je reste ma valise.’
Merry Christmas.
• Paula Thelwell is a member of the Council of the National Trust for Jersey. Her views do not necessarily reflect those of the Council or the National Trust.
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