Those were the days of care in the community

The virus, ‘reminiscences affectionate’, must have got into the water supply at the old packing shed at Five Oaks if the supper I hosted last weekend for dear old workmates – and Monsieur Clement’s latest column – were anything to go by. While looking back with those with whom you shared common experiences is a jolly pasttime, it can also have the opposite effect of inducing a state of maudlin at what has passed and will never be again.

See what I mean? You share a bottle, three or more of excellent Italian wine over a repast of quality British cold meats accompanied by freshly baked local artisan bread, followed by quality local seasonal produce fashioned into a fish pie, according to a Cornish recipe courtesy of Ricky Stein, and finished off with hand-made Jersey cheese with side helpings of grapes, black butter and home-made crab apple jelly, and all of a sudden the hands of the clock fly back.

The only problem is you wake the next morning to the washing up and the stark truth that things simply ain’t what they used to be.

Curmudgeonly old Helier’s recollections concerned a côterie of long-gone local characters who added colour to Island life before it got above itself and sold its soul to the worshippers of mammon and land-grabbing developers.

Local characters are much like Marmite – you either love them or cross the road to avoid them. In the days before social workers existed to control the lives of those who don’t fit the accepted mould, there was enough genuine care in the community to let such ‘misfits’ live their lives as long as they didn’t hurt anyone.

Those were the days when the police applied common sense to upholding the law and turned a blind eye when a strong word of caution was all that was required to bring an erring citizen back on the straight narrow.

More importantly, the copper probably knew your parents and a phone call the next day would ensure that the appropriate punishment was carried out at home.

As a friend learned the hard way when, in the days when Slade topped the charts, she picked an argument with a member of the public who had commented on her drunken and unladylike behaviour.

Unfortunately, that upstanding member of the community just happened to be an old friend of her mother. The altercation resulted in my friend being grounded for a month and proves that in a small community you should always be on your guard.

Those were also the days when the people, even gobby youths with brains addled by the demon drink and fit for a fight, knew to respect the law.

The veil of nostalgia that settled over Boulivot Heights après Saturday’s supper was thickened by the final episode of the charming BBC drama series Call the Midwife. Adapted from the published recollections of a midwife in post-Second World War East End London, it proved to be a bigger hit than Downtown Abbey because it depicted a less complicated, if impoverished world, when the community cared and pulled together.

Fine acting from a talented cast also did much to push the series to the top of the Sunday viewing ratings – a rarity in the cultural desert that is now British television. The drama’s repeated message that the then newly-formed National Health Service was delivering better lives for the poor added fuel to the flames fanned by those who accuse the BBC of left-wing bias, coming as it did while the coalition government tries to push through its dubious reforms of health care.

Nostalgia does not necessarily require a long journey to the past, as the recent pleasures of life equally fit the bill.

Idling away the late afternoons this week in the bright winter sunshine that bathed the creeping incoming tideline of Robin Bay, behind La Rocque Harbour, as Jack Russell numero played ball and her pup fished hopefully for Jersey shrimps still secreted in deeper water, my mind was away in Cornwall.

Since that most delightful of English counties supplanted Australia as my most favourite place in the world at the close of the second Millennium, when the sun shines bright and clear against bright blue skies, my heart is either in the Camel Estuary or on Bodmin Moor, traversing the steep craggy cliff tops between Trevone Bay and Stepper Point, meandering the tiny streets of Mousehole or enjoying a pint of Doom Bar in the Seven Stars pub in Flushing.

So you can appreciate my delight at the eight part series, Caroline Quinton’s Cornwall, that concluded last Monday. Like the fantastic and best ever Jersey Tourism television advert 2012, it featured ordinary people well known in the community.

These included a fisherman, camp site owner, an employee of the National Trust who wouldn’t change his life for anything, owners of stately homes and the Lindo family, who make some of the best wine in the world in the Camel Valley. Just like those who feature in Tourism’s advert, some I have met on my Cornish travels, which is what made the programme so special.

Life should not be judged for its material acquisitions, such as the car you drive or the house you live in, but on those you can truly call friends and the strength of community life.