By Douglas Kruger
ON the heels of an excellent series about Jersey and Guernsey, Channel 5 headed north to document the Isle of Wight. And there’s big drama playing out there.
Specifically, a secret committee of five elderly community members, donning assorted country hats, is wandering from village to village, anonymously judging each place’s “prettiness” for an annual contest. The stakes are high, and so their identity must be kept a secret until the results are revealed.
“Tut, tut,” the committee members shake their heads. “A dog dropping clearly hasn’t been picked up, and it shall cost this place points.”
The reputation of this idyllic village now decimated, the committee gathers its clipboards and sallies forth. “To the next little hamlet!”
These are the sorts of challenges troubling their sleep.
If you’ll excuse me taking a bleak turn, the same week that this ode to tranquillity aired, someone back in South Africa poisoned our dogs. Their intention was to break into my folks’ house and the dogs were in the way. The growing South African population in Jersey will be familiar with that modus operandi, and will also attest that many such housebreakings end in murder, as it did for my best friend’s mum just after our high-school years, which is no small part of why we’re here.
My folks are fine. One of the dogs didn’t make it though, and I can’t spend too much time on that, because Cocoa was the loveliest little pooch ever to spend movie nights snoozing on my lap. I miss her mischievous personality dreadfully. And I’d rather not express what I feel towards her killers.
I watched the show about the Isle of Wight shortly after I received that awful news from home. And so I say: what an incredible privilege it is to live here.
And please don’t misunderstand. I don’t use the word “privilege” disparagingly, in the sense of an unearned benefit. Stability this deep and peace so dependable has required centuries of negotiation among the British peoples. Start at Magna Carta and work your way forward.
I say it because I am simply grateful. And I say it to remind you that though we grouse about small things here, we live in paradise.
And that’s not just “in comparison to South Africa”. Have you been watching the catastrophe in Israel? While the levels of violence and hatred displayed against Israeli civilians may seem unimaginable to anyone born here, it’s all too familiar to someone from my bit of the world. I will not relate what happens in SA during farm murders, because you don’t need to know. Indeed, you can’t even imagine it, and that is to the credit of this place, this people, this culture.
So, where do we actually rank?
This year, our neighbours in the UK came in the top 25% of the world’s safest countries. Its global peace index score moved from 1.7 last year to 1.69 this year, implying that conditions improved over the past 12 months.
Homicide, in particular, is just not a British specialty. Author Bill Bryson once observed that you were statistically more likely to die by walking into a wall than to be murdered by your fellow Brit.
And Jersey? Well, we’re even better. We’re apparently the fifth safest place on the planet, if the 2023 Global Residence Safety Index is to be believed. Our island is outperformed only by Liechtenstein, Andorra, the Isle of Man and Monaco.
Dig into the specifics, and you’ll note that our own homicide rate is so low as to be effectively unmeasurable. And our safety numbers aren’t even thrown by such things as road accident deaths, or anomalies such as natural disasters.
To put it into stark contrast, when last did someone poison your dog in order to try to kill your family and steal your household possessions? It just doesn’t happen here. And for that, and many other reasons besides, we are very, very grateful. I’ll admit that I say a prayer of thanks for this place each night.
Every time I exit the Tunnel and head towards the gym, I see that Union Flag above the Liberty Square restaurant, and I’m reminded what a privilege it is to be here. It fills me with gratitude on a deep level. OK, right now it’s been replaced with one of those woke, “look at me, I support everything” banners. But hopefully soon, the more all-inclusive Union Flag will return. Because it means something.
We are Jersey. We are part of the British Isles. The generations that came before crafted a country and a culture that prioritises peace, is intrinsically law-abiding, and rarely ever even considers causing harm to one another, let alone carrying it out in creative ways.
I’ll keep praying for the train wreck that is South Africa. I’ll keep praying for Israel. I cannot tell you how grateful I am that I get to say those prayers here, in Jersey. Thank you for having us.
-
Douglas Kruger lives in St Helier and writes books to keep himself out of mischief. When the seagulls aren’t shrieking, he records them too. They’re all available from Amazon and Audible.
