By Douglas Kruger
THERE’S a wonderful optical illusion in the Tunnel. You have to go by foot, or you won’t see it.
Place your back to Police HQ. Head in the direction of Liberation Square, passing beneath the mountain like a hobbit in Moria.
As you enter the gloom, you will need to scan ahead for tourists. They’re easy to identify; they are the ones trundling happily along on the wrong side of the road, gleefully oblivious of the gigantic warning sign at the entrance: “No! Wrong! Turn back!”
Space is tight down there, so to pass by such a lost soul, all parties must prepare for a rousing game of vertical limbo. Be forewarned, the dance can be surprisingly intimate. Your only consolation is the sheepish apology as they realise the error of their ways. Be a sport and don’t cluck condescendingly.
Now here’s the illusory part: try as you may, you cannot tell which way people are headed.
Not until they’re on top of you.
It’s something to do with silhouettes and backlighting. Perhaps it only works at certain times of the day. But you will see people on the path ahead of you, and your eyes will struggle valiantly to resolve directions, but they simply can’t do it. People are flickering blobs, their footfalls an ambiguous strobe, maybe coming at you, maybe heading away.
Stare long enough, and your brain begins to short circuit. You may become woozy or trip and stumble, or even start to believe that our property market is not a rigged cartel.
It’s funny how the mind works, with all its spits and glitches. It’s not purely about what’s objectively in front of your eyes. It’s also about how you interpret the things you see.
And it turns out that the same goes for the way we look at Jersey as a whole, where there’s an even bigger optical illusion at play.
Stare too closely at news items, and you’d swear we were all done for. Everything is horrific all the time. No one in charge knows what they’re doing and the tunnel goes on forever while a herd of cartoon dodos chant, “Doom on you!”
It’s even worse if you trawl through the comments section on social-media posts, where it feels like watching opera singers decry their final demise.
But, put your phone down. Zoom back from the narrative. Walk out onto the actual Island – not the mediated version – and simply look around.
Basking in the sunshine near the coast of France, you will see an entirely different place. It’s clean, peaceful, friendly. It’s unrivalled for natural beauty, and above all, it’s safe. It even functions well, after its own fashion. And it’s important to be reminded of that.
We got the chance to view the place afresh recently when my father-in-law came to visit. We fell into tourist mode, took it all in again through the eyes of a newcomer, and it’s nothing but idyllic. He commented unendingly on the friendly people, how clean and charming the streets were, the functionality of a nation where law and order still prevails.
Jersey cleans up nicely when you unveil it for a guest. Even when we pointed to local tiffs, challenges, or political hot buttons, he reminded us how lucky we were to be squabbling over such relative trivialities. There are places on earth where problems are life and death. This just isn’t one of them.
It led me to revisit a column I wrote a year or so back, in which I listed 15 things that make me inexplicably happy about our island. And it’s time for an update.
As the optical illusions resolve, and we realise we’re headed in the right direction, here are another 15 things that warm the heart:
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Turning a corner to discover bunting dancing in the sunlight between buildings.
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Spotting the ferry at different locations during the day. That elegant moment as it slips quietly around Elizabeth Castle.
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Realising that the strange sound I heard from my apartment at night was a ship’s horn way out at sea.
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Coming in to land from the east, and taking in both castles below in a single greedy gulp.
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Moments of unexpected charm, like a surprise concert in the park, a parade of classic vehicles happening by, or a pop-up French market in the Royal Square.
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Flowers along the buildings, flowers hanging from posts, flowers everywhere.
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Taking my kid for a walk through town and bumping into at least three of his friends.
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Momentarily losing said kid at a park/pool/beach/store/trail/bike park, and not being in the least concerned about his safety.
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Those little knitted doily characters perched atop our postboxes…and the spirit of doing something that delightful, and the peaceful society implied by such an act. How utterly lovely.
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The sounds we hear: those are the church bells from across the park. That’s the chiming of Le Petit Train setting off. (That’s my GPS mispronouncing a French road name.)
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The wonderful mix of the everyday with the astonishing: “This is my son’s teacher. His Dad found the biggest hoard of ancient Celtic coins in history. Oh, and that’s Henry Cavill’s mum over there.”
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The hauntingly beautiful and undisturbed silence of La Folie Inn, our enduring ghost house.
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Eating Thai food at the slip by sunset, or waffles near an idyllic surfer’s beach, and not even thinking of it as a special holiday moment. Just “Tuesday”.
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Being part of an ancient and still unfolding drama that incorporates stone-age man, Celts, Romans, Vikings, Normans and…us.
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All the very best aspects of British culture…without all the very worst aspects of British culture.
So, there are two ways you can look at it: “We live on a small island” or alternatively, “We live on a small island”. It’s the same data. The only change is the reverence in the voice. I choose reverence. There is much here to revere.
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Douglas Kruger is an award-winning professional speaker and author. His books are all available via Amazon and Audible. Meet him at douglaskruger.com.
