By Douglas Kruger
Helping baffled tourists in Jersey is one of life’s little pleasures. Usually older French or German hikers. You’ll find them poring over a map, heatedly pointing in opposite directions. They’re animated in their gratitude when you point the way. I’m assuming. They might actually be calling me names in High Dutch.
But I cringe when they ask after public restrooms. We need to talk about those, from a tourism perspective.
In Germany or Japan, public loos are a tech fest. They will just about perform the function for you. The ones in Norway and Switzerland receive plaudits for beauty from architectural magazines.
Ours look like that opening scene from Saw. The frightened victim awakens chained to a subterranean bathtub and must dismember himself with a hacksaw to escape.
To enter one, whether at our bus terminal or even along one of our pristine beaches, is to travel back to the Soviet Union and immerse yourself in communist misery.
Architects know that to increase perceptions of light and space, one should use mirrors liberally. And so, there are none in ours. Although you could use the inch of water on the floor. And although some of the graffiti can be quite entertaining, more appropriate signage would draw from Dante: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” (though we must remember to include French and German translations, for our guests).
Our public restrooms need help. The sort of help that begins with a bulldozer.
Still, it’s just a loo, right? Well, not so fast. There may be important reasons to think differently on that score.
When I first arrived in Jersey, a newspaper headline gave me endless mirth. It featured a proposal for covered bicycle racks, which had been rejected on the grounds that the cover was “too ugly”. My laughter wasn’t derision. It had more to do with coming from a country where headlines typically read: “Billions stolen by government still unaccounted for,” or, “twenty die in violent shoot-out”.
The fact that a government minister had been summoned to stand in front of a bicycle rack, to pose politely for a photo, and that such a story had made the front page, was delightful. Really, it’s a testament to the Island. If you have the peace and privilege to worry about such things, you’re doing alright.
And I’ve come to agree with the finding. “Ugly” matters, and should be rejected. “Beautiful” is important, and should be encouraged.
Victorian architects were preoccupied with it, and people today travel from around the world to photograph their creations. That impulse has somewhat lessened over time, giving way to the cheap-and-functional. That’s a step in the wrong direction. But not an inevitable one.
There’s a growing body of research – and several fascinating social media channels – teaching how profoundly beauty impacts upon psychology. It reduces stress, improves mood, enhances cognitive function and even appears to increase attention spans. It has a direct and dampening bearing on hooliganism and gang culture. In general terms, we’re simply healthier when our surroundings inspire, rather than depress.
A friend of mine recently travelled to Sweden and called it “impossibly, achingly beautiful”. Streets of such elegance that they look like museum displays. Not coincidentally, Sweden ranks in the top five for this year’s index of happiest nations. Denmark, with similar design language, is up there too.
Now who are the Swedes and Danes to hog all that happiness?
I’d like to propose a mechanism for increasing beauty generally in our public spaces. By active design, and not as a secondary consideration. A simple mechanism, and not necessarily one tied to government funding. This can be done informally.
We’re a small island, and already an exceedingly beautiful one. As we look to improve our tourism numbers, what if we launched a national drive, self-funded and requiring no taxpayer money, for street-by-street ideas to make it even prettier?
Imagine a simple repository. Put it online and make it public. Perhaps divided by parishes, or even by villages. Allow everyone to contribute simple commentary about how each area – place by place – could be rendered lovelier.
Naturally, you’ll have the odd clown proposing mood lighting for the Snow Hill public loos. And that might actually be an improvement.
But by and large, you would attract an entire island’s thoughtful consideration of simple things that could be done on a street-by-street basis: “In France, they play classical music in public. What if we did that on our highstreet? What if we added more hanging plants to the top half of Bath Street? What if we painted that La Collette chimney white, rather than groaning Bolshevik grey?”
Each place mentioned will eventually need maintenance or repair. When the people accountable for that repair carry it out, whether they are private citizens or from the public sector, they would have the option of consulting a registry of ideas for beautification.
Some of the ideas may prove too expensive. Others not. At least they are all available for consideration.
And in the same way that you get regular contributors to online forums like “Jersey Amateur Photographers”, you would probably have regulars pointing out what might be done on any given street – and readers thinking: “That’s a great idea. I could do that on my street.” Maybe Facebook would be the ideal forum.
I’ve started following people who campaign for this sort of thing. On Instagram: The War on Beauty. On YouTube, I recently watched: “How Did the World Get So Ugly?” with a heavily moustachioed man who calls himself the Culture Tutor. He points out that even a Victorian sewage station in London was so beautifully made that it has been preserved as a museum.
By no means should we legislate for it. Do not force people by law to comply. That sort of thing leads to the horrors of planning permission and reduced freedom.
But what if we actively encouraged it? Launch a social campaign. Prompt people to look about them, right where they are, and ask: how could my little bit of Jersey be just a little prettier? Feature it on the news.
When you start to think that way, opportunities leap out at you, because ordinary things can be made beautiful. A drinking fountain. A bench. Lampposts, more than any other item. Even bins, which often spoil otherwise flawless views. In Rouge Bouillon, one of the newer residential buildings features an outdoor bin area that they have enclosed and covered with ivy. That’s how you do it. Now share the idea.
An Italian once told me that people in his country dress well because they do not wish to offend the eye. What if Jersey starts scouring itself for such visual offences? Informally. In the shared spirit of beautification?
Start by tearing down those damp Satanic temples of brutalist gloom we call our public bathrooms. Go from there.
Douglas Kruger is an author living in Jersey. His books are all available from Amazon and Audible, including his new novel, House of the Judas Goat.
