This Is Guernsey

By Neil Ross

Illustration by Peewee.

CHER Eugene,

It’s less than a week before the election now, eh, mon vieux? There’s signs been appearing in the gardens with the candidates’ names on and all these bloney manifestos coming through the door.

Some of the deputies, they’ve been really quiet for the last few weeks, them, so I suppose they’ve been busy with their electioneering and all that.

But there’s a lot of the old ones not standing and they’re still making statements and getting themselves on the news, eh?

I think I told you, they’ve even been giving advice to candidates who are standing for the first time. I’m not too too sure they should take much notice, mind, or the new States might end like up the old one, and who wants that, Eugene?

And the ones who are standing again, they’re still sending out manifestos and leaflets with old photographs that make them look young, eh?

I was thinking, me, it’s only these last few weeks the States voted to stop putting official notices in the Gazette, to the Press, eh?

You remember, they said people could read them in the post offices and to the douzaine rooms?

It seems to me if that’s good enough for the official notices, it’s funny they don’t trust that method for their manifestos, them, eh?

Talking of the post offices, you know they were going to move the one from Smith Street and put it in the old States office on the front?

There were a few people complaining it wouldn’t be so easy to get to, but the post office, they said it would be bigger and better and it was part of their improvement plans, eh?

Well, they’ve spent two years planning how to do it, but now suddenly they’ve decided there won’t be enough room.

Caw, I’m no architect or surveyor, Eugene, but you would have thought someone would at least have walked round the place before they started, eh?

Mind you, it won’t stop them wanting to close the Smith Street one. They’ve wanted that for a long time, them.

I suppose they spent so much on that huge place to La Vrangue, they want to make everyone go there, eh?

And you’ll never guess the latest, mon vieux. That Yacht Club, the one to the Ship & Crown, it’s moved somewhere else now, but it’s held a competition for people to design a new clubhouse to go on the Crown Pier.

But that’s States-owned land, it’s part of the harbour, eh? So how can they be allowed to build there, them?

It seems to me, if the post office aren’t going to move into the old States offices, then the yacht club could use that.

And when you think, there’s loads of empty buildings in Town these days, so they could occupy one of those instead of building to the Crown Pier, eh?

And what makes it worse, Eugene, the designs, they’re bloney hideous, them. Hang, the Germans did a better job with their blockhouses. If you ask me, the old airport terminal looked better, mon vieux.

But then, they made the competition open only to students from a college in the UK, so what do they know about Guernsey? And if they’re students, they’re only learning, them, eh.

I don’t suppose they’ve actually had anything built yet, unless one of them has a father who designed Sir Charles Frossard House.

Jack Torode, he said he thought there was a Jerseyman behind all the plans and I can believe that, Eugene. I mean, the crapauds have made such a mess of their waterfront, I bet they’d like some UK students to mess up our seafront, eh?

But I don’t see how they can get permission to build like that on States land, me. After all, old Jack says he can’t even get permission to put a window in his garage, on his own land, eh?

I was chatting to the lads down to the slip and I said I might put in an application to build a private house on the Crown Pier.

Old Jack said he’d like to move his workshop there.

And Mick, from Fermain, he thought we could start our own club and apply to put a clubhouse there. We could invite the regulars from the St Saviour’s Tavern to join, eh?

Like Mick was saying, they’ve spoiled the White Rock enough already with their Customs shed and railings and all that.

And I thought they were supposed to be making the piers attractive for tourists, eh?

But it’s all about banks and big, ugly buildings and black holes these days, Eugene. The States seem to have given up on tourism, them.

When you think, in the old days we could tell when the schools broke up for Easter because the roads would suddenly be full of hire cars, getting in a mess at filters and stopping in the middle of junctions to look at their maps, eh?

But there’s hardly any hire cars here these days, Eugene. Mind you, perhaps it’s just as well, because there’s no room for them with all the local ones and all the English builders’ vans that seem to be everywhere.

And there’s still all the roads closed so you can’t get anywhere, eh? They’ve been digging up the road past the airport for weeks and Mick says if you try following the signs, you end up going round in circles like a plane trying to land.

He said the diversion signs are so confusing, trying to get to the airport is like trying to work out the real cost of one of these airlines’ so-called cheap flights, eh?

I still can’t work out how it can take so long to lay a main drain or resurface a road, when in other countries they can lay miles of motorway in the same time. Perhaps they’re trying to make the Forest Road wider to save them having to build a new runway, eh?

Still, at least the spring is coming, mon vieux, and the primroses and bluebells are coming through everywhere to brighten things up.

Mind you, we’ve had our fair share of April showers, us, and the wind, she’s been in the east so it’s been bloney cold for April.

We even had a frost on a couple of days and it killed off some of Jack’s seedlings.

He said it reminded him of the new candidates standing for deputy: their enthusiasm will be killed once they get sucked into the States system, eh?

Some of the lads were saying there’s so many new deputies, the chief minister will probably be one of the old guard, eh? Well, someone who can say there’s nothing wrong with Flamanville, even though the French authorities want extra inspections and a fisherman off Alderney found a blue lobster in his pots, eh?

I heard the chief minister can pick who he wants for ministers, even if they didn’t get many votes in the election, and there’s been the usual talk about having island-wide voting.

But some of the older States members, they say it would be too difficult to pick 47 good deputies from 80-odd candidates. Caw, someone should tell them it’s hard enough to pick half a dozen, eh?

A la perchoine,

Your cousin Emile.