With carriage rides now allowed on Sundays, the number of horses in the Sark annual horse, dog and pet show was limited. (0826741)

IT SEEMS that Sark’s annual horse, dog and pet show last Sunday attracted everyone but the island’s carriage drivers.

The irony of the situation was pointed out to me by a couple of spectators from Jersey who enter their own animals and carriages in events both in that island and elsewhere.

They remarked that virtually the only place they know of where working horse-drawn carriages are an everyday sight – certainly in the summer months – had no entrants in a horse show, despite the  resurgence of interest in showing such animals almost everywhere else.

In defence of the carriage operators, 2009 is the first full year in which they have been allowed to ply for hire on Sundays and many of them were out working on the day of the show.

That said, it was a major disappointment for many spectators as there is nothing quite so stirring as the sight of half a dozen or more of these animals and their drivers being put through their paces in a show ring. Perhaps there may be a change of heart by the carriage operators in future years.

I certainly hope so because, as show ring commentator Jeremy La Trobe-Bateman said when he explained there would be no entries in the carriage classes, a horse show in Sark without such competitors does seem very odd.

However, Sark resident Jim Pollard at least gave an audience of several hundred people an exhibition of driving a pair of horses and that was extremely well received.

After a period of relative peace I see that the war of words which seemed to have abated since just after last December’s elections has resumed again. Apart from it indicating that some folk appear to have too much time on their hands, bystanders and other casual observers must be wondering how it is that Sark, as a community or a collection of individuals, manages to shoot itself in the foot with such unerring accuracy. No wonder this small place competes with such distinction in firearm events in the Island Games.

Here we are in the middle, not only of our tourist season but a tourist season which is coinciding with what many describe as the deepest recession since the 20s and 30s, and people are slagging the place off in the correspondence columns of this newspaper. We need that like we need a hole in the head.

Sticking my head above the parapet for a second – knowing full well that there are those with cannons already primed to fire at the drop of a hat (or a stroke of the keyboard) – there is still far too much emphasis being placed on who is saying or doing what, rather than what is being said or done.

That analogy always reminds me of a conversation I had with a politicians here several years ago about a planning matter.

The politician, who was on the Development Control Committee, told me that a certain applicant should not get consent to build a house because ‘he has a perfectly adequate one already’.

When I suggested that his current home was none of the committee’s business and in my view the politicians need not know the applicant’s name in order to determine planning applications, I got a response which suggested that I was from another planet.

Such is the way in Sark. It’s just a pity, as one retired Chief Pleas member told me after reading the latest spate of correspondence, that no effort is being made by either ‘side’ to find common ground, particularly when so much of it exists.

*The email address for comment is fallesark@sark.net.