Members of Rafiki Jazz performing at St Anne’s School in Alderney. They visited Sark last week. (0972664)

MANY people who visit Sark for more than a day trip remark that it is an ideal place in which children can grow up and of course that can also mean that it’s ideal for children on holiday.

However, these comments are sometimes tempered – in respect of the youngsters who live here – by questions about what they might miss out on when their lot is compared with that of the confreres who live in larger communities.

That may be so, although many would argue that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

One area in which they most certainly don’t lose out in is music. For many years now the artists who come to Sark for the island’s Music Society’s performances have almost invariably put on an afternoon performance for the schoolchildren.

That happened the other week when Rafiki Jazz visited Sark to play in the first concert of this year’s World Music Series, sponsored by Collins Stewart Wealth Management.

I have to admit that it was the group’s name – Rafiki Jazz – which caught my eye and, probably recalling my own school days when the mere mention of jazz was taboo in relation to concerts at school (the St Cecelia Guild of Strings seems to ring a bell), I wondered how they would be received by the pupils.

Extremely well indeed, it seems. I was there for only a short while but head teacher Sarah Cottle told me later that her pupils soon relaxed and some of them actually got up and danced to the music.

There are many people to thank for this happy state of affairs – too many to mention here – but the Sark Music Society and the sponsors do deserve a mention. So too do those Sark residents who provide accommodation for visiting artists.

This year’s concert programme will feature almost 50 – on one occasion as many as 10 at a time – and if they had to be put up in hotels or guest houses then the programme would cease to be financially viable.

For Guernsey readers who would like to experience these concerts in Sark – you can have a pre-concert meal in the same building – two caught my eye, probably because they involve cabaret-style seating.

The first is on 29 September, when the Cantabile Vocal Quintet performs, and the second is on 14 October, when Le Vent du Nord – billed as Quebec and Brittany folk music – take to the stage. Both promise to be a far cry from the concerts of my schooldays.

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My reference last week in my farewell to Jennifer Cochrane included the fact that she was a founder member of La Societe Sercquaise. I have space this week to make a plea for it to be referred to locally by its full title and not by the awful Anglicised abbreviation which, spelt phonetically, sounds like ‘Sock Surk’.

It seems ironic for the organisation to be referred to – mostly by its members, I have to say – by an abbreviation when its purpose includes the preservation of Sark’s cultural heritage.

In both Guernsey and Jersey the corresponding organisations are invariably referred to either by their full titles or simply ‘La Societe’ – but both in almost reverential terms.

‘Sock Surk’ sounds as awful as it looks and is part of the galloping Anglicisation in all manner of things – referring to The Avenue as ‘the village’ is another – which bedevils this and other Channel Islands.

It’s time it stopped.

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