I’ve not been to the Mountbatten Stadium in Portsmouth for the county athletics championships in some years now. What I do recall on each of these May occasions is inevitable drizzle and a wind whipping off the nearby tidal Fareham Lake. We used to huddle as a team up in the bowels of the stand until forced to descend to the track.

Not this year. The whole of the substantial group of athletes, coaches, parents and spectators were sprawled around the grass and the cycle track – proper athletics weather. You can read the athletics report here. But by the end of Day 1 I was sunburnt and as thirsty as a sponge. Having no manager or coach duties I was blissfully free to do as I wished. And what I wished was a decent pint.

It’s about a 25-minute walk from the stadium to Hilsea station and my train back to the hotel. Eight hours previously I’d taken note of The Green Posts, an establishment that promised good things within. There’s been a pub here for a couple of hundred years I believe and the ‘green posts’ in question are supposedly those things you tie your boat up against. Possibly, way back, this was coastal land. Whatever, I didn’t care about that. I looked for the Real Ale pumps – disaster! There was one but it was not in use – not a good sign. So a cold pint of Guinness and up onto a barstool.

A lively but good-humoured crowd were in, a few pints to the good most of them at this stage. Then it kicked off! Two combatants lurched my way bawling and shouting, fists flailing inaccurately. The man on the defence picked up a chair and tried to fend off the aggressor, lion-tamer style, all the while protesting his innocence. The combatants were separated at last, and led outside. Peace reigned. For a minute or two. Like extras in a Wild West saloon brawl they came roaring and hitting back in the door. I drank up, made my excuses and left. 

The Green Posts – Marks out of 10
Ambience 3
Décor 5
Beer selection 1
Service 4
Would you take your Mum 3
Total = 16/50

I thought that was it, Hilsea’s only bar. But happily, as my thirst still raged, I espied the Coach and Horses (rebuilt 1931) lurking just off my route. I looked in warily and, amazingly, it was nearly empty. It is something called a ‘flaming grill’ pub. Now I hate pubs that are restaurants in all but name. (The previous night was a perfect example – The Fleming Arms near Southampton Airport is almost overtly hostile to non-diners despite having a good range of ales.) At this early time in the evening though the place was quiet and, alleluia, they had Bombardier and Directors on tap. Very nice it was too. Without fear of getting a chair in my earhole I lingered over a couple before making my way happily back to the station.

The Coach & Horses
Ambience 6
Décor 7
Beer selection 6
Service 8
Would you take your Mum 10
Total = 37/50

Is that it for Hilsea? Let me know if I missed one.

Here is a rare ‘re-blog’ from a fellow blogger reflecting on the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic – great stuff.

Here’s the result of a little project that’s been hanging around for some time now. It started out as a running book but, as I got into the writing process, it became more than that. Anyway I’m pretty proud of my first self-publishing effort. You may of course think it’s crap but that’s OK, I really don’t mind.

I’m giving away the first 200 to anyone that wants one. Just click on the Barry-The Novel tab above to find out how.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,900 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Take a vote amongst Jersey folk as to what is the biggest monstrosity on the Island and they’ll probably have the top three as

1. The Waterfront
2. The Portelet Bay apartments
3. The Incinerator at La Collette

Not necessarily in that order. Today I decided to have a little stroll around Portelet Common. It’s a good while since I’ve been around there; the last time I found some Spartan cross-country flags still in place! The Common is now a designated nature reserve I see. Anyway, I looked landward from a precarious clifftop position with a gale blowing and saw the controversial apartments development for the first time. And to me they actually look very nice. The award-winning design, the colours of off-white and green, the aesthetics as a whole. It’s fine – I wish I had one!

Portelet Bay Apartments (a section)

Now, given a say in the matter back at the planning stage I’d have voted for the whole of the former Butlins (later Pontins) holiday village to be demolished and the site returned to nature. But whatever you say it looks a whole lot better than it did twenty or so years ago. And I’m sure palms were greased along the way to ensure maximum profit for the developers, but that’s the way it works all over the world.

Now, the Incinerator. Hold on a minute while I look out of my apartment window. Yes, there it is, a big cuboid thing sitting on the reclaimed land this side of the power station. And it’s fine! I’m not offended by it. The view it obscures is of the power station, fuel tanks etc. There was nothing there before only sea and reclamation rubble. It’s given a break to Bellozanne which used to be one of our prettiest valleys and has transferred the function to an industrial landscape. Get over it!

Incinerator at La Collette

Now let me tell you what I find ugly; the reinforced, barbed wire fence that cuts off Portelet House from the common. It’s dreadful. Why can’t the owners find it within themselves to allow walkers to wander the wooded slopes of their property? I didn’t see them out admiring the grounds themselves, so why not show a bit of graciousness. Take a leaf from the books of St Ouen’s Manor, Samares Manor, St George’s Manor, Radier Manor, the Perchards and their Trinity farm, Reg Langlois’ place at Tabor, to name but a few privately-owned places that can tolerate visitors without resorting to barbed wire. Shame on you.

Portelet House – boo!

And OK, I’ll let you have the Waterfront – that’s ugly.

What a transformation! A month ago the Banks Ladies looked a ragtag though game outfit. Today they rocked. They looked a different team – and indeed they appeared to have several new and more accomplished players, particularly in the backs. They ran out comfortable winners against a limited Guernsey XV.

I arrived at the scheduled start time wondering if I’d get a space in the Grainville car park. I needn’t have worried. As is usually the case with club rugby the teams and officials trot onto the pitch any old time and the few spectators drift along in the course of the match. There was no sense at all of a big inter-island occasion. It was soon evident that, behind the scrum, Banks had good ideas and the skills to implement them. The first clean ball produced a reverse pass move and soon the ball was moving across the three quarters and Guernsey were outflanked as the home side dotted down under the posts. Today Jersey had a sharp and skillful scrum half and a no.10 who could kick – at least out of hand. Guernsey’s heavy scrum had the Banks pack buckling but never crumbling. Once the Banks back row found a way of coping with the pressure there was rarely a moment when Guernsey threatened. Once Banks had the ball they stretched the Guernsey defence continuously.

15-0 at half time. The pattern continued in the second half. I take credit for the Banks fifth – and best -try. The little no.9 picked up from the base of the scrum and set off on a solo run down the right wing. She looked for non-existent support as she came by me and I shouted ‘Keep going!’ whereupon she skipped around the remaining two defenders to touch down.

The other highlight was Banks’s strong no.12 putting in a tackle that Tuilagi would have been proud of, late on in the game. Great performance and result for the local girls. The Guernsey ladies and their noisy coaches sent home to think again.

A couple of further observations. Why, at every stoppage, are all the coaches (three from Guernsey) allowed onto the pitch to issue instructions to their huddled team? Second, no medical cover on either side. In this day and age surely teams should have a physio or at least a first aider – rugby is a bruising sport and a fair share of injuries can and do occur. Today one of the Guernsey team thought she’d cracked a rib but no one knew what to do about it. Eventually she returned to the fray.

One of my day job tasks is Money Laundering Compliance Officer. As a job title it’s up there with Actuarial Assistant and at the opposite end of the scale from Lion Tamer.

A greater challenge than the job itself is delivering the anti-money laundering training to other staff that is necessary. Like, how can you make obtaining client ID and address verification interesting? How can you make it relevant to staff who might have other ideas of what is interesting? How can you put that stuff into context?

Well I’ll have no problem next time around. Did you know that there are presently more slaves in the world than ever existed in the past? Some estimates say 27 million, the majority of whom are women and children. Human trafficking is estimated to generate profits of $32 billion per annum. These are incomprehensible figures and can only be hammered home by attention to some of the detail.

A couple of weeks ago we in Jersey got a gut-wrenching close up thanks to a film shown in the course of the Amnesty International Film Festival. Through secret filming it took us into the vast red light district of Mumbai, into what are known as The Cages. With the help of a ‘lucky’ few young women who had been rescued we learnt the fate of some of those they’d left behind. Girls are worth money in India and neighbouring Nepal. Some are sold by their families. Others are taken from the streets or easily tricked and drugged. They are as young as seven. They end up in one of the countless brothels in the city.

They are told that they now work in the sex trade. They have no choices. Many initially refuse but are beaten, raped, degraded until they comply. They are expected to go with up to 30 men each day. There is no notion of contraception or medical care. Most end up with AIDS and have multiple abortions. There is no escape, unless you are one of the very small percentage rescued.

Under pressure from various international agencies the local police check the brothels for minors. A small but regular bribe sees them turn a blind eye. If they survive the girls are worn out and sick, still at a young age. By now they are institutionalised and have nowhere else to go.

The AVERAGE age of the girls in the Mumbai sex trade is 14. The film in question told of two sisters, new recruits who, knowing their fate, hanged themselves with their scarves. The title of the film is taken from the girls themselves – it is The Day My God Died. They have no childhood. One in three Indian girls never see their teens.

One 14 year-old daughter of a work colleague viewed the film and arrived home distraught, asking what she could do to help. Truly our kids here in the West are fortunate – as Amnesty say, they have already won the lottery of life.

So, stop the money laundering, stop the crime. If crime for profit doesn’t pay then it won’t happen. It’s sometimes a tortuous link but there is logic in there. So keep collecting those copy passports guys.

You can watch the film here http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/day-my-god-died/ go on, I dare you. (Edit Nov 2018 – sadly this film appears to be no longer available.)

Women’s rugby pyramid is considerably narrower than the men’s, and near the base of that pyramid are Jersey United Banks RFC Ladies. Today history was made as the local ladies hosted their first ever league match, at Grainville v Beckenham.

Of course there is little sport that girls and women don’t play these days. There was a time when these things were clearly demarcated; blokes played football, rugby and cricket, women played netball and rounders. Some sports were common to both sexes – athletics, swimming, tennis for example. Indeed women participated regularly from early in the 20^th century. The Women’s Amateur Athletics Association was formed in 1922 but for many years the events that they could enter were restricted. The marathon only became an Olympic event in 1984, for example.

It was only in the 50s however that women became involved in greater numbers. During WW2 a strange phenomena occurred – women found that they could do stuff for themselves, and not just child-rearing and housekeeping. Inevitably the top sports began to embrace women more and more. Today the girls do more or less what the men do though in athletics the weights and hurdle specifications (for example) still differ. In tennis women are still deemed incapable of playing five sets.

But it is only in the last decade or so that women have really crossed over into the men’s world with a vengeance with coaching opportunities available to girls in all sports from a young age. Jersey was slow off the mark but the soccer girls have improved considerably over the last ten years. Cricket and rugby for women is much newer and today I’m afraid it showed.

It finished JUBRFC 5 – 22 Beckenham. It was not a pretty sight really. Admittedly we are presently being spoilt by an excellent JRFC First XV and junior club rugby bears little relationship to what we see at St Peter once a fortnight. The Beckenham girls were more experienced and possessed basic skills plus a couple of genuinely strong and fast players. The local girls looked what they are, a collection of players learning to pick up the rudiments of the game. For much of the match they seemed intent on proving the truisms that ‘girls can’t catch’ and ‘girls can’t kick’. What possession they had was either run sideways and/or easily coughed up. Once the visiting girls woke up it was one way traffic.

But fair play to the local girls, they battled away and gave their opponents few enough chances. There were no heads dropping and the enthusiasm levels remained high. Though a number of them are clearly short of fitness they managed one sustained period of pressure to be rewarded by a try in the corner.

Good on JUBRFC for leading the way where JRC seem uninterested in this branch of the sport. They need more women to get involved, more coaches to help out in the many and various aspects of the game. They need to get fitter. Let’s hope that in a few years time they too will be climbing the national ladder.

Did you cast your vote yet? You can you know, in advance, at St Paul’s Centre. I popped in today. A nice lady sits just inside the door and looks at you enquiringly. When she ascertains that you want to vote, and that you haven’t popped in for a pint of milk maybe, you are directed to one of four desks. Behind each a helper checks your ID, hands you your voting papers and points you to the voting booth. Job done you put your papers in an envelope and hand them to the nice lady on the way out. Tell you what, it beats running the gauntlet of candidates, their supporters and the staff at the regular polling stations.

So who’s going to get the four Senatorial seats up for grabs? There is one shoo-in (Sir Philip) but others you just ask yourself…why? I can’t find any betting on this (though maybe Honest Nev Ahier would give you a price) so I’ve made my own up. Remember it’s first past the post and the prices are for the candidate to get one of the four places.

Bailhache, Philip                                  1/100
Cohen, Freddie                                     1/2
Gorst, Ian                                                1/1
Le Gresley, Francis                             1/1
Colley, Rose                                           2/1
Farnham, Lyndon                                2/1
Pearce, Darius                                       40/1
Richardson, David                               50/1
Lagadu, Sylvia                                        75/1
Syvret, Stuart                                        100/1
Forskitt, Mark                                       100/1
Whitworth, Chris                                 1000/1
Corby, Linda                                          1000/1
 

It would be sad not to try to acknowledge the fairly extraordinary week we’ve had weather-wise. Today I believe sets the all-time record high for October temperature in Jersey, weighing in at around 26-27 degrees. We’ve a couple more days yet before it breaks and, if I were the race director of tomorrow’s Jersey Marathon, I’d be a worried man.

I’m fortunate to live in an apartment overlooking St Clement’s Bay. Tonight I’m able to sit on the balcony and type this wearing only my running shorts. There’s a sliver of old moon directly to the south, its reflection coming ashore across the calmest of half-tides. People and dogs are lazily walking along the shoreline; a family are enjoying a barbeque on the sands just below me. Across the bay the lights of a boat out of St Malo as she cuts her engines on the approach to St Helier Harbour, the red warning lights on the clusters of rocks that guard the approaches winking tirelessly.

On Thursday evening I took my beginner running group down into the Marina area. In the moonlight groups of people were sitting around chatting, quietly sharing cans of beer without the need to shout and bawl about it. Couples walking arm in arm, enjoying the unaccustomed warmth. A couple of lads were up on the sea wall entertaining passers by, and themselves, with a fire-eating trick. It was a reminder of how things are in warmer climes where people don’t dream of eating before 10 and then happily socialise, without creating trouble, into the early hours.

And unless it’s my imagination the many Jersey whingers and moaners have been less in evidence this last week. We must have the greatest proportion of malcontents of any place. These are divided into two groups; those that have all the answers but wouldn’t dream of actually trying to put them into practice, and those that are content to sit and generally complain about anything and in doing so make themselves and those around them eternally miserable. It seems to me that both lots have decided to give us a break these last few days.

So yes, we’ve been blessed. I’ve heard it said that we’re in for a harsh winter – well that’s fine by me – everything in its season. I wonder if I’ll ever again be sitting on a balcony in October in shorts only. At night the balcony doors are flung wide open and the mozzies have free entrance.

Meanwhile I fear for the marathoners tomorrow and the medics will be kept very busy. Those last 6-8 miles are hard enough under normal conditions.