THE VIEW FROM HERELAST week’s CP front-page headline was stark in its message. "Overweight, Sick and Deprived" is not perhaps the ideal image for an Island which relies on its tourist trade but that is apparently how we are these days.
A report into our "health and wellbeing" has discovered we’re actually in pretty rotten shape, our hideous lives filled with disgusting food, poisonous cigarettes, mental incapacity and economic dysfunction.
Not a pretty sight. And it all used to be so different, back in the days when the Island had a reputation for being able to lift even the weakest patient out of infirmity. Our climate was renowned as being just the thing if you were poorly and the Island welcomed thousands of people who were not so fortunate as us but could visit places such as Ventnor for the purposes of recuperation.
Ventnor’s Royal National Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest, built in 1869, was a byword for the kind of wholesome lifestyle which would restore its patients, at least until they had to return to the vile miasma of the mainland from which they had come in search of the Island’s soothing touch.
We were intolerant of horrid habits. When Ivan Turgenev lodged in Ventnor in 1860, his landlady was unimpressed. No matter this aristocratic Russian was engaged on writing a novel (Fathers and Sons), which was to become one of the major works of the 19th century, she still evicted him for excessive smoking.
It’s all very different now. Are we going to take any notice of this damning report? Most of us won’t even read it. Perhaps the Island needs something more graphic to haul itself back to fitness.
Now here’s something that might get us thinking. In the same week the Island received the bad news on its health and wellbeing (ie, it had neither of these commodities), a controversial application for a licensed burger bar in Newport received the thumbs up from the council.
There had been a number of protests about the application, particularly from funeral director Geoff Leather, whose premises are adjacent to the proposed bar.
"Due to the very sensitive nature of my business, I do not think it conducive to have a licensed premises next to my business … the thought of being confronted by groups of drunken people does not bear thinking about."
Despite the assurance this is a "high-class" burger bar (surely an oxymoron, unless the customers use silver forks to peck daintily at their chips and wipe their greasy chins with damask napkins), one has a certain sympathy with Mr Leather. The smell of burger fry-ups wafting across to his funeral parlour may well be unwelcome when dealing with matters of a "sensitive nature".
And he is right to be cautious about the licence given to the bar. Between 50 and 60 under-18s on the Island are admitted to hospital each year after drinking themselves senseless.
And yet, and yet. Is this burger-funeral combo not a dire warning, a modern-day allegory for the Island’s troubled state?
It is but a short step from the follies of fast food to the eternal peace of the chapel of rest. Mr Leather may not relish the arrival of his new neighbour but, as far as the Island is concerned, it’s practically a one-stop representation of our lifestyle.
What a waste of an expensive, exquisite bottle of bubbly
FORMULA One’s motor-racing championship comes to an end later this month, which will put a temporary brake on those chaps going round and round guzzling up fuel and having silly feuds.
But the best thing about motor racing’s close season is the blissful period when we are no longer subjected to the sight of the winners showing off on the rostrum by spraying champagne at each other.
Why do they do it? Because, presumably, they’re twits. Champagne is an exquisite drink, made with delicate precision and infinite care. It is meant to be savoured and enjoyed.
It is also jolly expensive. To chuck it around displays a boorish indifference not just to those who create champagne but to those who cannot afford even to drink it, let alone waste it.
These ghastly racing drivers are not the only culprits, of course. It’s prevalent among sportsmen and also with those whose brains have been put into twit mode by an unexpected windfall.
When Dave and Angie Dawes won £101million on a Euro lottery recently, they thought it would be a marvellous idea to celebrate by spraying the contents of a very nice bottle of champagne into the ground.
Let’s hope they haven’t started as they mean to go on.