Classic Guernsey

WHEN I was writing about my granddad's freesia bunching shed last week, I remembered his old wooden wheelbarrow. It was painted in blue gloss, except for the handles, which were kept just bare wood for a better grip.

The barrow was wide with sloping sides and had a pump-up rubber tyre and two solid support struts.

As a kid I could lie back and sleep in it. He must have had it specially made as, I imagine, many other growers did. Looking back, it was a design classic.

When he died in 1997, his daughters, Lynne, Sandra and my mum, Carol, asked his brother Vince if he wanted anything to remember him by.

He asked if he could have the wheelbarrow.

He must have wheeled it empty up the path to his house next door and, who knows, put it next to his own or even the place where his used to be.

Wherever it went, that was its last journey.

But it got me thinking. That wheelbarrow was so indigenous to the island, so utterly Guernsey, that I began wondering what else qualified for that honour.

From the wheelbarrow's final resting place, go down the Frie Baton and through the lanes to Rue de la Maladerie/La Route du Margion. The cottage that makes the corner has three such items. One is the 'eyelid' window and the other two are the stones sticking out from the gable end.

You can find a few other examples around the island.

The house at Crossways has one and there's one in the Green Lanes.

(I think the famed and much-missed 'eyebrow house' that looked out over Rocquaine Bay was something entirely different, though I could be wrong.)

These babies must surely be kept in tip-top condition because if the frames started rotting or a pane of glass smashed, I can't imagine they would be either that easy or cheap to fix.

The stones sticking out of the gable end we've all seen before. (There is another pair of good ones sticking out over Rue du Felconte.)

For any very early tourist reading this or for those who didn't pay attention during local history class, these stones were put in so that witches could rest on them.

Apparently, they would be so grateful for this provision that they wouldn't fly down the chimney and put a curse on the household.

Just to digress a minute (which is totally unlike me), I love Guernsey folklore and I wouldn't dream of knocking any of it, but I find one legend just a bit weak: the headless dog of Bailiff's Cross.

Now, call me all modern, but what can a dog with no head actually do?

It couldn't howl bloodcurdlingly at the moonlight or savage you, because it has no gob.

All you would hear is its toenails rattling up the tarmac and then, at best, it would neck-butt you with the stumpy bit or perhaps pee on you and run away.

And its collar would always be falling off.

Nope, give me the scary fairies at Le Creux es Faies, the devil at Le Trepied tomb and witches in the hedges any day.

But back to the design classics.

I know the concept is French but most of them are circular and I've never seen any tucked under a road before.

So where else but in Guernsey can a gentleman have a slash while motorcycles park overhead? I refer, of course, to the pissoir beneath Pedvin Street.

I bet old Victor Hugo, a bit uninspired while trawling through Les Travailleurs de la Mer and on his way for a jar or two of VB at the West End Bar, stopped off here for a squirt and a squint through the filigree ironwork at all the bargains in Brennan Langlois Olde Worlde Furniture Emporium across the road.

I think this is a great, quirky place and I hope it's never filled in due to States cuts or modernisation, like the ones in Market Square. They never should have gone.

Next up, there's the model yacht pond. Better if it had the pedalos of yore (great band name, by the way) still operating - but I imagine Health and Safety would have a field day - and all the more strange as it's only seconds away from an awful lot of water.

For this reason, when I was a kid, I thought it had no bottom and was filled with seawater and if you dived in you could actually get to the sea.

My mum (happy birthday, Ca) said that when she was a little girl they drained all the water out and held a circus in it. She's usually spot on, is me mum, but no one else I have spoken to has heard of this.

It's a nice image, though. Elephants, horses and clowns all trundling round the oval concrete arena with Castle Cornet in the background.

Staying with water, I also nominate the pump in the Duke of Richmond car park and the drinking fountain at North Plantation as part of classic Guernsey.

Style-wise, these are linked by the animal's head on the front.

Now, could someone please confirm, once and for all, are these beasts lions or camels?

The question has foxed me for 42 years.

Lions would make no sense but camels were long believed to carry water in their humps, so that would figure.

When I was a kid (and obviously daydreaming about reaching the sea via the model yacht pond), you could actually drink from the North Plantation one.

You pushed a button and water squirted from the 'liomel's' mouth.

You could also drink from the one outside the Town Church.

Again, Health and Safety would have a field day nowadays.

(By the way, can you imagine a Health and Safety field day? Clipboards, wellies and anoraks, and Tupperware boxes with potted meat sandwiches made by their mums.)

Like it or lump it, the German towers with the slits in are probably here to stay, so if nothing else we should admire their endurance.

I have a copy of a National Geographic from 1937 and it features Guernsey. As well as a photo of Le Guet without any pine trees (very strange) it has a picture taken on the corner just by the old fish factory at Rocquaine.

Not only is the spot where the photographer is standing devoid of the German bunker, the horizon at L'Eree is completely Fort Saumarez-free.

How different our landscape looked then without that giant concrete Ned Kelly helmet on the skyline.

Well, that was just a short list. There are obviously many others such as the Guernsey milk can, the oxidised dome of Lloyd's Bank, the long-gone multi-coloured steamrollers as climbing frames in our parks, the bathing pools, filter-in-turns and granite gates like the Ivy Gates (there's one down the Fosse Andre and another along Landes du Marche - any others?). Each one shows the quirkiness and character of Guernseyfolk and long may our individuality create many more.

Me, I'm off down to the model yacht pond because, you know, I'm still not sure.