'Le God' to visit

GUERNSEY football legend Matt Le Tissier is to be guest of honour at the Sark Sports Club annual dinner next month.

I smiled when I saw the notice about the function on one of the shop boards because, when offering guidance about the dress code, the club stipulated 'smart/casual, no football shirts'.

Given that 'Le God' is a regular guest in our homes via his role as a Sky TV football pundit, I'm surprised that no 'guidance' was offered in relation to comments about women officiating at Premier League matches.

On a less frivolous note, the occasion marks a major coup for a sports club which - despite the relatively small pool of participants and officials from which it is forced to draw - provides a lot of pleasure to many. This function is one that deserves support.

A month later, on Friday 25 March, the Carnival Committee holds its annual cheque presentation and auction night at the Island Hall. Apart from disclosing by how much the Professor Saint Medical Trust has benefited from events such as the sheep race meeting - it's invariably a sum that makes me wonder where it all comes from - the money raised during the evening serves to kick-start the 2011 fund-raising exercise.

It kicks off at 7pm, with dinner being served at 7.30pm, and there is a promise of dancing, although I reckon that will be simply a postscript to a couple of hours of the Carnival Committee doing what it does best - extracting money from anyone with only half a mind to give it.

While on the subject, the dates for the sheep race meeting weekend are the evening of Friday 22 July to the late afternoon of Sunday 24 July with, for some of those involved in the organisation, precious little time for sleep in between, I shouldn't wonder.

In the note committee chairman Puffin Taylour emailed to me recently, she referred to the sheep racing and then said 'live piglets expected'. Whether this means that they are due to be born in the field behind the Island Hall at about that time, or whether - as I strongly suspect - they are introducing pig racing as an added attraction, I know not.

Either way, it will be a fun weekend, as it always is, and I will be giving more details about what else is on offer closer to the time.

Our electricity bill arrived this week - never a pleasant occasion anywhere, but all the more so in Sark where, if the commodity was water and charged at the same rate, it would probably be cheaper in the middle of the Sahara.

For that state of affairs, no blame is attached to anyone and indeed those at Sark Electricity seem to be trying their level best to examine ways of reducing the bills. To this end, the company enclosed a fairly comprehensive questionnaire to be completed by customers and these are being passed to Southampton University.

The university is currently studying 'Sark scale' possibilities in relation to other forms of energy provision and these are part of the company's plans to attempt to reduce its dependence on diesel for generating power.

The Sark Chamber of Commerce is hosting one of its regular forums on 10 February at the Island Hall, where the speakers will include Southampton University and Sark Electricity representatives and Roger Olsen, with the latter's brief involving plans to harvest energy and sell it to Europe.

Before I close, I've just seen snowdrops in the garden and in the field next door at least three sets of twins have been born to Rossford de Carteret's ewes. It seems I can't get away from sheep this week, but hopefully the birth of lambs heralds a bit of spring weather.

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