The Isle of Man it's 'beautiful' - Yes I know!

I’m worried about the Chief Minister (CM) Howard Quayle MHK! I know it may sound an unlikely scenario as those who used to click into my weekly utterances on CL Facebook before I moved over to the more serene environment of Transceltic usually hoped that every third post would include a knock at Howard.

Still unlikely as it sounds there was never anything personal and if you follow the political meanderings of your average CM (and I’ve followed a few over the decades) you study them astutely - they almost become kindred spirits.

Now the reason for my concern is that in the case of Walker, Gelling, Brown, Bell et al although over the years they certainly declared their love for the Isle of Man they didn’t feel the need to interperse every answer to every query with references to ‘our beautiful’ or ‘our wonderful’ Island. In the case of Howard produce a microphone and in no time at all out it comes - ‘splendid’ - ‘beautiful’ - ‘wonderful’ etc.

Howard can even be wading around in sea borne detritus washed up on the shoreline and in no time at all the ‘beautiful’ Island mantra spews out.

Now of course the Isle of Man is extremely beautiful. My own ‘stock in trade’ when explaining the Island to folk overseas was always that it combined within its small area all the best characteristics of all the other countries of the British Isles - adding that on a good day you could pop up Snaefell and see some of those other countries for good measure.

However if in every sentence while travelling through Ireland many years ago I had prattled on about our ‘beautiful’ or ‘wonderful’ Island I would probably be in my fourth decade of a stint in the lunatic asylum at Ballinasloe.

The government and Howard not content with wittering on about it have also of course decided this is ‘the year of our Island’. I don’t know about you but the last seventy-two years have been the ‘year of my Island’ for me so who are we trying to sell this to? For goodness sake before I could stand up the ‘kipper girls’ who lodged at our house overlooking Peel Hill were propping me on the back wall so I could view our beautiful Island - I had you might say an early start with the ladies!

I’m also being extolled by folk who have only been here ‘ten minutes’ to ‘explore the place’ more but in truth I’ve been all over it planting trees on the old forestry board or reconnecting supply to outlying farms on the old electricity board etc I’ve even explored below the surface physically digging my way along the Starvey and up Dalton Street to mention just a few places.

Anyway coming back to Howard I think he’s either been hypomitised by Chris Thomas MHK (in relative terms a comparative newcomer who no doubt still has a bit of exploratory work to do) or its some kind of psychosis either way I hope he gets well soon.

As for me I find the whole thing a little bit patronising but then I’m just an old geezer who has probably overdosed on our beautiful Island for to long!

Final point - I do hope that several years down the way we don’t find a few folk have made a ‘few bob’ out of this ‘beautiful’ Island caper!

Image: Peel Hill - my first intro to ‘our beautiful Island’ aged one!