The good, the bad and the bonkers

A JERSEY headmaster cancelled his school’s annual day-trip to the beach this summer in case his students got skin cancer. This comes amid new health warnings that the Channel Island of Jersey is fast becoming the world’s top hotspot for malignant melanoma.

Before the ‘elf ‘n’ safety’ mob start, wasn’t this surely an opportunity to teach students how to enjoy the sun and sea safely? What’s wrong with taking a few sensible precautions in case it’s a sunny day: like asking parents to send their kids to school with a hat, suncream and bottled water?

Otherwise that’s like me saying: “I’m not sending my children to school, in case they get bullied, in case they do badly in their exams, or in case their teacher is a complete ****.”

Banning children in Jersey from playing by the sea is a bit like banning children in Cornwall from eating pasties, although it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if this has already happened.

No wonder we have Generation Snowflake when we teach kids to be so risk averse and paranoid about everyday life. Quick! Wrap them all up in cotton wool and don’t let them out!

Hundreds of years from now, action movies will feature ‘heroes’ daring to venture to the shops without a raincoat and encountering a rather treacherous puddle.

Medical reports state Jersey is fast becoming the location for skin cancer, not Jersey beaches. These children live there and are subject to the same sun whether they’re in their gardens, at school or playing on the beach. The headmaster says he may resurrect such visits in the future. I would suggest he won’t last that long.

What with this report and the one about male primary school kids wearing trousers or skirts depending on their mood, is it me or is the world going barmy? 

Going now, I need to ask my cat if she prefers Aldi or Lidl litter in her tray. I don’t want the Spanish equivalent of the RSPCA prosecuting me for feline discrimination by not giving her a choice…

Nora Johnson’s thrillers ‘No Way Back,’ ‘Landscape of Lies,’ ‘Retribution,’ ‘Soul Stealer,’ ‘The De Clerambault Code’ (www.nora-johnson.com) available from Amazon in paperback/eBook (€0.89;£0.79) and iBookstore. All profits to Costa del Sol Cudeca cancer charity.