Photo: bbc.co.uk

The island was abuzz with the scandal. It was something that Jersey’s ‘Battle of Flowers’ – an annual parade of themed, beflowered floats where parishes and communities compete for local acclaim and trophies from (allegedly) corrupt judges – had never seen before. A rogue, runaway float had caused brief pandemonium and danger. Our float.

As the driver of said float, I was asked to be present at the Parish Hall with fellow members of the Parish of St. Saviour Battle of Flowers Association Committee. It was to be a ‘calm discussion’, but as I looked around at the characters gathered I was sceptical of there being much in the way of calm or discussion: the tyrannical Rose; spacewagon Jen and her teenage son; bigoted handyman Gerald. Even the parish princess, this year’s Miss St. Saviour had graced us with a rare appearance: a true honour, to be sure.

They greeted me with a palpable air of hostility as I sat down. I’d been identified early as a scapegoat for the ‘incident’, but I knew the committee’s collective embarrassment concerning the judges’ verdict of our float (“A bewilderingly irrelevant New York theme…a Statue of Liberty with a head at least twice as big as it has any reason to be…inconsistent gluing of flowers” were just a few of the choice remarks)  was being taken out on me too.

“I think most of us will recall the incident in question, but perhaps for the record we should run through it briefly…”

The chairman detailed the events in painstaking detail: exact times, names of witnesses, angles of collision and such forth. Yet he neglected what was to my mind the most important point: that the vehicle that lay beneath our flower-covered catastrophe was barely fit for scrap, never mind pulling a nine-feet-tall, top-heavy Statue of Liberty and surrounding city skyline. I had mentioned this a number of times over the summer, and like a tired moth banging its head one final time into a lit bulb, I mentioned it again.

“Yeah what an awful design! Bloody monstrosity. We’re lucky it moved anywhere!”

Gerald was responsible for the vehicle’s maintenance and was quite keen to shift the blame onto the designer, Daniel, who had abandoned the build prematurely in a huff due to repeated digs about Lady Liberty’s head.

“If you didn’t want to bloody well do it I’d said said my Bill would’ve done it!” Rose snapped at me.

Rose had indeed said this, and her Bill would have happily driven our Big Rotten Apple: as a veteran milkman and alcoholic it suited both his driving and reaction speeds. It was, however, the committee’s knowledge of Bill’s habits that made them reluctant to hand him the keys. It was also their reluctance to admit that this was the reason to Rose, that made it look as though I’d lept over Bill to grab the wheels to our floral colossus.

“Rosanna your Bill has nothing to do with this” the chairman asserted himself “let’s hear what happened from the driver.”

I went into the sequence of events: a high-pitched squeal, a judder, a final, almighty crack, the steering spinning redundantly in my hands. In less than a few seconds, our cranially-burdened Lady Liberty freed herself of her human constraints and plotted a course of her own towards a confused audience. The float’s stereo was playing Sinatra’s ‘New York, New York’ on a loop and the line “I want to be a part of it” felt weirdly apt as our imperfect symbol of freedom and justice joined the rapidly dispersing crowd.

Perhaps uncomfortable with the lack of attention she had received since her arrival, Miss St. Saviour the opportunity to tell everyone of how she had to leap from the float in panic as it trundled at about five miles an hour towards the crowd. There was a wobble in her voice. She was already sore about coming an embarrassing eighth as the Parish’s entry in the Miss Battle of Flowers competition; now she had bruised knees.

Lady Liberty’s ramble off-road was over quick. A hook-a-duck stand in the neighbouring funfair brought the float’s slug-like crawl to an almost imperceptible stop moments later, with very little damage to anything. A shame, said Gerald, since they were all a bunch of thieving gypos anyway. Miss St. Saviour gasped. Rose sniggered.

Jen, who was caressing the back of her son’s neck, spoke solemnly of the ‘trauma’ posed to the ‘children’ by my handling of the float. Her son, who was at least sixteen, may have indeed been traumatised, I said, but in the immediate aftermath of the incident he was doubled over in hysterics, breaking off occasionally to point and call me ‘a wanker’. So it was hard to tell. Her precious son sniggered.

The Chairman reminded everyone that we weren’t gathered point the finger in accusation. Rose, bang on cue, responded by pointing at the chairman and accusing him of mismanagement. It was no secret that she disliked him and although officially it was down to his increasing of the ratio of paper to natural flowers, everyone – including the chairman – knew it was bringing in his Venezuelan wife to help out with the float. An outsider.

“You know, no-one demands that you come Rose!” The Chairman thumped the table.

“And no-one needs you bringing your drunken pest of a husband round either!” Jen said.

“Yeah why do you think I stopped coming to help?” Miss St. Saviour added..

“Because you’re a lazy, stuck-up brat!” Gerald snapped back.

“My Bill is a dear old soul and I will not have his name – “

A sudden bang echoed at the back of the hall: a door had been flung open. It was our absentee designer, holding aloft the local paper:

“Who gave them my name? I’m finished!”

“Oh shut up you clown!” Gerald bellowed from across the hall.

The meeting became a free-for-all. I patted Daniel on the shoulder as I passed him on the way out.

“Good luck.” I said.