I’ve been needing to go to Jersey for over a year now, but this whole situation has made it impossible. After the 26th there might be a window of opportunity before more shit hits the fan. A chance to do the things I need to do before everything probably stops again. I’ve been making a few calls and touching base with people I know out there in advance. It’s not so far away but it’s surrounded by water and these times make it hard for anybody to go anywhere. Jersey has always been pretty insular, and right now that tendency has been amped up as we are all encouraged to sneak deeper into our little boxes. If I go, people will glare at me for my English car and my grockley ways, coming over and breathing their air and probably giving everybody that dirty Covid thing from filthy London town.
I never plan anything this far ahead. I usually don’t really know where I’ll be going in twenty four hours and then I suddenly find out it’s Bognor. With The Cove in the equation everything has to be put into place so early. I have to be much more organised than I like to be. Booking travel, working out what I’ll have to do, contingency planning…
I’ll even have to find somebody who’s happy to take custody of the friendly snake and of our glorious fluffy communist leader. He’s camped out on the freshly made bed at my feet, snoring like my dad. All he’s done all day is sleep. He’s an easy thing to look after for a week or two. You watch him sleep, then you have an intensive evening snuggle and groom, then more sleep. I’d take him in the car on the ferry as he’s extremely mild and unfazed, but he’s just settling here now and a new human will be enough disruption despite his nature. If I took him I’d have to take the snake and the fishies too. Rather than turn into Doctor Doolittle I’ll stay here. Animals make a home. They also bind you to that home.
I had a good potter to the Chelsea Physic Garden, enjoying the spring blossoms. The café is open again and as a result everybody was just sitting there. I could walk around relatively uncrowded avenues. I don’t quite get that. Surrounded by all these beautiful organisms in this fertile protected soil near the river, with the bulbs yielding up their tulips to the kiss of the sun in cold air, people sit under a plastic awning sipping expensive tea and talking about how cold they are. I guess it’s the novelty of it now. We haven’t been able to do it for months. If I was drinking it would’ve been a different matter I guess. I’d have seen the opportunity and would now be writing this to you a good fifteen pounds poorer and half cut.
I hope you’re enjoying the things you missed that you can do again. I’m sure I’ll find those pleasures again in time, but at the moment I’m happy to stay in semi torpor like all the animals in my home.
AlBarclay 