The ferry is finally booked. I’ve been waiting for my SEISS payment but then the sailing I wanted suddenly filled up so I went and put the next one on my credit card instead. There’s all sorts of red tape that I’ll have to go through and work out before I get there but that’ll wait. I have never even had a lateral flow test, least of all a PCR. I’m going to experience both of these wonders in the next week. I’m not even sure which one of them involves having something shoved all the way up your nose. Either way, I have to get to Jersey, so I’ll just have to have some sort of unpleasantness acted upon me in order to tick the boxes.
They don’t let us sit in our cars either, which I’d be fine with despite the smell and the clanking. You have to pay extra depending on the level of “comfort” you wish to subject yourself to. For just a tenner you get to sit in everybody’s feet, shoulder to shoulder with six people who hate you. For the princely sum of £20 you get to travel Club Class, which just means there’s a coded door into your special room full of feet and rage, where the chairs are bigger. I paid for it though. There are plug sockets in those big chairs and you get free coffee. A cabin with a door would’ve been £130 but it’s the colour of sick to make it easier to clean and it’s the size of a shower cubicle. I’d sooner sleep in the bed of Procrustes.
I still haven’t a clue where I’m staying. I’m hoping I’ll be able to cheerfully impose on family but it’s hard to cheerfully impose on anybody at the moment considering other human beings are terrifying disease ridden filthbags who want you dead. Chances are I’ll have to book a hotel for the first two weeks and then cheerfully impose on family once they can be sure I’m not going to give them death-cooties.
For now I’m enjoying my last couple of days of gentle home life, me and the animals, before I have to farm them off to their various carers and hit the land of difficult forms and numbers and stuff just on the other side of the English Channel. A month in Jersey. Land of my birth.
I’m looking forward to it. If money was no object I honestly think I’d have moved back there by now. The climate is better and even though it’s small I find it less cloying than The Isle of Man. Plus the sea is much better for swimming. I might even get to go in there.
First though I’ve got a theatre workshop audition on Friday morning. Heavens! All spaced out and distanced in Ealing. Two hours of movement while staying away from each other. I’m supposed to wear soft shoes and I literally don’t think I own any. I’ll need to get up into the attic and dig. Surely there’s a plimsoll in a bag there somewhere, unloved and hopeful…
With all this in mind, I’m getting an early bed. So is Mao.
AlBarclay 