Causeway

Now I’m through the bit where I have to be shut in a beige room, it’s bloody great to be on this island. It makes me want to seize the opportunity and travel as much as possible. My dad always insisted that when the prevailing mood is against something, that’s the best time to do it. And he was pretty good at that sort of thing. So it’s a good time to travel. And it is. There’s nobody here.

I’m sitting by an inlet just below Corbière Lighthouse, looking southerly across the sea to Plevenon. There’s not a soul but me despite this being tourist season. To get here it has to be low tide. It’s 5pm and high water is in 4 hours so I can be here a while, but once you’ve missed it you’ve missed it and you’re going to have to break into the lighthouse. There’s a siren that goes off shortly before the water covers the causeway. It’s not foolproof, but nothing really is, but I’m on my own so if I get cut off nobody will be panicking and I can just treat it like another adventure. I’ll probably end up playing cards and drinking whisky with the lighthouse keeper until dawn. If ever there were a reason to break the abstinence, that’s it.

It’s beautiful here, as ever in this island. I’m not sure if my idea of beauty was formed here so I’m more affected by it than most, or if it’s just generally glorious. I think it might be the latter. Beautiful or special places are frequently ruined by the crowds. I’m starting to think that this thought-environment is the perfect one in which to drop everything and get very good at globe-trotting within the restrictions. There won’t be crowds. If you had the money you could book a veritable palace in every place for the first period, and then go live where the people are once freedom is granted. Twelve places, a month in each place, first two weeks writing and thinking and looking out the window in a sarong, and padding barefoot on the immaculate turf of the lawn, maybe a dip in the pool. Then the second week going straight into the monument, sitting on the front of the boat, being welcomed into the restaurant without any delay… I could get behind that.

And there’s my text message from the final test as I sit alone on this rock. Surprise surprise it’s negative, and it’s almost as if the greatest portion of all the rigmarole of testing and filling in forms is just an ineffectual box ticking exercise with little actual merit.

To celebrate I’m going to go back to my beige room for an alcohol free super bock and a hot bath, to wash off all the salt I’m going to get in my hair from now until the siren going off and me rushing back down the vanishing causeway.