Month: May 2021

At high tide it’s nine miles long and five miles wide here. At low tide considerably bigger. It’s not as big as Greater London. In London you’re never more then ten metres from a rat. In Jersey you’re never more then ten minutes from the sea. And I’d certainly sooner be hemmed in by those breathing beaches than by the M25.

Despite it coming into usual tourist season, it’s not too crowded here. The roads can get grotty with grockles in season which is why it’s traditional to hate them. Right now of course everybody hates everybody everywhere. But at least those filthy people aren’t trying to turn round in the middle of the lanes, or haring along at 18mph. The island conversation still goes quickly to drivers going too fast. It’s small here. Very small. You are being watched.

We walk through the lanes together, my friend and I, and I am regaled with stories of the island. Scandalous gossip and descriptions of individuals who come across as larger than life. Their social gaffes. Their dreadful preoccupations. Even the manner of their deaths. The foxgloves are coming out in the verges. The birds are singing. Occasionally a dog walker exchanges pleasantries with us and complains about the traffic. Everybody has to walk in the road because the place is so damned small. We meet a nanny from Lancashire. If I lived here I’d know where she buys her socks within a week.

A quick visit to the greffe in the afternoon and I’ve got a lovely shiny grant of probate for my mum. It might help shed light on a bank account we missed.

Then off for another walk, this time around a reservoir. There’s a lot here, packed into this tiny space. The world is limited by the sea. I’m trying to get an old man to stop being so fucking stubborn. That’s my main work over here. Old men are known for being stubborn anyway, and this guy is ex army and be has lived on an island for his whole life. He thinks his narrow frame is wide, and instantly challenges and resists anything that conflicts with his worldview. I don’t want to stress him out as it might kill him. But I’m going slowly mad. He’s bad enough on the phone…

Anyway. One more day of week. We might be lucky. We might not… I don’t want to have to extend my trip. But I’m not leaving until this is in process…

I like it here. I’m having to make sure I’m not distracted by how much I like it here. It’s lovely. And it feels like home… I’m not ready to retire for another few decades but maybe I should sew the seeds so I can be just as much of an annoying old bastard over here in forty years time myself.

My evening wanderings have taken me here today – L’Etacquerel Fort. Protected from one side by sea and the other by a deep dug moat, some enterprising individual has put it on the internet as an unusual place to stay. No beds, but it sleeps ten. No electricity. No running water. Compost toilets and hard benches and an open fire. Of course I’m immediately tempted. I could book it next Wednesday and Thursday for £340 and hang out with the ghosts, but it’s too much when I’m still not sure how effective my bureaucratic meanderings will be. It’s more for a party really. Confused Jersey teenagers and beer and spin the bottle and fumbles.

I’m sitting outside it though as the sun begins to fall, watching the horizon above that ancient stone. There’s nobody else near. Just the ever present roar of the sea and the various calls of the rare birds that flood this sanctuary of an island. No litter here either. Just the grass, the bluebells, a foxglove and me.

I was at Bouley Bay earlier. I remember it as a place where the grownups would gather to get tipsy and shout at each other. It’s quiet now, with the huge wreckage of The Water’s Edge Hotel making the corner – (is that where they used to go?) The letters have been ripped from the front by time and the same teenagers who have their parties at the fort. There’s just a scuba school at the bay now, and a little ill attended beachfront coffee shack run by “Mad Mary”. She’s Irish, and her madness manifests more as a persistent curiosity. She knows everything about me before I’ve paid for my coffee. I like her, but I’ve been pretty starved of human company so it’s nice to be asked questions.

Things are in process. Tomorrow I’m off to the registrar and then onwards into this mission I’ve set myself. Time goes so quickly. It’s hard to believe how fast it goes. I still can’t countenance how long ago it was that I lived here and the edges of this island were the edges of my world. But my ferry is booked for the 5th of June and even though I might have to extend it I’d prefer not to. I’m happy here though. If travel wasn’t so complicated and money was less of a restriction I might well come back here more often. The more I’m here the more I think I could live here again, with the sea and the birds and the ghosts. I’d have to find a home closer in feel to this fort than my beige hotel room first, though…

Both masked, we sat at either end of a long table. He is twice my age. “My life is run by this watch now,” he tells me of his Apple Watch. It tries to keep him healthy. It makes him walk around. It knows things about him. Clever stuff, and exposing me for a luddite when this man in his eighties has adopted technology that I have so far avoided. Still, we are in Jersey so everybody wants to sell you a watch, or electronics, and this is both.

In front of us was a form, and I was on hold to the registrar. Neither of us had any idea what a legal entity number is when it’s at home, or how we were supposed to find it, but the form requires it. The registrar doesn’t know either. We can’t send the form without an LEN or it’ll just come back again. Another hurdle, but one we will leap over this time, me fueled by my free lunchtime sandwich and he encouraged by the buzzing of his Apple Watch. In the past they’ve always come back, but I’m gonna work out out. At the end of this trail of paper and numbers and obfuscation surely there’ll be clear proof that it was worth me putting the time in and coming out here to focus on this. Maths. Numbers. I’m very good at taking words from a piece of paper and making them live. I’m great at memory. I’m pretty empathetic when I’m not being selfish. Numbers? They’re a panic spot for me. They flood me so quickly.

I felt like I was the one in my eighties when I left his house. Tomorrow we’ll work it out. I drove home mildly frustrated at meeting another obstacle, and the phone rang. It seems I’m going to be in Dream again, just a day after talking to that nice old stick who is playing Egeus at Samares. A short and delightful event in late summer and something to look forward to. Then another. I got off the phone to a text message. A collaboration, this time in London, all about machines and Victorians. Two things at once, just as I’m starting to try and mold the mess I’ve been passed into a more functional shape. There’s something in the air, and it’s not just pathogens. Things are waking up. I’ll have to make sure I get it done as there are things to come back to now and when that snowball starts rolling, boy does it get hard to stop.

I’m going to get this done and find time to enjoy myself as well. It was a gorgeous day but the rain has come again at night. Tomorrow will be fine again.

It’s taken a while for me to get myself to one particular part of this island. Just down the road from here really, but I’ve gone on all sorts of diversions to avoid it. My old manor. That little corner of Grouville where I first discovered how to be a human. There was a little bramble path leading to a tumbledown white farmhouse with a huge garden. Now instead of the brambles we get this:

It’s beautifully maintained. A groundsman was driving around on the perfect turf on one of those mowers that you ride. It looks pristine, but it’s so very far from the place where I skinned my knee coming over my cycle wearing shorts. “It’s because you hit the brake,” said dad. “You didn’t need to hit the brake. Your own fear is what hurt you.” Apparently down the end of that avenue there are two elderly people living in a monstrous Romanesque villa littered with statuary. I know some of the extent of it. I drove in there once with the intention of introducing myself. Nobody was home that time so I couldn’t see the inside. I didn’t want to go there at all this time. I’ve almost forgotten the new reality. I’ll stick with my memory of the copper beech and the meadow, dad’s roses, the huge garden and the little white house.

Just around the corner, my grandparent’s place still looks the same. I felt bolder there and went to knock on the door. I was greeted like an old friend. A very different reception in every way and a happy thing. Having seen nobody really through my isolation and in the days after, suddenly I was in animated conversation with this lovely couple. We all had a moment where we fondly remembered the neighbour, an architect who would invite me over aged 16 and give me whisky and lend me his books “We’ve got the books!” they cried. “Yes, we didn’t really know your mum but OH YES, we REMEMBER your FATHER.”

It turns out the husband is an amateur thespian. “Come out here, we’ve got a real actor” and then I’m talking about The Dream with a lovely fellow who will be a suitably fearsome Egeus in July in the grounds of Samares Manor – and if it gets rained off, all the better as they get to go to the party early.

I left with contact details and an invitation to stay next time I’m over. So incredibly hospitable, genuine and Bohemian. My kind of people can be found on this island it seems. I still think I’d like to move back here somehow, so long as I can afford to shuttle over for my work.

Then down the road to the cold red stone on the bright clear hill that marks where three of the lost are lying. Last time I came I dug bulbs into the soil with a clam shell, and they have risen, so I did a good job. Daffodils – past the season, but lovely to know they took. I had my time with them, and asked for their help as you do with your parents and grandparents. And then I found my way back here to work on my laptop.

I have so much personal history in this tiny fertile rock. Here with the soil and the water – this is where I grew. I never remember that I miss it until I get here.

The weather. I forgot.

This island is tiny, really. Less than 50 square miles. Completely surrounded by sea. The water in the air and good soil means that it is brimming with nature of all kinds. Birds are everywhere, the verges are shocked through with colourful blooms. I bet there’ll be good mushrooms in season. But around us, everywhere, there is the sea – the vast implacable sea – and the weather it brings.

The little local store only sells instant coffee grains, so I start my day with a hunt for coffee outside. There’s a place on the front with a view of Elizabeth Castle. The coffee ain’t great, but it hits the spot. This morning I went out in the bright sunshine. I parked the car the other side of the main road from the coffee. I didn’t check the sky over the sea as I crossed at the lights to get it. “A flat white,” I said to the man in the stall. It’s a burnt latte but I’m in Jersey. And the rain started. Suddenly I knew I was in for. The wind picked up and one of those bastard squalls rolled in just as he handed me my boiling coffee through the window. Leaping through a puddle that wasn’t there a moment before, I tried to outpace the epicentre of the weatherfront. These things have 4 stages of rain. Blowing mist in the air turns to heavy droplets turns to pelting rain turns to upside down lake and then back the other way just as quickly. I was badly timed for the lights. With my car no more than ten seconds from me I had the whole lake dropped on my head.

A drowned rat I still ran when the lights changed. Thankfully I had a change of clothes in the car, and steamed everything up wrestling myself into dry clothes again. Just in time for the sun to come back as if it had never gone. Check the skies when you live by the sea.

My grandfather had a tide chart always open and a special clock to keep track of the changes. I’m remembering now how it can be here, where the weather changes utterly in a moment. We are a rock in the sea. When the foghorns blow, all the planes are grounded, and the foghorns blow all the time.

Right now, in my bed in this little beige room I can hear the wind fighting with the edges of my building. The window is closed but it’s still trying to come in here to disturb my peace. We are all clinging on here, protected by the ingenuity of the generations that came before us and learnt how to make their own cave.

Next week back into the unknown and I’m going to have to step up my pace in this as everything is already taking longer than at thought it would.

Still, I had a walk through the cliffs in the wind and sun after the squall. It takes it out of you, this sea air. I’m off to sleep. Did I take a photo? Ah yes. This is where I ate my sandwich. The beaches are incredible. If only it wasn’t so wet and windy.

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.

I’m on my own in a restaurant – something I like to do from time to time. I was having an evening stroll in Howard Davis Park and happened on a restaurant nestled in a little walled garden called the Marquis de Caçeres. Moules à la Créme was on the specials board, and as Lou said last night, the benefit of staying in a doss house is that I can go to a restaurant from time to time. Nicer than just having instant noodles in a hotel with a jacuzzi that’s closed because of Covid. And anyway it’s not really a doss house. It’s just very competitively priced for the market. Good on them for making it possible.

Wherever I go in this island, beauty follows me. The sun came out in the afternoon, and I drove through the little lanes after lunch, looking at the displays of flowers outside the houses. Living here is a bit like living in the Cotswolds though. They force you to make yourself look presentable. I guess tourism was a big part of the industry here before the crumble. The rules about painting your house only in certain colours and making it all look pretty are still being adhered to.

I mostly drove randomly, but occasionally switched on Google Maps to laugh at poor robot Fiona as she tried to pronounce Jersey Street names with their irregular spellings and grammar. Rouette de la Pontlietaut. I grew up on Rue au Blancq, and I remember being laughed at in front of the class by my French teacher for spelling “white” with a q on the end in a test. I can’t remember which teacher. Just my rage and indignation. “Dammit, I’m hyperlexic and this is a word I saw every day for decades!” That’s what I didn’t say. And the mussels have arrived.

I scoffed the mussels.

Last time I came to this island with my brother we had moules on the first night and then we were both up all night in that very peculiar kind of hell that only comes from shellfish. There was no “r” in the month then, and there isn’t one in “May” either but it’s close enough to apRil that I’m hoping I’ll be safe. It certainly feels like Spring now at last. The sun came out. I’m going for a walk in the park.

Glorious. Many hours later and no trouble with the mussels. A contented sleep ahead of a solitary weekend. I’ve got so used to not seeing anybody I’m pretty much convinced it’s the norm.

Growing up here really helps explain my attraction to water. Everywhere you go, the sea is there with you. In my wanderings today I ended up a few times on beaches. They just pulled me in.

I stopped the car for a second, got out and looked at the beach and the channel. They say there’s a man in St John’s and he’s never seen the sea. I can kind of believe that of the people here. It’s small and it can give you an island mentality where you artlessly assume that the global population is really only about a few thousand people but you don’t need to look beyond the ones you know already.

Not being in a Jersey car makes me a marked man. The roads are tiny. So narrow. I know this and in the past I’ve driven Jersey cars here and not experienced this. All the Jersey drivers are very used to maneuvering in limited space, and they assume nobody else is. None of the roads are faster than 40mph and they assume everybody but them wants to drive at 90. But you can’t, and you won’t, and you don’t need to. The island’s roads are like the wet dream of some bastard London planning counselor who comes into every meeting and suggests “maybe we could make it sound like fun to call it a 20 mile an hour borough”. But … you can’t really go much faster than 30 here. They’re all two way roads with enough room for one car. You get very used to watching for stopping spaces and waiting in them when necessary. There are even turnpikes in some of the towns as they take up less space than roundabouts. And the etiquette of the turnpike. You go in order. You don’t jump the queue. As Jersey drivers just assume that nobody else gets it. And every Jersey car starts with a J on the license plate.

I’ve been in those Jersey cars. They hate grockles, and here I am with my obvious UK car. Even the hire cars are branded with a bright red H at the start of the plate. There’s no escaping being known if you aren’t a Jersey car. And you’re a pariah. You needn’t do anything, you just have to exist and the other drivers have moving lips and hard eyes as they come by on the other side. There’s no honking, we’re all far too polite for honking. There’s just polite hatred.

One order of business was to drop off a print of the Jersey Races that I sold on eBay. I brought it over on the ferry as it worked out a little cheaper than it would have done sending it by Hermes – plus Hermes would’ve danced the mazurka on it, shot it three times and thrown it in the sea. “Hi this is Hermes. Your package has been delivered. We chucked it in the water off Cherbourg.”

Tomorrow is Friday and so an admin binge before hopefully getting some more plates spinning. And I’m beginning to settle in my doss house. “You’re saving about £30 a night compared to all the other places. You might as well just have a nice meal every so often and stay where you are.” And by God she’s right.

Of all the things I expected to be consistent throughout my life, who knew it would be the little bag on top of the loo. I first discovered these when I was too small to remember properly. I probably came back into a restaurant brandishing one to ask “What’s this thing for mummy?” I was probably admonished – “Put it back immediately,” which would have piqued my childish interest and seared the item into my mind. It probably went folded up into a sweaty pocket for further persual in private, to work out what it was that the adults found so shocking about this freely available little bag.

This hotel is full of period features, and perhaps this is just one of them – another touch of something old that has been around just about long enough to be chic again instead of old fashioned. Like the Rediffusion Radio. The petticoat lady sanitary product disposal bag. “She has a tache,” Lou remembers when I show her a photo. And by God she does. And there she is, free for all comers, on top of the beige loo in my beige room.

“So basically you’re staying in a doss house,” says my half brother. I just renewed for a week and it cost me £297.50. My half brother has probably spent more than that every night for a week and thought he was getting a bargain. But I’m okay in this for another week even if I can’t cook. I’m hoping to get this all done in time for the fifth of June and I’ll likely have to eventually hit upon a place with a cooker. But here, in the bathroom of this actually rather sweet family run hotel, is yet another thing that roots me back into the memory of the child I was, not so very long ago, in a world with different edges. A tampon bag showing a very old fashioned woman sporting rather fine moustache.

Another wonderful thing about The Mornington Hotel is the location. Bloody hell, it’s well placed. You don’t get the beach and the sea which I guess is what a lot of people come to Jersey for. But you’re close to the town centre in one direction, and less than a minute’s walk from Howard Davis Park in the other.

The park looks extremely disappointing until you get past the huge pigeonproofed statue of some dead monarch and into the gloriously landscaped lawns and rose gardens and trees that we probably bequeathed to the people of Jersey by whichever one of the Edwards it was. Had I known it was so lovely, so full of scents and birdsong, so close to the room in which I have festered, I’m not sure if my isolation would’ve been more bitter or more sweet. Perhaps a bit of both.

The wind is up now, coming in off the sea, buffeting my windows. The best of the weather so far was definitely observed through the window but I have another three weeks here and now I can move around and see all the wonderful vistas, the trees, the huge beaches and vast skies and all this wonder, and still, with all the possible things, I only have a photograph of this stupid disposal bag. Here she is. Enjoy.

Up early in the morning to take advantage of my new found freedom and out into the world. St Helier is the capital, it’s the town where I was born, and it’s definitely a little more happening than when I was a kid where they just had a bloke selling fish, eighteen pubs and a twenty seven jewellers. Now it feels a little bit like one of the hipster boroughs in London. Rich people dressing down and broke people dressing up. I needed to go to the bank but it turned out the bank wasn’t where I needed to go so I went to the Greff and the Greff told us I needed to go to the archive and they sent me back to the Greff having taken my email but they haven’t sent me an email yet and this is how it’s going to go from now on. Fuck me how tedious. At least I saw a copper with a tattoo on my peregrinations. I like his white hat. Reminds me of being in the Bahamas as a kid. I forgot they were here too. I was so protected when I lived here though.

My usual reaction faced with this sort of admin nightmare thing related to this ancient tangle is to just throw up my arms in despair and leave it about a decade by which time it gets even more convoluted, but this time I’m going to get stuck in properly and go back for round two, three and four. This is only one of many strings I’m trying to pull here. This time I’ll get to the bottom of it even if basically everybody wants to fob me off on somebody else.

Before lunch I stopped at the registrar because I wanted to get a look at my birth certificate and see what time I was born. They are closed for COVID and I’ll have to do it online. I had lunch at the Arts Centre but it felt more like a cinema café and everybody was extremely anxious. Then I went back to the hotel before time in order to try and fill some forms in online and because, on the first day I’ve been able to get out it kept bloody raining on me…

I’ve been here a whole fecking week already. How did that happen so fast? Good God.

The hotel asked me if I was staying further and it’s definitely cheaper than anywhere else especially considering I get a nice sandwich for lunch. I agreed. Self catering will have to wait until I think I can sort something out from his tangled up impossible mess I’m trying to work out. This place is a minutes walk from the park and actually very convenient for everything. If I end up in a place where I can cook I’ll be too comfortable maybe. I have the advantage of wanting to get out of my room here at the first opportunity.

Sleep now and another go tomorrow. I’ve got to see an old family friend but I’m holding off because he’s 80. Gonna arrive brandishing my third test certificate so he can’t avoid me by saying I might be contagious.

The best thing about this room is it has a good big hot bath. I just got out. I’m sleepy and pickled. Good night/good morning. Boing. X