Finally a day here when the good ship Jersey is not sailing through a storm. Grey skies and cold, but being outside was tolerable. Lou and I went up to St Clement to visit mum and her parents. Somebody has left little poppy crosses on their grave, and it’s pretty well maintained. I introduced Lou to them.
The church was open and being dressed up for Christmas. I told them I was visiting my grandparents and mother and was asked their name. “Oh yes, my husband knew your grandfather very well.” This small island…
We parked a moment at the gateway to Les Silleries, the land I grew up on. I haven’t plucked up the courage to go down the driveway. Sometimes it’s nice to just remember how things were.
We went to Gorey, which hasn’t changed since the seventies apart from the fact that if you ask for a flat white you get a coffee. We looked at boats, and the huge squat threatening fortification of Mont Orgueil.
Then we shot over to St Aubin for lunch and then hopped to St Brelade. Lou’s parents remembered staying at the St Brelade Bay Hotel a long long time ago. They think she might have come with them as a little girl. We had a hot chocolate in the bar, sitting on a huge comfy sofa and listening to local ladies dish the dirt on each other’s husbands in a little scandalous huddle by the window.
Up the hill from the hotel is a floodlit church. Lou was immediately drawn to it, so we ventured up to St Brelade parish church and her instinct proved excellent. There’s a fisherman’s chapel up there, reasonably recently excavated and filled with incredible medieval biblical art. They really look after it. The chapel and the church were both open and unattended and beautiful. I think my godmother used to do something with her donkeys there for the Easter parade. It’s hard to piece things together from the flashes of memory I have. But it was a truly beautiful church, and a place of power here.
A walk on the beach in the dusk and a good meal and I’m sleepy before the show would normally be over. I might end up turning in. Why the hell not? Rock and roll. It’s not even nine yet. Just so long as I am good to go tomorrow evening… Good to have a rest.
AlBarclay 