Holiday

Well that was a lovely holiday. Over now. Sob, sob etc. I would highly recommend a trip to the channel islands. Guernsey museums seem slightly obsessed by the occupation (however the exhibits have made me fairly sure that I am anti-Hitler) but there is a lot of fun to be had. I started out taking a book with me to meals in the evening – how to dine alone and avoid the pitying stares of other diners- but I found that eavesdropping was far more fun. Especially when I over heard the following conversation “Yes, that was Schoellsberg wasn’t it?” “ooooh yes, terrible man, horrible piece of work”, “Well I don’t know about that”, “He was a dictator wasn’t he?” “No, no a bobsleigher”. I don’t think they appreciated my snorting laughter. However as they both declared at the beginning of their meal that they were going to be “terribly Yorkshire and drink tea with their meal” they are blatantly weird and base all their knowledge of Northeners on the Tetley Tea Folk. I base my knowledge of the North on Last of the Summer Wine. Far more reliable. I look forward to a trip North at some point where I shall see old men whizzing down hills in bath tubs and running away from randy old ladies in headscarves.

The boat trip back was vile. I have never been ill on public transport in my life. Even when drunk I have managed to contain myself. However sitting on a small boat bobbing between Sark and Guernsey I started to feel a bit rough, convincing myself it was a case of mind over matter I decided to concentrate on my book (having read all 5 of the books I had taken in the first two days I read a lot of trash magazines and whatever books were left in the hotel. I am therefore deeply immersed in a dreadful family saga.) When that didn’t work I thought I’d look at the horizon. Except the windows were masked by waves crashing over them and it was difficult to look at the horizon when one moment the window was in the sea and the next it was pointing at the sky. So I looked at a fire hydrant and gulped in deep breaths of diesel filled air. Eventually with Guernsey in sight I took a deep breath – and threw up. In to a bag. Grim. Luckily there was a bin on board so I didn’t have to carry it around like a badly served portion of take away soup. 3 hours on dry land and I still felt rough as.

It was a very nice holiday, I don’t want you to go away thinking it was all being sick in bags and mad racists. I went in the sea twice. Baltic (well actually it was the channel) ho ho. I drank far too much VAT free wine, I met some very pleasant people and I read and slept a lot. I also discovered that although you never forget how to ride a bike (there are no cars on Sark) your thighs have given up the ghost and scream with disgust when you attempt to cycle up hills. I bumped in to the mad bob sleighing people when I was attempting to have a nap at the top of a cliff (as nice as the beach looked I couldn’t face the walk back up). He was dressed in some sort of lycra all in one with a bandana and she was wearing sensible walking shorts. I forced myself to sit up and talk to them, thinking that they only thing worse than talking to them would be to continue attempting to sleep and have them think that I was dead upon a cliff and have them try to rescue me. 10 foot away from his lycra clad genitals was fine for me.