Guernsey and Herm,
United Kingdom
Monday, June 14, 1982
It's quite freaky visiting the Channel Islands, because they're like home, but not. Letter boxes are a different colour - and there's a lot of French. In 1983 I went to Guernsey on a family holiday to Lancresse Bay, so we spent a lot of time on the beach. The most memorable part was the dat trip to Herm. My parents loved it so much that the following year we hired a cottage on Herm for our summer holiday. I've been back two or three times since and my parents have been back often. Its such a small island, you can get to know every last bit. Despite being so tiny, it has a lot to offer. We spent hours coming shell beach for - well, shells. And Oyster catcher aggs (look but don't touch). We'd always be on the look out for puffins, but rarely saw more than black dots on the sea. The road to teh top of the hill, where our cottage was, is steep in a thigh-building kind of way. For some reason I have a very vivid memory of walking down the last few metres singing Elton John's "I guess that's why they call it the blues". Obviously , this was before my goth phase. As a teenager, I was allowed to steer the ferry-ette to Guernsey by the nice young man in charge. This was on the first boat over so no-one else was on board besides me & my mate Nicky. We wer also allowed to wear the Captain's hat, which turned out to be a giant green sombrero.
Some years later I returned to Herm with my husband and two brothers. Mum and Dad were staying on the island with friends, and Dad had secretly arranged for us to come over and surprise mum for her 50th birthday. I was working in the city. My brothers were students. I'm not going to name names about who got us all hauled over by customs and thoroughly searched (although not
that thoroughly, thankfully) but let's just say that I didn't look like I'd recently been selling the Big Issue. Everyone else on the flight was over 50 and wearing a blazer. Happily, we were allowed in, despite my brother's beard, and we were rewarded by the sight of our mother reeling around her deckchair in confused circles. Then she saw us and was really surprised.
