Jersey Spoils

 At a pub called The Cock and Bottle in St. Hellier. There are a lot of French people here. They're identifiable because they're thinner than the English, quieter, and contain less faded ink. I was going to say the French are better dressed but they aren't really better dressed. They're differently dressed: sweaters are thrown casually around shoulders, there are scarves and neckerchiefs and, yes, matelot sweaters. They're wearing layers, even though its thirty degrees. The women wear a lot of jewelry and it's jewelry that looks as if it may have had a previous owner, perhaps several down the generations. The English are wearing polo shirts with popped collars and expensive, cycling sunglasses perched on top of their bald heads like tiaras. Their jewelry might as well have the price sticker still on it. It shines like scattered ice under a low winter sun. I'd have to say the French have this, but the Frenchman next to me is happily tucking into a pint of Carling. Reader, I judged him. 

I DO like to be beside the seaside...

Later we're at a high-stooled wine bar called The Watchmaker, looking across at St Hellier marketplace, with its red wrought-iron gates and high-end picnic supply stalls. We order a cheese and charcuterie board and Susan a glass of muscadet while I plump for a gamay. I get my notebook out and write in it. Magically, the service improves. I love to do this. Never fails in places where people care about service. I don't bother in Belfast. My wine has a very strong vanilla note which I dislike. So I drink it and order another wine. That too has a very strong vanilla tang. What's going on here? And I realise that earlier in the day I sprayed myself with a vile vial of Armani Code and somehow its horrible scent is informing everything I'm drinking. We go back to the hotel and I scrub vigorously to get the stench off me. 

Seems to be "Daddy/Daughter Day" quite a lot on Jersey. I mean, it could all be legit, but I reckon you can get away with a lot when you're a millionaire tax exile. Though these guys don't look like millionaires. But then, they wouldn't. They live here. They buy milk. And, presumably, rusks. 

Everyone is on crutches in St Hellier. Is this the fashion? I remember Jim Bergerac had a gammy leg in the TV detective series. Is that it? Let it go lads - it hasn't been on in thirty years. Cast off thy casts and walk. 

Susan and I are in a restaurant where all the meals are bad puns. I like bad puns but I'm not going to sit down and eat anything named "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Salmons". Bloody hell. For one thing the plural of salmon is salmon. The craft ales - because of course craft ales - are all puns too or claim to be, in some way, punk. Perhaps they are punk, given punk is a state of mind and these thin hoppy gruels would have been much better as ideas than in practice. Susan tells me that if I owned a cafe all the meals would have stupid names. Yes, that's true, but they'd be a fuck of a lot better than "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Salmons." "No they wouldn't," she says. Injured, I quickly come up with "Salmon Chanted Evening", which doesn't work for her, "because this is a breakfast place." Fine. Okay, how about "Salmon To Watch Over Me", which she likes because she's seen that film. 

They're playing Craig David. Is Craig David cool again? Was he cool to begin with? I note that "Walking Away" has exactly the same tune as U2's "One". Cool. 

The flight to Jersey was appalling. The woman next to me, elbows out, prodding me in the ribs, ate smelly food for the entire flight. I said nothing, of course. Across the aisle from her - she had headphones in so she was fine - was a four year old called Lily, watching Spongebob Squarepants on a screen at head trauma volume. Lily's mum and grandma were fine with it - she was distracted for a moment. They were free to close their eyes and imagine they were elsewhere. The woman in front of me took it harder. She had her hands clamped over her ears and her coat draped over her head. If someone actually had shouted "Brace, Brace" it would have been a sweet release for her. She said nothing. I said nothing. It's taken as a given you have to just put up with a blaring tablet in a confined space for an hour, because that's modern parenting. Give 'em a screen to shut them up. A remarkably high proportion of Spongebob is just screaming. Literal screaming. I did not know that. 

We're staying in the Pomme D'Or, a hotel so old Victor Hugo stayed here during his exile. It's delightful. Delightfully old fashioned. Weighty browns and heritage greens. The twinkle of amber lamps, the worlds slowest lift, the carpets of which - carpeted lifts - continued the apple motif. The telly in the room is small and the channel listings bear no resemblance to what's actually on. The shower controls are so basic that I can use them. There's a leather bench at the bottom of the bed. There's a writing desk and a trouser press. The discreet fridge appears to be apologising for even being there. The prints on the walls are modernist magazine illustrations in the French manner. The air-con is positively thrilling. 

I love this hotel. 

Jersey feels like my childhood. I grew up by the sea and remember the dusty little shops, with flats above them, the homemade trade signs. Hand-written notes in the windows. Spinning postcard racks. These things are still here. 

A giant man with two dogs catches up with us at a crossroads. He can tell we're tourists as we're clambering up a winding, pavement-free road in the middle of nowhere. I don't know what his excuse is, but he seems somehow elemental, a benign spirit appearing from the green verge to haunt the crossroads. We hear a cock crow. He tells us the best way to get to St Brelade, and then disappears into a handy nearby wood with his two hounds. I assume he's a mellowed Herne the Hunter, leading our wild hunt to the pub that used to be in Bergerac. 

We turn a corner, past dozing black goats, and find ourselves transported to the rural France of my dreams. I had no idea, before we made this trip, just how close Jersey was to France. I had no idea there were French channel islands. But the evidence is everywhere you are definitely in France and the English signposts and tattooed pot-bellied locals are some sort of administrative error.  We travel down a twisting road, past an archetypal, care-worn French farmhouse, replete with rusting Renaults and a wary eyed rooster, who starts crowing his head off as soon as we're safely round the corner. As we approach the white sand beach, we pass The Smuggler's Inn*, a haunted pub I've previously researched, but we elect to pop into it on the way back, as we have large empty beaches to walk on. The beach is wide, the sand soft and white. There's no one here, just miles of empty beach, the sea dimpled and distant, the sky an azure canopy. We're not in Northern Ireland any more. 

We sit in baronial splendour in The Old Court House Inn, in a wood-paneled room dedicated to vast amounts of champagne. This is - of course - The Royal Barge in TV's Bergerac, haunt of Diamante Lil and, surprisingly for an on-the-wagon alcoholic, Jim Bergerac himself. It's great. My bum has been where Celia Imrie's bum has been. A warming thought. Though not for her.    

"All ale, Lord Pint, master of the revels and a dab hand with the maltesers too..."

In Winston Churchill Park a girl with a perfect body in a tiny bikini is sunning herself. She is reading a book. Susan starts calling me Mr Palomar. It's hard to argue with her. 

We go to a fifth Century fisherman's chapel, which is tiny barn with mostly eroded scenes from the New Testament. I spot Gabriel announcing "Guess what?" to Mary, and see Joseph's miffed Medieval face. The chapel is beautiful in its simplicity, the erosion of its fresco somehow appropriate to our modern sensibilities. It speaks to the ineffable. 

Next door is the Parish church proper and, as we pass, we hear piano music. We slip inside but its not clear whether it's a recording, so we wander around the church and it has the wonderful grey/green calmness of old buildings on a hot day and, at the back of the church, like something from a French film I'm too ugly to be in, a beautiful girl is playing an upright piano. She's filming herself on her phone, presumably for her TikTok or a Youtube channel, and Susan and I ghost around the knave, trying not to intrude. I think she's playing Chopin's Nocturne in C Sharp minor, lent an even more forlorn and melancholy feel by the echo in the room, by the rickety upright. It's a beautiful moment. She finishes as we reach the door and I burst into spontaneous applause, only to realise, as she continues to play, it was just a dramatic pause and my clunky clapping - echoing round the venerable stone-work - has just totally fucked up the performance she was live-streaming. I run outside and succumb to a full-body cringe. Inside I can hear her gamely plodding on, fresh hesitancy in her fingerwork. I wince back to the bus stop. Susan laughs till she cries.  

We were supposed to travel to Sark, a place Susan has always dreamed of visiting. But the day before we're due to travel - taking passports, checking in an hour and a half before we're due to sail, all the palaver - the ferry company abruptly cancel. They're citing "bad weather". It's the hottest day of the year, there's not a cloud in the sky, nor a lick of wind, the sea looks like blue carpet on an old sea captain's landing. It's bullshit. So, I have a sad Susan, coupled with the possibility that because it's an "Act of God" - God controls the weather? Is it Thor we're dealing with? - there may be no refund. **

We go to a zoo. She meets flamingos. Flamingos are the weirdest things on the planet. She loves them. Holiday saved. Phew.    

If the cartoon Pink Panther was an evil dinosaur...

We visit a place called Rozel and there's a beach and a view and a bus and we have a pint and watch a group of matey looking Germans. Germans are so nice. Big, jolly healthy looking lads. You wouldn't think they'd be any trouble...

We leave to investigate the nearby Chateau la Chaire. Not knowing what to expect, I'm here to soak up mysterious vibes for a film I'm writing, so I'm keen to get to any chateau I can. You climb a winding path under a canopy of giant trees and...there it is, a dusty relic of the past surrounded on all sides by thick, muffling, sleepy trees. If you didn't know it was here you would never find it. 

It's empty. There's no one about. You're surrounded on every side by swaying woodland and the only sound is the burble of the ornamental fountain and the occasional fussing of pigeons. You may still enjoy your podium dancing and your foam parties and your chlamydia, but this is what I want from a holiday now: beauty and silence. A server appears and in a few seconds I'm drinking a frosty pint of Liberation Ale and Susan has a cream tea and a glass of champagne. Perfection. In the nearby pub a live band strike up, to puncture the hushed majesty of the afternoon. Please no covers of Ed Sheeran. Instead, it sounds like excerpts from Peter Grimes! It's hard to make out through the thickness of the trees, but there is deep, massed, choral singing, and thrummed acoustic instruments. Rough music. It was magical, adding to the deep strangeness of the mood. In a way, I never want to go back as it feels like an afternoon that could never be repeated. In a way, I never wanted to leave. 

I mean, you would want to make a film here...

We go to a pub called Moulin de Lecq, and it was alright, but the best thing about it was the DJ dropping disco hits in the pub garden - Detroit Emeralds, Hues Corporation, er, Johnny Hates Jazz - who was eighty if he was a day, and the only other man in long trousers on the island. He'd slip George McRae's "Rock Your Baby" on the wheels of steel, then slowly parade his dog around, smiling and waving like a minor royal on a walkabout. We can be heroes. 

On the last day I meet up with a friend from art school, whom I haven't seen for thirty five years. We last clapped eyes on each other in the last year of the eighties! Fuck. 

Chris lives on the island and runs his own gallery, bringing taste and distinction to the cadre of tax-avoiding philistine millionaires who flock there. He's like Saint Damian on the leper colony, trying to convert the locals to the religion of enlightened good taste, knowing eventually he too will succumb to their disease: corrupting wealth. 

We meet in his office, and he decides to bunk off for the rest of the day, ferrying us around the island in his shiny black Merc. We saw the east of the island - Chris' manor - and the tour-guide is breathless. He was born on Jersey and clearly adores the place, even if he fears its destruction by the same people who are his clients. He asked what we'd been up to, and when we told him - going to a zoo, eating Croque Monsieur in an empty chateau, interrupting a piano recital in a fisherman's chapel - he looked bemused. When we said we'd been going everywhere by bus he was openly distraught. 

Finding I was there, in part, to do research for a film project, he decided we had to visit Gorey Castle. Well, just the name was a solid thumbs up for me. It was also free in, he assured us. 

It was not free in. 

The ludicrously posh Wanda Ventham type in the kiosk was amused by the idea the "jewel in Jersey's crown" had ever been free to get into. "Why would it be?" she said. Chris paid for us to get in without a quibble. Fifty quid, mind. He then gave us a guided tour of the entire castle, which I'm sure is the reason everyone on the island is on crutches - I nearly went over myself - including The Dance of Death: a twirling, shadowy skeleton diorama traversing a model of the castle and representing leprosy or plague or something, set to some spooky music that came from the record library on a disc called "Ultimate Spooky Music".  

We saw the room William "en suite" Prynne was imprisoned in for forty years for "offending" the Queen. I wonder what he'd have got if he threw an apple at her head. Whatever it was it was probably not as bad as what the shit-ton of witches burnt to death here got. They were REALLY down on witches in Jersey. It was properly grim. A lot of suffering smudged onto the walls in human charcoal. In the dining hall a representation of all the owners of the castle had been assembled in the shape of a large metal tree, their unwieldy metal heads swinging, the faces like deformed fruit in ugly hats. 

Chris borrows a quid from a passing child to throw down the wishing well, promising a really long wait for the splash. "When I was a kid I was terrified by how long the drop was - centre of the earth!" The splash comes after about one and a half seconds. We run away. 

Afterwards he took us to a fabulous restaurant - The Moorings - we would never have found in a million years, and treated us to a three hour, two bottle lunch where I ate the best crab and prawn linguine I've ever tasted.  

Throughout the day Chris had been magnanimous, expansive, funny as fuck and full of tid-bits of local information. It was like being ferried around the island by the world's best tour guide, and then he buys you dinner! It was the unexpected highlight of the trip. Fuck you, Sark. You were nothing next to my mate from Art College. A brilliant day. 

Later we went to a marvelous pub called The Lamplighter Chris had recommended, literally around the corner from the hotel. It was half full of French people, half full of a darts team, and all full of real ale. It's not what you know, it's who you know, especially on Jersey. I expect to be introduced by the cigar guy the next time I'm back. 

And I will be back. Perhaps quite soon. 

*The Smugglers Inn wasn't all that. No ghosts. Weak beer selection. I think I ended up with a pint of Madri. Just no. 

**There is a full refund.