under another sun

With Lorraine there, I managed to sleep like a baby. A worrying development. Does this now mean that sleeping without Lorraine induces nightmares? A relaxed start to the day, although I got up early to do some writing. Eventually, after a tomatoes on toast breakfast we sloped off to Icart. A fine bright morning, with the sun shafting through onto the cliffs bringing all the autumnal colours out: the dark greens, russets and purple of the cliffs, and the turquoise sea. After walking around to the top of Saints Bay, we decided to walk back. The sky suddenly dark and brooding, and we watched as a squall raced towards us over the sea, the wind picked up dramatically, and the sea turned rough and chopping, as we reached Icart icy rain was stinging our faces, and we were literally blown back into the carpark. Made off in the pouring rain to The Captains, where we had a late lunch of bottles of Pony Ale, which its label calls a Pale Ale despite it being dark. Sat quietly there engulfing a...

Home from home Last morning at La Barbarie . A good night's sleep again, thank God. The full Guernsey breakfast was followed by a call to St Martin's Primary. I also called the number that was given me by Mary last night, speaking to the father of a boy who had lost his copy of Defenders on the way home. I arranged for the parents to pick one up from the hotel. Once packed Lorraine and I went to my old school and donated the remaining copies of Defenders of Guernsey to it. A strange feeling of coming full circle, returning to my first-ever school during play time, boys running at a bank of earth and somersaulting mid-air. Then paid my respects to La Gran'mère . Lorraine then left to work on the laptop, while I sorted out a new flower holder for my grandparents grave. Added white carnations and with some left over, added carnations to other family graves. The newest grave, not yet with a headstone, had a woman tending it. The name was Marquis, which is my Guernsey family...

The cliffs again Checking my emails this morning on my crotchtop computer, have received an invite from Richard Fleming for Saturday night of wine food and poetry. Also had a smidgen of work to do for my pharmaceutical client which I was able to polish off in a couple of minutes. After a gargantuan breakfast where mum was at the coffee like some crack fiend, we set off into Town, where I bought some local interest books, including Pixies and Faeries on Guernsey . A pamphlet I am sure Anton will be keen to borrow on my return. Apparently, long ago Guernsey was an invaded by an army of foreign fairies from across the water and a distant land we now call England. Mum and I then climbed up the steep flights of stairs that lead up to the top of St Peter Port. We passed my grandfather's little school, and I tried to picture him as a kid heading into the playground through the doorway marked Garcons . Also wandered into a catholic church, Notre Dame du Rosaire which was rather boatlike, h...