under another sun

Cabou in their pools After a nice breakfast in Les Douvres, simply packed and dragged our cases down to La Barbarie, where I normally stay (it had been booked for Friday night). Felt like coming home. Then ambled to Icârt Point. We sat down to take in the view for some time, and Lorraine cried she liked it so much. Having had the week from hell at work, this escape was exactly what was needed. Ambled slowly through the flowers of the cliffpath to Saints Bay, feeling happier by the second, and then stopped at the beach on which were perhaps four other people. I paddled for a bit, but the water seemed bone-numbingly cold. I have been spoilt by the Mediterranean. We had some tea at the tearooms, where we got chatting to the young guy who runs it, and older man from Guernsey and the lady visiting for the first time in 48 years. The Guernseyman had heard me on the radio. Fame at last! The sun came out and we sat about chatting for half an hour, before Lorraine and I walked back up the hill ...

Moulin Huet Mum's last day in Guernsey, so in the morning we went down to Moulin Huet. Popped into the pottery place there, and had a chat with the potter and told him I'd found one of his pieces in a charity shop in Brighton. I bought a Klee-like square piece of pottery, with no observable function, to take home with me. Then down to the incomparably beautiful Moulin Huet bay. The tide was low and it was nice to get my hands on limpets, and pop bladderwrack and peer into rockpools in search of gobies, which the locals call cabou . The first fish I ever caught was a cabou on a groundline from the white rock. Betty had told me that my poem was on a Guernsey bus whose registration number ends with 40. Happening to be in town this afternoon, I sighted it at the terminal bursting onto the full bus with a flourish, bellowing my poem! But it wasn't, and instead was one of Richard's. Mum had similarly burst on behind me also brandishing a camera. Slunk off feeling silly. This ...