Notes From a (Very) Small Island - Part Five
Created | Updated Oct 18, 2007
Your note-writer, Paff, works on the Channel Island of Jersey, but lives in Devon, England. He spends most of his working week looking at the inside of the airport, the inside of a cab, the inside of an office or the inside of his eyelids. He must try to get out more. When he does get out, these notes are the result.
(Back) Around the Bay
Wind behind you.
You'll remember that I'm partial to a bit of Bus Stop Pontoon. You'll also remember that I made it round to St. Aubin without seeing a single bus, so I'd got a good hand by this point. But should I stick or should I twist?
What you won't know is that I'd spent a good half hour with a good pint and had a good read through a good part of my copy of Autosport. So I was ready to go. And I was looking forward to having the wind behind me on the way back.
However, Jersey weather is not 'land' weather. It's sea weather. When there's fog, it's sea fog; it does its own thing; comes and goes as it pleases. The wind is the same; one minute it's blowing a gale from the west, next minute there's a gentle breeze from the east. The wind can turn on a sixpence...
(Back) Around The Bay
Up from the table, out of the pub, around the corner. Cross the road and head for the bus stop. A minute of loitering. No bus. Twist.
The wind, it seems, has dropped. The wind, it seems, has turned on a sixpence. The buildings of St Aubin may well be acting as a windbreak, but this is definitely now more akin to a gentle breeze from the east. Let's get going. A reasonable pace, in time with 'Takin Care of Business', the 1970s rock stomp by Bachman-Turner Overdrive. "Get up every morning to the alarm clock's warning, take the 8:15 into the city" stride, stride, stride. Back across the road and onto the path around the bay. Like the wind, the activity has died down around the harbour.
Dusk is falling. As dusk does. The sun has dropped below the steep rise behind St Aubin. In fact, the sun has done no such thing. It has stayed where it is, and this great ball of rock that we live on has rotated around its axis in a direction we call east, causing the sun to appear to have dropped below the horizon in the west. The sky eastward is darkening. Still blue, but a darker shade of blue than immediately above. Stop and look behind to see that in the west the blue pales almost into white, fades into yellow, then orange just where it dips to meet the horizon. That curved band of yellow accentuates the sheer size of the sky. Look hard, and you can see where atmosphere ends and void begins. Concentrate, and you can almost feel the planet turning as it hurtles through space.
The multi-coloured lights around the bay suddenly glow into life. Black posts are situated at approximately ten-yard intervals. Spanning each ten yards is a run of around 30 bulbs, each run a different colour to the last. Ten yards of red, ten yards of white, then pink, then green, then yellow, then red again. And so on. For the entire three mile stretch. That's around 14,000 coloured lights - give or take a couple of thousand - lighting the way home.
Here's that tiny burger hut. Now is the time for a burger. With a few onions. And a cuppa. The burger-and-tea combination hits the spot. The tea - interestingly - comes in a polystyrene cup. Not the sort of cup encountered on the way here, crashing its way along the cycle path. This cup - left to its own devices (and emptied of tea) - would tumble and bounce along, rather than crash and bump like the other one.
Standing by the sea wall, drinking tea and eating burger, the beach beacons. Nearby are some steps. The tide is out, and from here the beach looks as if it might afford a neat short-cut straight to St Helier, rather than the longer way around that curving bayside path. There's nothing for it then. Down onto the sand, accompanied by half a burger and half a tea.
The road sound noticeably quietens on the drop to the beach. Engine noise is generally pitched high enough to be bounced off the wall, back from where it came. The less distinct sound of rubber on tarmac remains, and listen carefully, the sound of the air being moved about by the traffic can be heard. Nothing that sounds like a bus. Twist. (And this is going to be a big twist).
Other sounds become apparent. Gulls warbling, grouped at the water's edge, pulling worms. Waves breaking at the shore. Waves pulling away from the shore. The pulling is stronger than the breaking; the tide is continuing its outward journey. Each wave belonging to that great single expanse of water, now being pulled elsewhere on this globe by unseen forces from a large lump of grey rock orbiting outside the huge heavens above. In six or so hours our spinning globe will have rotated another quarter of a turn and the moon will 'come up' in the same way as the sun has 'gone down'; and that body of water will continue its dance around the globe as the moon continues its dance around the planet. Standing on this spot at 3am tonight would be a very wet experience.
As the sky darkens further, an evening star winks into existence. Lights blink out at sea, too. A lighthouse out westward, on the headland between St Aubin's bay and St Brelade's. Other lights way out at sea, safeguarding ships from Les Minquiers' reef, ten or so miles south, out in the Channel.
Walking the beach is gentler under foot and dictates a slower pace, let's say 'April, Spring, Summer and Wednesdays', early 1970s Status Quo slow rock groove. "I can't leave" stroll, stroll "but I won't stay here", stroll, stroll "if I stay" stroll, stroll "I still won't be here". A Great Dane lopes over. Maybe he heard the imaginary music. Maybe he smelled the finished burger. Great Dane's owner walks by and Great Dane lopes away.
A flicker of torchlight at the water's edge catches the eye. A guy is fishing off the very long jetty that at low tide extends far into the bay. Maybe he's the same fishing guy who braved the rocks along the waterfront a few weeks ago.
The sea seems higher than the beach here. Can't be, of course. Maybe some kind of optical illusion, created by the golden lights reflecting across the sea from Elizabeth Castle. The St Helier skyline is now silhouetted against the dimming sky. Waterfront apartments begin to light up. The usually white dome of Fort Regent is now cycling through the colours of the rainbow like an alien spacecraft from some Spielberg directed 1970s sci-fi movie. The colour rotation has a hypnotic quality, and trance-like we follow it homeward.
Here are some steps back up to the Esplanade. Out of the trance. Up here is real life. People sit on the balcony of The Grand Hotel, drinking and chatting. Evening traffic flows up and down the promenade.
The final bus stop is ahead, and would you believe it, two busses round the corner by The Grand and pull up at the stop. Bust.
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