Time flies, and in a couple of hours, so will I

Gorgeous roast beef baguette with fried onions and gravy

I had thought that the early pickup of my return transfer was going to give me far too much time at the airport.

Too much time has turned into enough time to enjoy the most delicious roast beef baguette I have ever tasted. Melt in the mouth gorgeousness cut from the joint in front of me by a very capable and very hard working guy behind the counter. I was tempted to go for the Jersey beef burger and chips, but when I saw how big the burgers were and how many chips the guy was serving I thought there's no way I can down that along with the preflight jitters. 

As it is the weather doesn't look so rosey right now, and a couple of flights into the island have been delayed by the weather. 

How is it that the facilities in Jersey's airport departure terminal are better by far than the ones in Southampton (which I flew out from) ? 

It's worth coming here just to turn round and go back out to get at the lovely food available here. 

Making use of the free wifi while I wait. 

As with the other holiday posts, I will attach pictures when I get back home. (done 18:09 09/05/14)

Last night in Jersey

Tomorrow is my last day in Jersey. I'm flying back to the UK tomorrow evening. Today was a very energetic day. 

One of the first things I'm going to do when I get back to my flat, after I put the kettle on, is to weigh myself. If I haven't lost weight this week I will not just be surprised I'll be fucking furious. Be warned. 

Today I decided to make the most of my last full day on the island and go on one of my 'I'm not lost, I'm exploring' ventures. This basically means heading off in one direction, either by foot or on by bike and seeing where the road takes me.  

Now in the uk, where I have access to free maps courtesy of GPS (as long as I have phone signal), it's not really possible to get truly lost. Here, well it is. It's not a dire panic because the locals speak English, but none the less there was a point this afternoon where I did stop a couple of times and get out the fee tourist map, to check reference points or clues. It doesn't have road names except for major roads, but my map reading skills are helpful. 

If I actually look at the map at the beginning it may have helped. When I started I negotiated the impossibly complicated one way systems of St Helier into the countryside.  You know, that's the place with all the green stuff, and animals. Without direction, by mid to late morning I was starting to think, 'ok, is there anything to see while I'm out this way'. Figuring that if I get back to the hotel and realise I was mere yards from some fanatstic attraction or sight that I would kick myself rather harshly. I kept seeing these signs for a wildlife park. That's nice. I thought. That sounds like it's worth a look. 

Every road I went down I was thinking there'd be some sign as to how far away this park was. But no. None of the signs gave any indication of how far away it was. At one point I rode about half a mile down one road, which I thought the sign had directed me down, only to give up and turn back when I realised I wasn't getting anywhere near close to this elusive bloody park. Did the thing even exist ? 

Eventually I did find it. I must have done a circuit right round the damn place. I'm sure if I look up on google earth I will discover that the park was 'just round the next corner' on that road I'd turned found on. 

I'd taken not one, not two, but three bottles of drink. I needed them. 

Anyway despite my moaning about getting there the park was more of a zoo, and well worth the trek, or maybe even getting a bus. After having cycled miles upon miles, I walked round filling up the memory card on my camera with lots of pictures. 

Zoos are funny places, it's always interesting to see different animals, but when you see the bored sorrowful faces of the Gorillas I feel ashamed and wrong, and wonder what's going through their minds, watching all these humans gawping, taking pictures. 

The human children playing in the play park didn't seem to be began in any differently to the other primates. 

I stopped for some lovely lunch at the wildlife park. Some beef pad Thai. When I'd spent a good couple of hours there, I decided it was time to head back in the direction of St Helier. Thankfully, leaving the park there were a couple of signs for cycle paths. A quick check, and double check of my map to figure out which one to take, and I was off in the right direction. 

As I cycled through ever remoter countryside I began to doubt this decision, and look for reassurance I was indeed on the right track. I'm male enough to not ask someone else for help, although there were moments that it got quite close, it's just that for most of the time I didn't see another soul. This got me to thinking, how much time before the sun goes down ? If anything happens to me, will anyone ever find me ? Panic wasn't setting in, but I was starting to wonder if I'd gone the right way. 

As it happened I passed the edge of a reservoir, checked my map, and found that not only was I in the right track, but that I was much closer to civilisation than I thought. The way back a much more direct route. 

The thought occurs to me that things only got stressful when I was trying to get somewhere, or started to sorry about the time being taken. Before all that I was rather content. Before I was trying to find the wildlife park I was exploring. Once I started trying to find it, I went from being exploring to lost. 

After a couple hours rest in the hotel (and returning the bike) I headed out again, on foot. Heading East. I'd headed West to St Aubin and Corbiere a couple of days before, so figured East was the way to go. Again there's something liberating about walking somewhere without an agenda, a place to be, by a certain time. 

Although I have to check out by ten tomorrow, the flight isn't until the evening, so I'll be able to leave my bag here until I'm picked up and taken to the airport. I think I may just get a bus somewhere tomorrow, see some other parts of the island. Maybe. See how it goes. 

It's a bitter sweet thing, leaving. I don't want to go back to 'real life', but I do miss home. I will be sad to leave Jersey though. Coming away has shown me who's easy it is to do, so there's nothing stopping me from going somewhere else. 

I guess I should down my drink and head off to start my packing. 

I'm leaving .... on a jet plane.....

May 4th 2014. 00:21

I write this from my hotel room in Jersey. I'm up at this ungodly hour, because my sleep pattern is all out of whack.

I got up five A.M. today, to make sure that I had everything ready before I had to leave to get the train to the airport.

As it was, I'd rather allowed myself too much time. But better to be there and waiting, than arrive with too little time and be rushing around. As it was, at the time I arrived there was hardly anyone else there, and the bemused staff were very helpful although the ones in security check in don't seem to find it necessary to bring their smiles with them, or to explain things to sad, disoriented people who haven't flown for about twenty years.

Risking only a danish pastry as breakfast in the cafe, I awaited the plane, which arrived well enough, but we were delayed boarding, and left Southampton ten minutes late.

I was glad that I hadn't plumped for a full English breakfast, as the plane, a double propeller thing did kind of lurch about a bit, and the turns around take off and landing are a bit hair raising.

There was barely time to get comfortable, let a lone travel from one end of the plane to the other with the duty free trolley before it was time to get ready to land again.

Airports are funny places, everyone is really uber focused on making sure they don't miss their flight or paying attention to this announcement or that. Airports are just like train stations, where the method of transport evolved wings instead of wheels. (I know they didn't evolve. I know planes have wheels).

Dropped off at the hotel in a rather fancy looking car that was waiting for me at the airport. The hotel offered to look after my rucksack until the room was ready for checkin. This was a great thing, as I wasn't fancying lumbering around the streets of Jersey with a (just under) ten kilo bag on my back.

And wander I did. I think, over the space of about three hours I probably walked about three or four miles. Took in some sights, found a lovely beach or two, took lots of photos of some nice buildings (trying to be all artsy), stumbled across a boat show, which had a young teenage boy singing on his own on stage, just him and his guitar. He was rather good actually. Took in the opportunity to grab some food, and had a look round a Royal Navy ship that was docked for the occasion.

I came back to the hotel, checked in, and flaked in my room for a bit, watching a film about the early life of Winston Churchill. It was rather fascinating. I had a brief nap at some point, and this, along with the similar one I grabbed after coming back from a similar walk in the afternoon is why I'm not exactly ready to drop to sleep just yet.

It's been a great first day. Even with me being rather scared on the plane. I don't think I did too bad, considering I normally won't go on the kiddie rides they put outside the shops at Christmas for fear of being sick. Dodgems are normally about my limit. I think I can only tolerate them because I'm the one in control of the vehicle. With the plane, I most definitely wasn't. It was disconcerting to see and feel it moving about so much at times.

Hot Hot Hot

It's been super hot lately, and this has coincided with the week that I am on standby for the emergency call centre. I have been in rather a lot, and tonight (Thursday night) is the last night of my stint, but also the only day so far this week that I haven't been called in.

I had thought, or hoped that it not being the middle of winter that I wouldn't see much 'action'. I couldn't have been more wrong. I don't know how the guys out in the field were keeping up with all the problems that were going on. Trees causing problems, fires, lines coming down, over zealous gardeners digging through cables. All sorts of things. You could tell how tough it was getting in the delays that were creeping in for first response to faults - because the engineers were already out on another job.

The most stupid thing has to be someone deciding to prove that the power's out by using a ladder to climb up the power pole and test the supply themselves. Lucky the supply was dead, because otherwise they would have been. Important bit of advice people, don't climb up power supply poles, don't go near the cables if they happen to come down. Don't touch them. They have a really bad habit of killing people.

Having not spoken too much to my daughter this week, I text her tonight for a cursory chat about things. I couldn't call her from my mobile because I have to leave the line open in case I'm called in. The chat moved from sms texting to facebook chat, where I then sent her a picture of my new Chromebook. She then proceeded to lecture me about how I didn't need another device and that I 'just keep buying things'.

The problem is, she may be right. Okay, I have brought another device. But I did buy it ridiculously cheaply, and can always sell it on if I don't want it any more. Having identified a need, that I thought could be filled with my iPad and a portable keyboard, I went for the absolutely cheapest way of filling that need. Not the most complicated or expensive. But she is right, that I have an iPad, and iMac, why, oh why, oh why do I need a laptop. Well I do. I need to be able to type easily. On Wednesday, when I sat in the 'garden' working on a 'Doorstops' script for Beacon, it was on the Chromebook that I did it. I couldn't have really managed to sit out there on my camping chair with my iPad and a bluetooth keyboard. I have done in the past, and it's a thing of managing to balance everything right, setting them at the right angle on my lap so that I've got room to move or sit comfortably and type. Also the heat doesn't really do nice things to my iPad. Last time it actually shut itself down and refused to work until it had cooled down somewhat. The device itself, being made of metal was white hot. Picking it up in my hand, I was genuinely concerned I was going to get branded by the Apple Logo, burning into my palm.

I know that I can come up with loads of different reasons to justify my expenditure. To justify it to myself maybe.

It is finally dawning on me that our holiday is not too far away, and I should really get my arse moving and actually book one. There are emails I get frequently from some of the holiday places, offering me short notice deals, but those are still too close - and not yet for the week that we want.

I am confident that we will be able to get something. Part of me would like to have been able to go to Jersey, but it turned out to be so fucking expensive that I would have nearly had to sell the flat in order for us to go.
I may have just exaggerated slightly. Slightly. There's something special about Devon. Heading westwards has a spiritual draw to it. Heading Eastwards, like we did a few years ago when we went to Hastings doesn't have the same charm. I don't know how to put that into words, or explain it, but that's how I feel.

I would also like to go to Scotland, or Ireland, but there's also the part of me that thinks we should not be heading further North. Further South = warmer. Further North = colder, in my mind. Would I feel cheated spending my summer holiday deliberately going somewhere colder ? So that when I come home, it's warmer ? Now that doesn't make sense.

If it was somewhere more special, maybe Iceland, or Canada, or cruise up the Norwegian fjords, then maybe, just maybe. But to damp Edinburgh ? Nah. Does not compute.

I'm probably talking a load of shite and am about to get lots of comments from very angry people in the Scottish Tourist Board.