All Aboard the Skylark ...

Sorry, Condor Liberation, for an 'entertaining' afternoon!

Condor Liberation on a smooth run

At Christmas I usually drive from Jersey to Liverpool, which, as you have probably guessed, involves either a swim or a sail. I prefer the latter at this time of year, especially as I don’t have a DUKW, but it was with trepidation that I set forth for the UK in gale force winds last month.

For reasons best known to themselves, about a month prior to my journey, Brittany Ferries transferred one of the Condor slow ferries that plies the seas between Jersey and Portsmouth onto another route. It was the ferry I had booked for the 20^th of December. The clerk could offer me the 21^st which was useless because I had to be in Liverpool for a family celebration on that day, so reluctantly I opted for the 19^th on a ferry bound for Guernsey where I then had a three hour wait until a fast ferry arrived from France bound for Poole.

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The trip to Guernsey was lumpy and bumpy but only an hour so easy to manage. I didn’t eat anything just in case and drove off the boat in Guernsey in blustery winds. I got out of the town and went straight across to Cobo Bay which I’m sure is lovely in summer, but in the wind and squally rain was very forbidding. I watched the sea complete with rainbows and rain for an hour and drove back to the port. We boarded and got away early. The fast ferries to Poole are a different construction from the slow old things that go to Portsmouth, which pitch and toss. The fast ferries roll from side to side in a heavy sea.

Cobo Bay, Guernsey on a wild day in December

The captain announced that it would be bumpy out there and we should stay in our seats. My seat was alongside the café at right angles to the counter. A few men were buying pints of beer and would live to regret it later. Some were mocking the captain’s announcements. ‘Been sailing for years’, one of them said. ‘Won’t be any trouble to me’. A few were eating baked potatoes as we set out. It was a different story an hour later!

The fun started as we left Saint Peter Port. Out of the shelter of the harbour the waves began to hit us. My policy was to sit with my coat on and hood up so that I could not see anything except my book. I had bought a cup of tea but before long that had shot sideways onto the floor as had a tray of chocolate biscuits - Kitkats, Twix’s, etc, from the counter at the café. The assistant grubbed around on the floor and managed to pick them up but she put them back exactly in the same place and I wondered, if they could lash down the cars, why they couldn’t secure the loose items in the café, or at least put the trays on the floor where they couldn’t fall further. The bottles were crashing around, and all the retail outlets were closed. I worried about the amount of gin bottles that might be getting smashed in the duty-free shop and hoped we would finally reach calm waters so that I could get to the holy grail.

The captain continued to ask that passengers stayed in their seats, but after the pints there were some very full bladders and several times, lurching males came too close for comfort, so I moved further along the row. At least then they would have an empty seat to fall into or throw up on. A few minutes later there was another almighty crash as we lurched to the side. I looked up and out through the panoramic windows. On one side I could see only sea, on the other only sky. I put my head down.

Suddenly not only did the trays hurtle off the counter but a carton of milk flew from somewhere onto the floor and milk spurted out towards me. There was a dividing strip of metal between the flooring and the carpet underneath the seating. As the young woman came staggering out from behind her counter with kitchen roll, she tried to stem the flow of milk from my feet. Another woman came to help her and they concluded it was too much for kitchen roll and the second woman was dispatched to find a mop. She found a young man with a mop, who recounted that the passengers in starboard aft were fearing the worst and asked him to reassure them that this was the worst journey he’d ever been on. He had apparently replied cheerily ‘No not at all. It’s just a Roly day.’ They all laughed but it was a nervous laugh, and I wondered if that was the brave front they put on for all the passengers.

The mopping up took some time as the, by now, four members of staff were unable to stand up for very long and were either crashing into one another or using it as an opportunity to clutch one another inappropriately, but eventually it was done. All this without a bucket, just a mop which distributed the milk out across the floor in front of the counter. After a few minutes someone tottered past the counter and slipped. There was no warning sign to say it was wet, and he went straight down on his bum with his mates laughing at him. Despite the fact we were still crashing around, rolling from side to side, a couple of others reeled across the floor and went down, one clinging onto the handrail on the counter edge.

Now the staff showed some concern. They debated what was wrong with the floor, which was irritating as it intruded on my reading. So I stated the bleeding obvious and told them the floor was slippery because of the milk. The cheery man (without mop this time) said it was because the ship had been in dry dock and had the floors polished. I asked how come no one had slipped over until the milk was spilt and they would need to wash it properly with soap and water. They blanked me and went to fetch someone in higher authority. Along came someone with Gold Stripes on his shoulder, who slid up and down on it and concluded it had to be washed. This meeting took place while they lurched backwards, sideways and in crazy circles trying to maintain balance and dignity.

The cheery man came back with a mop and bucket, glared at me and proceeded to wash the floor as best he could while crashing into counter and rubbish bins in equal measure. At the end of the exercise, he placed a yellow plastic sign saying ‘wet floor ‘ prominently in the middle of the washed space and disappeared with his mop and bucket, presumably to report back to Gold Stripes. The sign meanwhile conducted a stately gavotte until it got tired, slipped to one side and collapsed unnoticed under the seating. Anyone who needed to get to the toilet was escorted by a member of staff, which was fine for children, but looked a bit odd when it was a grown man being helped across the floor by a young woman with better sea legs than him.

Babies had been crying almost from the start of the journey and I felt sorry for parents who were trapped in the lounge with them, unable to soothe them by the usual pacing up and down. Toddlers screamed angrily at being confined to a seat. Normally, they would waddle round the ship, followed closely by adults grateful to have the child expend energy before the next leg of the journey, which they would be dreading, on crowded roads to the in-laws for Christmas.

I spent the whole time with my head in a book, (the latest of the Harrison Lane series by Gwyn Bennett), which kept me entertained when I wasn’t observing the antics of the staff. It wasn’t the worst journey I’ve ever been on. That was on a Hovercraft years ago from Belgium to Ramsgate. We had to be strapped down in our seats and not allowed to move. However, this journey was pretty bad. The only redeeming feature was that we got in early and when we got close to Poole the duty-free shop opened and I found to my relief that most of the gin bottles were still standing, so was able to buy my Christmas hoard.

I got to my destination shaken not stirred. Even the M5 and M6 weren’t badly congested and when going past long road works with cut off lanes, where we all complain that no-one’s ever working, an electronic sign proclaimed that - people are working but you may not be able to see them. Quite made my day!

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I’ve read

Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers. The stories told by Claire Chambers are of fragile people in almost mundane and everyday situations, until they're not ordinary anymore. She makes us care about almost all the characters and there's some beautiful descriptive prose. I was carried along with these damaged, and vulnerable characters. Wonderful and unusual tale. Her characters are always ordinary but not in very extraordinary situations, just a bit different. William has been "protected” by his aunts for years and over the chapters we learn why.

I particularly enjoyed the structure of the story which is set in 1964 and interspersed with chapters going back in time to reveal bit by bit what happened to William as a child. Near perfect construction of a novel, revealing the past in tantalising fragments.

Three Fires by Denise Mina. At 136 pages this is a fast read but not an easy one. Girolamo Savonarola was the arch disrupter of the 15th century. As a young man he experienced rejection and witnessed hideous atrocities before becoming a Dominican friar and perpetrating his own horrors on the Italian city of Florence. Books, fashionable clothes, jewellery and works of art were all destroyed in the burnings that came to be known as the Bonfire of the Vanities. After he was put to death, (sorry spoiler) the writings he had ensured were smuggled out of the prison and found their way all over Europe to be read and believed by Martin Luther and other dissenters.

Savonarola’s story is told in a succinct, modern style which I really enjoyed. it could easily have been dry and dusty, but it wasn’t. It was fresh and lively. enjoyable in a shocking, sometimes gruesome sort of a way.

I listened on Audible to

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald A 1978 Booker prize nominated novel which was made into a film in 2017. A gentle tale of a widow who sinks all her savings into a bookshop in a haunted house and of the attempts to thwart her by the town’s grande dame. The characters are well drawn, easily recognisable and interesting enough to keep you reading to the uncompromising end.

Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson. I love Atkinson’s early books, but confess i’ve never read her Jackson Brodie series of which this is the latest. When I looked on Audible to see what I’d listened to in the last month, I couldn’t remember this one at all. I had to look at a couple of reviews to recall the story. They were mixed. The Guardian loved it but others weren’t so complementary. It’s an Agatha Christie-esque mystery centring on some missing pictures and there’s a nice relationship between Brodie and a female detective who appeared in an earlier book. Some of the stuff in the stately home is funny, but I don’t think i’ll be rushing to read the earlier Brodie books.

I’ve watched

Gavin and Stacey BBC1 Christmas night. Of course I did! didn’t have time to watch much else, but that was unmissable. loved it and will watch it again - soon.