Keir Royale

In which Formerly Blog Fodder gets very cross, following attempts to cross the Channel in high winds and rough seas, eager to reach the welcoming arms of his family.

Do you remember those TV ads featuring “That Condor Moment”?

The first whiff of tobacco transported the deluded smoker into a state of blissful serenity.

These days any mention of That Condor Moment re-awakens in me the sickening sound of yet another tannoy announcement along the lines of…

“Condor Ferries regret to announce… “ either an interminable delay or the cancellation of yet another service to France.

Last weekend I was trying to get to St Malo, a mere 40 mile hop from Jersey, for the Easter break.
My journey started on Thursday, but I didn’t arrive until late on Saturday night.

In between there were e-mails, news stories, last minute swaps from one ferry company to another, followed by delays aplenty, variously blamed on the weather and “operational reasons”.

To be fair, the weather was foul - high tides, rough seas and unseasonably low temperatures.

But that doesn’t stop my main memory of the Easter break featuring St Helier’s ferry terminal – a vast and draughty tin shed filled with an anxious throng of bewildered would-be travellers, going nowhere fast.

Heathrow’s Terminal One doesn’t seem such a bad place after all. At least there are shops there.

And it wasn’t just Condor that gave me a headache.
My woes started with a booking made by Beta Mum with the (cheaper) rival ferry company, HD Ferries.

After months of careful preparation for the new season, they had to cancel their inaugural crossing last Thursday because of the non-arrival of a key engine part.

To me, “lost in the post” has a similar ring to “the dog ate my homework”. But perhaps I’ve just been around the block a few too many times.

Friday’s crossing was also abandoned – stormy weather having prevented vital safety checks as well as the journey from Southampton.

So I switched to Condor, the allegedly more reliable but definitely more expensive alternative.

Despite the outlay of extra cash, the frustrations continued unabated.
Their late Friday crossing was also jettisoned because of the weather. I was switched to an early Saturday boat requiring me to be back at the terminal at 7.30am.

I arrived, spent four hours reading the paper and loitering without intent, only to leave the terminal on foot after a string of Condor moments.

The wrong kind of weather was cited again, although the word on the street was that the ferry had been holed while negotiating St Malo harbour - a rumour later confirmed by local media.

Dragged back to the ferry terminal at 6.30 on Saturday evening a ferry finally left Jersey one and a half hours later.

This was a replacement vessel that made very slow headway. A traditional ferry rather than a high speed catamaran, which took more than twice as long as the advertised service - just to add to my terminal frustration.

It was enough to drive a man to drink.
So once on board and safely at sea, I went to the bar:

“A pint of lager please.”

“Sorry, sir, we’re out of draught lager”.

I sighed.

“How about a coffee?”

“Err, the machine’s not working.”

How I needed a Condor moment.

Do those cars look safe to you?

We’re booked onto this ferry, for an Easter weekend en France.
We booked for Thursday evening, straight from work.

But I got a call yesterday - from HD Ferries.

Having been out of service since November last year, and having advertised their summer timetable as starting on Thursday, they called to tell me the sailing has been cancelled.

This is the company whose ferry became a laughing stock last summer.

It just couldn’t seem to negotiate a harbour, particularly one with other boats in it, without scraping the odd hull on its way out.

But the company has had 4 months to sort itself out.
There have been training programmes, engine repairs, licence agreements, cheap offers…

And yes, we were lulled into a “how bad can it be this time? Surely they’ve got their act together now” sense of security.

So now, instead of a four day break, we’re down to a three day one.
We do get a free trip later in the year, but should I risk booking time off work on specific dates which may, or may not, coincide with a working ferry?

By Thursday, we may get another call informing us that we’re off to France for a night, or even a day.

I did enquire as to whether we could get to France on Thursday evening using another company.

“Yes,” they said, “but there’s space for passengers only. Your car would have to go the next day. On HD Ferries.”

We may end up staying here for the weekend at this rate.

In which Formerly Blog Fodder gets lost…

Father Christmas was very kind to me last year. He brought me the boys’ toy par excellence – a sat-nav.

The little box of tricks guides you on your way with unerring accuracy, with a posh lady keeping you on the straight and narrow at every twist and turn - unless, of course, you’re driving one of those juggernauts sent down a one-way track to nowhere.

I don’t know the posh lady’s real name but I call her Charlotte.

She can get a bit insistent when you ignore her best advice, issuing repeated instructions to turn around… provided it’s safe to do so, of course.
I do sometimes remonstrate with her when she gets it spectacularly wrong, but she never loses her cool.

I figured Charlotte and I would get on famously once I’d moved to Jersey. The island may be small but its road network is remarkably intricate. When eventually you do reach a coast, the knack is knowing which one.

I was a bit worried about the sat-nav Santa had brought me. A UK only version would not include Jersey, but the little elves obviously did their homework. It features the whole of Western Europe.

So now I can drive all the way to the Steppes and back without wrestling with a single fold-a-way map.

I’m all set as I drive off the ferry, though rather bafflingly Charlotte immediately advises me to drive on the right.
Worse still I seem to be ploughing through a Jersey knee-deep in snow… the screen is showing an island entirely in white, apart from a black dot labelled St Helier.

Now I know Jersey’s not in the EU, that’s why you can still buy duty-free goods on a trip here. Even saying it’s in Great Britain doesn’t quite tell the whole story, but surely it is in Western Europe.
Even the Canary Islands are in Western Europe and they’re miles out into the Atlantic.

No such luck.
According to Tom-Tom, it’s off-limits.

Bets Mum got cross and e-mailed them, asking where the Channel Islands were, if not somewhere between England and France.

In response to your question, working closely with our map providers, TomTom aims to provide the most accurate and up-to-date maps to its customers.

There is currently no digital mapping available for the Channel Islands that meets TomTom’s high quality standards, and therefore we do not offer maps of the Channel Islands on any of our products at the moment.

However, TomTom is always working to improve the products, and we will keep you updated as mapping information improves going forward.

Maybe there are other reasons for this absent island.
Conspirary theorists, lean a little closer…

Perhaps they’re trying to confuse the media hordes who invaded the Island a few weeks ago.
Maybe it’s a 21st century version of defacing road signs to confuse the occupying forces?
Or is Jersey simply off the radar?

They do, at least, drive on the left - well, they do on the few main roads. Mostly they drive in the middle because otherwise they lose the paint off their wing mirrors.

Very few of the lanes have pavements, which makes navigating round pedestrians quite tricky, not to mention the tractors and horses which dawdle down les ruettes.

And here my car - which in Merrie England stood proud as the solid, comfortable family estate it always believed itself to be - now languishes, sad and slightly embarrassed, behind queues of Porsches, Ferraris and Hummer lookalikes, all revving ready to roar off at the island’s top speed limit of 40mph.

It’s probably just as well the sat-nav doesn’t work here.
I don’t know how Charlotte would cope with some of the tongue-twisters that pass for street names in these parts… like La Rue de la Pouclee et des Quatre Chemins or La Petite Rue des Mielles des Quennevais.

You’d have have missed the turning by the time she managed to spit that little lot out.

So the poor girl’s back in her box.
Barely two months old and already on the shelf.

Another housebound ramble from Formerly Blog Fodder…

I don’t know what the Latin for ironing board is, but the Romans must have had them, because whenever you see Charlton Heston in a toga, he’s immaculately turned out.

Presumably they never had to iron their own clothes though, because there were always plenty of slaves around and the minimum wage hadn’t been invented.

The point is, my education is severely lacking.
I can conjugate Latin verbs like a good’un but bellum bellum bellum, belli bello bello, doesn’t get the ironing done.

My Mum didn’t teach me either – not because of my ‘Y’ chromosome, she didn’t teach my sisters either.
She just did it all herself.

Now though, it’s become a problem.
This morning I couldn’t find a single t-shirt to wear. The drawer was bare.
I found them all cowering in a cupboard in the bathroom, presumably awaiting a smooth operator.

Beta Mum is at work.
I can’t simply call for her to come home because she was never really inducted in the arcane art.
She doesn’t do ironing.

Maureen, our former two-hours-a-week lady who did, is hors de combat. Flying across the Channel to tackle a mound of ironing could be considered excessive.

That leaves me. Time to remove the brand new iron from its box and climb the mountain.
If it had just been t-shirts I think I’d have coped, but the trouble was the kids’ clothes also need ironing, not to mention some of BM’s more exotic garments.

Do tights need ironing in the first place?
Can you iron silk?
What temperature setting should I use?
Why does the iron constantly dribble water?
Why is that no matter how hard I attack the clothes there seem to be more creases at the end of my labours than when I started?
Why does the flex contort itself into intricate knots?

Which leads me to a bigger question…
Why do we bother at all?

Ne fronti crede, as the Romans might have said, while smugly donning their crease-free garments.

Note from Beta Mum -

1) No point ironing kids’ clothes when they’re covered in grime, snot & sludge within seconds of being put on
2) Buy stuff that doesn’t need ironing. Bri-nylon is very fetching on a man.
3) I caught you ironing your pants. What is your problem?

In which Formerly Blog Fodder goes misty-eyed at the thought of all those camp-burnt baked beans and random badges.

Ben’s on his way to the moon!

Well, it seems he’s improved his chances of getting there because he’s just joined the Cub Scouts. And, did you know that eleven of the twelve men who’ve walked on the moon were Scouts at one time in their lives?

Even if he doesn’t make it to the moon he’s guaranteed a few adventures, and according to research into what became of kids born in 1958 and 1970, he’s more likely to be happy in later life, in a good relationship, have good qualifications and be earning a decent income, than children who didn’t join the Scouts.

Watching him being presented with his scarf and woggle at his investiture brought back happy memories.

British Bulldog was just a brilliant game.

The happiest memory of all though, was the threepenny bag of chips we used to buy at the chippie across the road at the end of each session. They were properly wrapped in newspaper, and no doubt absorbing some of the ink was one of the reasons they tasted so delicious.

But doubtless they wouldn’t have met modern-day health and safety standards and I guess that’s one of the reasons why Scouting is such a welcome throw-back.

It’s a world apart from TV, computer games and couch potatoes.

Ben’s proud of the uniform, even though Beta Mum, with her throwback “he’ll grow into them” parsimony, bought trousers at least seven inches too long for him and had to take up half the leg.

He likes the discipline but he also enjoys the occasional rowdiness and roughness. He can’t wait to go on a summer camp, sleep under canvas, bake potatoes on an open fire and whittle bits of wood with a sharp knife… or is that me?

I can’t help thinking they ought to invent an adult version of the scouting movement.
Perhaps that’s what the Territorial Army is for?

I couldn’t help noticing Scouting has changed since my day and probably for the better.
Flower arranging used to be the exclusive reserve of Guides and Brownies but Ben came home with a beautiful floral composition to give to Beta Mum for Mother’s Day.

I did get my badge for domestic skills though, despite going to the house of some hapless volunteer and peeling her potatoes to the size of peas.

Ben delivered his promise to do his duty to God and the Queen with more earnestness than understanding, but because the Scouts now define themselves as a “multi-faith, co-educational youth movement” there are variations for people of other faiths.
Nothing for atheists though.

Last year marked the 100th anniversary of the movement founded by Lord Baden-Powell.
It also saw the first increase in recruitment for 13 years, of which Ben is now among their number - soon to be joined by his sister who signs the pledge with Beavers this week.

Long may they continue to do their best.

Otherwise, where would all the astronauts come from?

What do you expect when you pay generously for a couple of nights in a child-friendly hotel on the Cornish coast?

- peace and quiet?
- yummy food?
- more Boden per square inch than you can shake a fist at?

All those things and more perhaps, but what you may not expect is a modern day Basil Fawlty, intent on parody.

There was no mention of the War, and no silly walking.
But there was plenty of ineptitude, a dollop of mis-management and some pretty incompetent apologising.

It started on our first night - one of only two, so it’s not hard to remember every not-so-perfect moment.

It was a half term treat.
Two precious nights in a decent hotel with lots of facilities for children.
On the first night, after tea in the kids’ dining-room, we delivered our two to their respective children’s clubs. Then we sighed with gratitude as we sauntered into the grown-ups’ restaurant.

We were looking forward to a relaxing meal on our own, with decent cuisine and attentive service. We’d been before and knew the restaurant was good.
But we shouldn’t have counted our spatchcocks.

Things headed downhill once the starters had been cleared.

We chatted and waited for the next course.
And we waited.
And waited.

There was lots of to-ing and fro-ing from a variety of waiters, each asking with a slightly lower dip of the head, whether we’d had our main course.

When we said,
“No, not yet,” each one would promise to sort it out.

But nothing happened and after about an hour we had to extricate the children and put them to bed.

Tempting them away from their new best friends and back into the bedroom was taxing enough, but to return to find not even a congealed plate of something lurking on a couple of plates was a step too far.

Not a sausage, or a spatchcock, or even a mangetout.

We were told our meals were -
a) on the hot plate
b) in the kitchen
c) at a secure site we’d have to locate using only bat-sonar before we could eat them

By the time the food arrived, the hotel’s own peculiar re-incarnation of Manuel had materialised.

He couldn’t have apologised more profusely.
If saying sorry were an Olympic event, I’ve no doubt he’d be up there on the top of the podium.

He didn’t just say “sorry, have a bottle of wine on us” and leave.
Oh no.
He had to explain why things had gone wrong, how they’d been allowed to go wrong, and how he was struggling with sub-standard agency staff who should really have been cleaning rooms and not waiting at tables.

He added yet more detail to the sorry tale.

Our meal had been cooked twice but on each occasion the waiter had failed to find us - sitting, as we were, smack bang in the middle of the restaurant.
The temporary staff were unfamiliar with the kitchen procedures - a kitchen so peculiarly out of synch with every other kitchen that it represented a daunting challenge to their powers of comprehension.
The wine waiter was really a commis chef on an evening’s sabbatical in the dining room.

Soon, other diners got wind of our troubles and were swapping notes…

“You ordered the Tiramasu! That won’t be here until Saturday.”

“If you’re lucky you might get the coffee in time for breakfast.”

“It’s the only restaurant I know that offers Soup of Yesterday”

The second evening was a different story.

We were sipping our coffee by 8.30pm, stunned into an amicable silence by the prompt arrival of our food and a constant flow of polite enquiries -

“Everything alright sir?”
“Have you enjoyed your meal madam?”
“Can I get you anything else?”

But the first night will be the one we remember… the vintage taste of Basil, lacking only Sybil to complete the picture.

Maybe we can save up for another trip to Cornwall - in the hope of meeting our modern-day Manuel’s good lady wife.

Beta Mum and Blog Fodder (aka Mike)

Well, apart from the guinea pigs getting divorced, things are much the same here.

I barely see the house in daylight.
Ben’s roaming free and tells (afterwards, when it’s too late to veto) of solo bike rides around country lanes.
Hannah is still yearning for Mulcie and Weezey - friends, not ailments.

And Mike? Well he’s coping.

The guinea pigs though, seem to have departed from their everyday tale of joined-at-the-hip sisterhood. And it’s all my fault, of course.

We were tiring of old, broken down, second hand hutches, found on dumps and in the local paper.

So I bought them a spanking new, two tier affair with a ramp to link the ground floor run to the first floor hutch.
But I’d forgotten how dim they are.

Normally they crush into one little igloo hideyhole together, leaving the other one empty.

Now though, only one of them can negotiate the ramp. So Phoebe’s taken to living on the top deck and descending occasionally to join her sister for food and playtime.

While poor, earth-bound Sandy is too scared to lumber her way up the scarey slope to the cosy night-time sleeping quarters. So she sleeps alone.

I’ve tried shoving her up the slope to join her sister, but she digs her little claws into the wood and makes feeble noises.

Perhaps she’s pleased to be rid of the snoring? Or maybe that’s me and a bit of wishful thinking…

Anyhow, enough of small creatures, I have a tag to reply to.

It’s from Potty Mummy, who wants to know things that will reveal my return to brain-dead working mode.

I have to tell you: -

What I’ve read.
What I’ve watched.
What I’ve listened to.
What I’ve surfed.

Well. I’ve just passed through a few years of re-reading long forgotten classics and discovering wonderful new authors. But that period is past and I’m now making up for years of minimal earning.

So what I’ve been reading will have you running for the door, at best.

The Spin Doctor’s Diary, by Lance Price.
It was £1 in the pound shop in Lincoln, so I wasn’t overly hopeful that I’d get much past the first chapter, but I did, eventually.
And some of it was quite fascinating.
A lot of it wasn’t.
Lance Price seemed to go on holiday a lot when he was working for Alastair Campbell, and he was left out of lots of major political decisions.

But the things he was involved in were gripping, and I realise now how carefully managed all that “news” was that we all saw unfolding on TV.
At the time I somehow didn’t quite believe it.

It’s a window into another world - bizarre and beyond belief.

I’ve also read -

- The Jersey Evening Post (every day, although not religiously)

- The Jersey Annual Social Survey 2007

- Scrutiny Code of Practice for States of Jersey

- a new anti-inflation strategy for Jersey

I think you get the picture…

What I’ve watched…

Well, I watch the news (ITV and BBC) every day, even if I have to catch it the next day on erratic “Watch Again” services.

I’ve been pining for CSI since January, as Jersey doesn’t yet have digital TV or Ch 5, and I’m too mean to pay for Sky.
So I’ve watched the first five minutes of a few things, a couple of DVDs of CSI, and some film Mike bought cheap in Woolworths, and that’s about it.

Oh, apart from Location/Relocation/Grand Design type programmes.
It’s great to feel even worse about our house-buying situation now we’ve moved to a place where the average house price is £435,000 - and that’s just for a three-bedroomed box house.

What I’ve listened to -

We left our CD/LP (yes, LP) system in Plymouth, intending to buy an MP3 speaker system. But we haven’t got around to it yet.
So we have no means of listening to anything other than the TV or radio, except on small, uncomfortable headphones.

I’ve listened to Radio 4, Radio Jersey, Channel 103, and I heard some McFly wafting out of some young bod’s open-topped car the other day when I had my window open at work.
A reminder of times past.

What I’ve surfed -

I’ve been trying to keep up with my regulars, despite lack of time.

Fab people like Mother at Large (presumably now becoming a little larger than usual); Omega Mum; Beta Mom; Potty Mummy; Dulwich Mum; SAHD; Mutterings and Meanderings; Rilly Super; MYA; Man About the House; Pig-in-the-kitchen… and others I’ve probably forgotten because of a mind overtaken with too many policy documents.

I’ve also been looking at (oh dear, not more) local government websites, websites constructed using Sharepoint, and other tedious work-related nonsenses.

So that’s about it really.
Not very edifying.

And now over to …

Spiral Skies and Super Mommy.

Let’s hope you have a more erudite selection than I.

Ben is ploughing through his latest Anthony Horowitz novel and dutifully he’s telling me about the swear word count – a lot of ‘hells’, several ‘bloodys’ and even one ‘bitch’.

He spells the words out to me to avoid any harmful impact on my obviously sensitive parental psyche.
He missed out the ‘t’ in ‘bitch’ - but I put him right.

Swear words have become quite an issue in his life and they’re proving a perplexing minefield through which to steer.

For instance, he and his friends at school were recently discussing the everyday activities of gnomes.
The perceived wisdom in the classroom, presumably Disney-inspired, is that they work all day and work all night.

Ben offered the thought,

“How do they get time for sex?”

Hmm, liberal parenting regime you might think – or just an early introduction to sex education (both true).

But his reflection was greeted with shocked silence.
He’d used the s-e-x word in the company of everyday country folk.

The outrage was reported to one of the lunch-hour supervisory staff who issued Ben with a formal warning, a serious sanction because three warnings in a week means the loss of Golden Time.

The loss of one weekly Golden Time session also means exclusion from the end-of-term treat, this Easter’s being a trip to the ten-pin bowling alley.

Ben’s a bit shocked by all of this.
What if he’d used a serious swear-word, one of the ones he picked up in the playground in Plymouth?

Or even one of the expressions (probably worse) he’s heard used by his parents at moments of extreme stress?

Perhaps in Jersey it’s a problem to say ‘Go-od’ in that expressive way his father has when computers play up?

Where do you draw the line?

Would ‘hell’ bring eternal damnation? Whoops I did it again.

Or is ‘damn’ okay if you add the ‘nation’?

Is ‘penis’ a good word or a bad one? And if it’s not acceptable, what should he call it?

His Mum once went to see a play called the Vagina Monologues, clearly he can’t mention that in the playground.

Grown-ups have such effing double-standards.

I seem to have been ousted…
Yours,
nostalgically,
Beta Mum

I bought a packet of cigarettes today.

It’s a filthy habit, I know. What’s worse, I haven’t smoked for the best part of 30 years.

And I paid over the odds – ten quid for a packet of fags!
So why did I do it?

Well, actually, they’re not for me, they’re for my children.
The plan is for them to take the cigarettes to school.

Not for a crafty one behind the bike shed.
In fact I doubt whether you could smoke the cigarettes in question, even if you wanted to – which I don’t.

They’re the Gold Flake brand, made by the Bristol-based tobacco manufacturers, WD & HO Wills.

They’re the best part of sixty years old. I bought them in an auction in Jersey where they have a special significance.

Towards the end of the Second World War they were part of a Red Cross consignment carried on board the first ship to dock in Jersey after the end of the Occupation by the Germans.

For the Islanders it was the first heady taste of freedom – in one case at least they were presumably just too good to smoke.

My packet of cigarettes will be a fascinating exhibit for my children’s class to discuss at Show & Tell.

This post is the first of what may become a regular contribution from Mike, formerly permitted to appear here only as Blog Fodder.

The children have started beavers/cubs.

We suggested it, as the venue is just at the back of our house.
We don’t have to take them or fetch them, and we’re anticipating lots of weekend campouts for them, without us.

My first flicker of doubt as to the wisdom of this new activity came after Ben’s first session.

We were chatting to Brown Bear or Tabby Cat or whatever it is the leader calls himself, when he thrust two pieces of paper into my hands.

By way of explanation he said,

“Could you fill these in and bring them back next week please?”

I looked at what was being shoved at me.

Two CRB police check forms.

“Shouldn’t it be you who fills this out?” I asked, hoping he would understand I was making a joke - sort of.

“It’s so you can help out…” he replied, “… on occasion, of course,” he added, noticing the look of horror scuttling uncontrolled across my face.

In the end we didn’t take the forms, as we don’t yet have the necessary local (said in hushed Royston Vasey tones) paperwork to prove our identities.

But however we managed to stave off the inevitable, it would have been nice to have been asked whether or not we’d like to help, on occasion of course.

My second moment of unease came when reading the Cub Scout Promise that Ben has to fill in and sign.

I promise that I will do my best, to do my duty to God and to the queen, to help other people and to keep the Cub Scout law.

I was never a Brownie myself so I was only dimly aware of the militaristic overtones of the Scouting movement. I hadn’t twigged there were also strong religious and patriotic aspects to this camping lark.

I have no quarrel with doing your best and helping other people, but I’m afraid I’ve already been subtly undermining the rest of it.

I was very impressed with his activities last week though: - ironing, sewing and window-cleaning.

I have yet to see any evidence of these new skills at home, but he has a Good Turn Diary to fill out, so perhaps when he gets around to putting pen to paper he will remember the endless fun to be had with an iron and ironing board.

I won’t hold my breath.

Especially as his first query about this diary task was to ask me -

“Can’t I just make things up for it?”