Happy Easter from Sark

I realise that I have alot to fill you in on, like what I got up to from when I arrived on Guernsey until now but I've just come back from a lovely weekend on Sark and I'd like to tell you all about it. Well actually the story of how I came to spend Easter on the tiny car-less island starts the week I arrived anyway.





Mel, my lovely Guernsey host had introduced me to a couple of people from her Art Collective group as I had accompanied her to one of their meetings. It's a Guernsey group of freelance artists located in St. Peter Port who have their own gallery (Mill Street, catch it whilst you can - they've just lost sponsorship and the building's uninhabitable). After that initial meeting events took me and Mel to anothe pub with a girl called Den and her boyfriend Theo. Ther was some open mic activity going on and I got up and did a song acapella as ther was no piano nearby. Talking to Den and Theo it transpired he was a budding guitarist whilst stuck in a job that made ends meat whilst Den was an aspiring artist being stuck in a job that made ends meat before they both departed on their travels.



Theo was a Sark boy who´d been on and off Guernsey from 11years for schooling and spent time on mainland for Uni. Den was an authentic Islander who´d also spent time in England studying at Uni. Anyway it was whilst at this pub discussing life over lager (or was it Cider, I forget) that the two of them invited Mel and I to Sark for Easter. I was intruiged to go as I had visited the place as a 2yr old with my grandmother. The last holiday I think she ever had and so I´d always wanted to visit that place, in some nostalgic manor.



Easter was a month away anyhow at this point and many weekend of drunken times did me and Mel encounter. Some of which I would mention but would get me into trouble, some of which I forget and some I chose to forget but most that have taught me lessons. The first was to not get drunk and go back to strangers houses. The second not to get sober when others were still drunk (no matter how badly the wine tasted). Well Easter rolled on in after a fantastic birthday gathering of Mel´s when her Reading Uni friends flew over. However it transpired that it would not be possible for Mel to go to Sark for her impending travel arrangements needed to be made. But the weather was to play a bigger part in hindering my visit.



A couple of days before we were due to go over. the traditional March storms flared up accross the nation. I say traditional as in Febuary/March now we experience pleasent spring like weather - then comes a hurricane 1987 styley and snow. That week before Easter ports had to close, waves battered the Channel Islands, police closed the coastal roads, papers didnt arrive the next day, v. dramatic. On such small, isolated pieces of land, life and culture there becomes exagerated. On no other place can you experience the importance of nature upon human life and human nature in closed social environments.



The morning crossing Den, Theo and I were due to make to Sark was cancelled owing to the bad weather. The afternoon one thankfully (or not thankfully) was running. Waiting in harbour for our boat to come in I suddenly became nervous as the other two kept on saying how brave I was to make the trip. I started to think that perhaps I´d underestimated the short (40 mins or so) boat trip. I swallowed any nerves in any case that this was something I wanted to do and there was no other way of getting there. Local boy Theo started talking to the other locals who were there, as if they were all waiting for a bus, it was such normality. The boat arrived and we boarded.



Once on it was very clear why Den was going to lie down and try to sleep through it. Warnings from the lady who sold me my ticket saying might have to turn back even if make it to Harbour was going through my head. The waved were deep and rolling though thankfully not jerky which probably would have made it a whole lot worse. Setting off I found it quite exciting actually, like a theme park ride. I knew I wouldn´t be ill as long as I fixed my eye on some land and moved my body (not my head) with the boat. I guess you could take it as some kind of philosophy of life - to keep your focus but to roll with whatever comes your way.