A week in Jersey

Selfie with granddad

Margaret and I are just back from a week in Jersey where we have been visiting Sam and Lucy and getting some quality time with Arthur, our grandson, who is just 18 months old.

He's quite a handful, a lot more wriggly than Julia and much more daring. He will charge down steps, even quite high ones, and is obsessed with jumping.

We picked a bit of a bad week weather-wise, but Arthur was also a bit below par – he had a cough, which woke him (and his mum and dad) every night and he is also getting two teeth either side of the two he already has at the front on his bottom jaw.

He's been walking for a few months now and is really fast on his feet. You can't leave him for a second, although if he's about to do something he knows he shouldn't, he generally says “bye” - that sets the alarm bells ringing.

Like Julia, he's a real mimic, although he hasn't done any impressions of Margaret yet.

He can say “daddy”, "ga-ma" and also “mummy” but he wouldn't say “mummy” when Lucy was about.

He says “no” with a strange accent, almost like “niow” with real expression. He also says “go” and “there” when he wants you in a particular place. Arms held up mean “pick me up please” in universal toddler talk.

He looks like a real little lad, especially after his latest haircut (on Friday) and his favourite thing is to have books read to him. Mr Tumble was a popular choice, also a first words book with lots of pictures, Incy Wincy Spider and Piggy plays hide and seek. He's also allowed a spell of TV, so I was introduced to Something Special (a signing show featuring disabled and able-bodied children), In The Night Garden and Teletubbies.

These are all on BBC iPlayer. I think that In The Night Garden must have been written while the author was high on drugs and Teletubbies also has something of the mind-altering about it.

Normally Arthur is at nursery on weekdays. He gets dropped off by Sam in the morning around 8am and does a full day to 6pm. He's now in the older toddler group and he's one of the smaller ones in there. 

At home, he wakes up around 6am and likes a cup of cow's milk first thing, breakfast at 8am and then playtime until 10am when he really needs a sleep. He won't sleep if we put him down, but if you push him out in his buggy, then he goes out like a light for a maximum one hour (or until the buggy stops). Sam was just the same.

After the morning sleep, he likes a fairly early lunch, more play, an afternoon sleep (same rules as the morning sleep), then play or book and then dinner about 4pm, play, some TV and sleep around 7pm.

Sam and Lucy both had the sleep-deprived, harassed look of toddler parents. It was ironic to hear Margaret re-assuring Sam (Sam who was such a difficult baby) that it wouldn't last long. It does seem hard work (because it is hard work) and you have no time for lots of other things, but it does go by so quickly.

Margaret and I know how they change and grow and how these precious moments of life's first steps, words and discoveries go past so fast. It seems not so long ago that we were doing things with Sam that he's now doing with Arthur.

Arthur enjoyed my company, especially a gee-gee, but he really loved ga-ma. He would always choose Margaret to read him a book and occasionally come to me for a second opinion. I'll have to try harder next time.

We drove to Gatwick and then flew to Jersey by easyJet. It's a familiar route by now and is the cheapest way to do it (although I got my suitcase weight really wrong and ended up paying another £40) It cost more to get the suitcase there and back than it did for our tickets. We arrived around 8.30pm on Wednesday.

Thursday was a nice day. Arthur had to be at nursery because Sam, Margaret and I were booked on a boat trip to the Écréhous, which is a reef and string of tiny islands between Jersey and the Cherbourg peninsula. It's about six miles from Jersey and the same from France, but is part of Jersey and has been since the Normans conquered the whole region in the first millennium. France laid claim to the Écréhous, but in 1953 the International Court of Justice ruled they were part of Jersey.

The name comes from two Norse words – Esker and Hou, meaning 'stony' and 'island'. The Vikings didn't miss much and this tiny string of islands, most of it only visible at low tide, was certainly on their radar.

All but the three largest islands are submerged at high tide, there are no permanent residents and no fresh water there. Due to erosion, they are now much smaller than they may have been within historic times. Maîtr'Île, the largest of the islets, is about 300 metres long. There are about eight buildings, some used as holiday residences, on the largest islets, and one official building, a customs house, on La Marmotchiéthe.

The Écréhous also attracted the notice of the early Christians in Europe. Being remote and grim, it was considered the perfect place for a monk to live and for a few hundred years there was a chapel and priory there. It was also a staging post for smuggling.

According to Wikipedia, there have been permanent residents on Les Écréhous in recent times. Philippe Pinel lived on Bliantch'Île from 1848 to 1898 and exchanged gifts with Queen Victoria. He styled himself king of the Écréhous. More recently, in the 1960s and 1970s a man called Alphonse Le Gastelois sought refuge in the islands from unfounded public suspicion of being a sexual attacker. He home in Jersey was attacked, so he left for the Écréhous and lived there for more than 20 years, even after the real culprit was arrested.

Now the islands are a protected conservation zone.

We took a rib from St Catherine's. It was a powerful craft that sped across the short stretch of water and easily navigated the many submerged rocks and sandbanks. It would have been a much more dangerous trip for the Vikings, who depended on oars and sails. Inside  Maîtr'Île, there is a sheltered inlet and small sandy beaches. We only had an hour or so on the island, but Sam was keen to have a swim and so I went in with him. The water was about 18 degrees, so it felt cold until you splashed about a bit and then it seemed warmer than the air above. I haven't swum in the sea for well over 10 years and it's easy to forget how much easier it is due to the extra buoyancy of salt water. Other people who had come across with us thought we were a little crazy.

It's amazing to swim in a little sheltered inlet like this, miles from anywhere and think of Viking longships laid up there with some protection from a high sea. There was a fair bit of wildlife about. We saw dolphins, seals, gannets and terns.

Once back, we picked up Arthur from nursery and headed home.

Breakfast at El Tico's always goes down well.

On Friday, the weather was getting wet and windier. We wouldn't have been able to get to the Écréhous this day, so it was as well we had gone when we did. Instead, we had breakfast at El Tico, a favourite location for breakfast when we're in Jersey and then did a supermarket shop at Waitrose in Red Houses and Sam took Arthur for a haircut (his second). Having a 'big boy' haircut really makes him look grown up and older than his year-and-a-half. Arthur's routine isn't as rigid as Julia's. She goes to bed for a two-hour sleep at about 12.30pm, but Arthur seems to catch some zzzs when he can. A trip in the car or the buggy, soon sends him off to sleep.

On Saturday, we all went to Jersey Zoo, which had an open day for 'friends' – including people who have bought a year-long subscription. I don't really like zoos and, especially zoos that have birds in cages, but I acknowledge that my dislike is perhaps not based on sensible science but rather putting myself in the position of the animals. We bought Lucy a subscription to the zoo, so that she could take Arthur along there any time and it has been fairly well used. It's in a nice parkland setting, so it's a pleasant place to walk around and there are some interesting plants as well as the usual animals. I had a nice chat with the politically incorrect gorilla keeper and went to say hello to the fruit bats. Arthur wanted to run downhill (any hill).

We had lunch in the zoo cafe, but plans for my first taste of Jersey ice-cream were thwarted when the ice-cream machine had broken down. There are two types of Jersey ice-cream (made with Jersey milk) – soft or hard. I rather like ice cream, but for some reason I've never had one on holiday in Jersey. Perhaps the weather has always been too wet.

Nice ice-cream for Arthur

After the zoo, we drove out to the north shore and had a little stroll along a beach and slipway. A party was just setting off on a coasteering trip and it brought back horrific memories for Sam who was terrified when he took Max and Inna coasteering this summer.

In the evening, we were babysitting so that Sam and Lucy could go out for dinner. It had been their wedding anniversary (ninth, I think) that week and they went to Ormer, the Michelin-starred restaurant in St Helier. Arthur was very good for us, but woke up just before Sam and Lucy arrived home. Margaret was able to get him down again. Poor lad has a cough and spits his dummy, then needs comforting. Sam and Lucy were both stuffed with food and wine. They'd had a taster menu with a different glass of wine with each course!

It was good that they could go out. It's hard with a small baby and no family support nearby, so they depend upon Maureen or Margaret being in town to have a social life.

There have been lots of changes to the house since I last visited. There are new wood floors, wood-burning stoves in both living rooms, the kitchen units have been painted and the garden is much changed and restocked. Lucy has some lovely grasses, which I rather coveted. She found me some seeds for one variety, but the other is not hardy enough to grow in our garden. I do have its name, so I might try anyway. Perhaps I could find a warm corner.

On Sunday, I helped in the garden by sorting out the pile of wood from various trees that have been cut down. I persuaded Sam to put the bigger logs in his wood-store and stacked the smaller pieces in a neater pile at the bottom of the garden. They should be good for insects and birds. Sam says he isn’t scared of spiders any more, but he wasn’t in any hurry to dig into the woodpile.

We also fixed the lock on the front gate, so Arthur could be locked in the back garden (he could open the gate and get out onto the road) and also did some general tidying.

Windy day at St Brelade's

In the afternoon, Sam and Lucy took advantage of grandparent day-care to visit the gym, so Margaret and I walked Arthur around St Brelade's. Soon after we set off, the rain blew in on a strong wind and so we decided to carry on across the beach to the Smugglers’ Inn at the end of the bay. Arthur was snoozing happily, but Margaret and I were soaked on one side and completely dry on the other. The rain was coming on horizontally.

I like the Smugglers’, it has fires and allows dogs into the bar. We got Arthur some fish & chips and apple crumble with ice cream. He ate fish, licked tomato sauce off the chips and ate the ice cream. Thankfully, the rain had stopped for the walk back.

St Brelade’s is probably the nicest beach on Jersey. It’s not as long as St Ouen’s, but has good sand and it’s very pretty, with a rocky clump of granite dividing the beach (and the bay) in two. At low tide, you can walk around it; at high tide, you have the scramble over the top.

Jersey isn’t very green. All household waste gets incinerated and there’s no organised recycling. Electricity comes from France, so I guess that’s nuclear and it’s either green or the end of the world, depending upon your point of view.

Well, on Monday I went with Sam to the recycling centre. I’ve been before, but a new one has opened just north east of St Helier. It’s very impressive. There’s a recycling shop, where you can drop off things that might be useful and they are then sold for charity; also different skips for different types of rubbish. It’s all clean, very easy to park and very quick. We also took some garden waste, which is composted and you can buy topsoil/compost by the bag or giant bale. The best thing about the old site was a pile of “possibly useful” things which you could help yourself to. That’s no longer there because the charity shop takes them all. Trouble is, the stuff that might be useful to someone, but is a little shoddy, now tends to get dumped.

Foamy sea off St Ouen's Bay

As we drove to the recycling centre, the waves were crashing over the sea wall, so afterwards, we went round to St Ouen’s Bay, which faces west, just to see what it was like. The sea was foaming and waves were breaking over the wall – not a day for a walk on the beach or a sea crossing. If we’d come via ferry, we might have been wondering if we’d get home on Wednesday.

St Helier was windy, sunny and wet – all in the space of a couple of hours. We had a look round the shops, bought some Jersey Pottery for Emilia and Julia and met Lucy for lunch at Pizza Express. Arthur was good, but needed a dance with Margaret to keep him amused. He does like to dance, but other diners might not have noticed the small toddler and thought: why is that crazy woman dancing in the middle of the restaurant?

Tuesday was our last day with Sam, who had to return to work on Wednesday. We had a quiet day, with a couple of walks for Arthur so Sam could spend some time sorting out his broken boiler (leak, then short circuit when it was turned on), the blokes who had come to dig some tree roots out of the garden and also looking at the John Lewis website. Sam wants a new oven and hob to complete his kitchen makeover and his favourite reading is currently the Bosch catalogue and the John Lewis website.

The gardeners did an OK job and there’s now lots more space for new plants. We rounded our day off with a trip to Waitrose. I took Arthur to see the fish on the fish counter and the shop-assistant (it being a slow day) thought he’s entertain us by picking up a mackerel and making it swim towards Arthur’s face. Arthur was not amused.

I let him have a run around after that and he found the toilet roll aisle bewitching. I realised that all toilet rolls and paper towels have pictures of puppies or teddies on them.

Our last day was Wednesday and we could have packed Arthur off to nursery and had a quiet day, or given him another day of books, buggies and Teletubbies. We chose Teletubbies. It was nice to spend time with him on our own, although we did need two long walks to get him to sleep. Sam arrived back from work in time to take over and to take us to the airport.

Not happy today - needs some Calpol

Discovered the joy of watering plants

Building a tower ...