Foggy days

Its Sunday morning and that means we are watching CBeebies - the the BBC childrens channel that runs all day and only has programmes for under 5 year olds and no advertisements.  Evie only watches on Sunday morning and she loves it all, I think her favourite is Charlie and Lola.  My favourite is Timmy Time - about a delinquent lamb called Timmy.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/timmy-time/  He makes me laugh which is quite a feat early on a Sunday morning, or any morning for that matter.


The FOG

Fog at midday (chimneys incidental but they're good ones
aren't they!)

The fog has been going away and then returning - a day might start foggy and be clear by lunchtime or the other way around.  I was walking to get Evie from preschool on Friday in the sunshine after a nice warm morning in town, I turned around to cross the road and the fog was literally creeping up the hill behind me.  By the time we left pre-school 10 minutes later it was up to the school and we walked all the way home in it.  It sort of reminds me of Taumarunui  - all those foggy mornings walking to the bus stop and only actually getting there by listening for the other kids voices coming through the murkiness.  But its much more unpredictable here because its a sea fog which rolls on in from the English Channel at any old time.


Foggy days mean that sometimes afternoons are long after Evie's sleep so we did a couple of fog outings.  One was to the big garden centre called Le Friquet, its a huge oval shaped building with a garden centre, pet shop and cafe (always a cafe in our outing destinations).  All the way there Evie was chattering away about going to the bull pit - I had visions of some sort of ring for bull fighting or cage fighting.  However it was really the 'ball' pit she was aiming for - much safer but still had an element of chaos and the noise was horrendous.  I soothed myself with a coffee and Evie had lots of fun and most importantly expended lots of energy.

The Bull Pit

The child has no fear and a great
sense of balance

And then she jumps

The next day Cherie suggested a beach visit - in the fog, although to be fair she didn't realise just how foggy it was.  I got instructions on how to drive to another of their favourite cafes, The Beach House, on Pembroke Beach or l'Ancresse (see below for explanation of that one).  Only one wrong turn (why do they not put street names up - at least on the main roads, its so simple...) and we were there is 10 minutes, on the other side of the island.  Cherie told me the cafe was in a building that sort of looked like a bunker - the 'sort of' was quite an understatement and the name  'Beach House' was also misleading - it wasn't exactly the quaint little bach like structure by the beach the name implied, it was in fact a concrete bunker.

The Beach House cafe 

The coffee was pretty good, maybe I was just relieved to be out of the fog, and we had sponge cake.  I bought a lollipop for Evie (she told me she thought it might be better not to tell mummy or daddy about the lollipop) which lasted, according to her, for 'ages'.  The beach was actually quite incredible if you looked in  the seaward direction and not back towards the land (very ugly high concrete seawalls).  I think Cherie has forgotten just how basic our beaches are in Wellington and much of New Zealand - she described this one as 'nice', I thought it was amazing and can imagine it being really beautiful in the summer.

Pembroke/l'Ancresse Beach in spring

Imagine this scene WITH sunshine, deckchairs, stripey wind 
breaks and men with hankies on their heads

Towers - every bay should have one, this one
has three 

The sand is like the sand you think of when you
think of sand - golden and grainy with a few
pebbles and shells, a natural version of Oriental Bay.

Just a few rock pools

I said don't look landward

Lets not tell mummy and daddy I had a lollipop - lets tell them
you gave me a stone Bronie.

This lollipop is taking AGES to eat.

Many place names in Guernsey are written in both english and french, as are some information signs.  There is also a local language which is recognised along with Irish and Scottish Gaellic, Welsh and Lowland Scots as a regional language.  Guernésiais (or Dgèrnésiais, Guernsey French, or Guernsey Norman French), is the variety of the Norman language spoken only in Guernsey. It has its roots in Latin but has had strong influence from both Norse and English at different points in its history.  Apparently only 2% of the adult population speak the language today, the reason being all the children were evacuated to the United Kingdom during World War II in 1940.  They remained away for over 5 years and spoke only english for that time so when they returned most had lost the local language.  In the years since there has not been much interest in re-claiming the language - there are no Guernsey versions of kohanga reo or language nests.  However in the last few years lessons have started in all the primary schools.  
Bizarrely French is the administrative language of Guernsey - for example if a lawyer wants to become a Guernsey Advocate he or she must pass a difficult exam on laws that only apply in Guernsey and just to make it that little bit more unattainable its in French!

Mentioning the war.....
Try as I might I can't write about Guernsey without 'mentioning the war'.  War has been a huge part of Guernsey history - not just WWII but dating back to the islands very origins when the poor old neolithic farmers went outside one day to find a whole load of Britons (from Brittany) had landed on the beach and were planning to stay on for a few hundred years (sound familiar??).  In 933 the Channel Islands (then part of the Duchy of Brittany) were 'annexed' by the Duchy of Normandy.  In the Middle Ages they were invaded by various naval forces and (far more exciting) pirates!.  In the English Civil War Guernsey sided with the Parliament (Jersey was royalist) but the Governor and some royalist troops occupied the castle in St. Peter Port and as a result got bombarded by the townspeople.  In 1704 Louis the XIV tried and failed to invade.  In WWI a fair proportion of the islands men served in the British Expeditionary Force.  And of course in WWII the island was occupied and became part of the Atlantic Wall - it is this occupation that forms the basis of so many of the tourist 'attractions' on the island (numerous museums, monuments, fortifications ) and is the subject of so many books. 
NB:  none of the above historical information should be relied upon for anything - its accuracy is dangerously close to that of Blackadder's take on Elizabethan England.
And just to prove that history is a living thing heres a little something I found about Pembroke Beach/ l'Ancresse AFTER we visited on Thursday:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-guernsey-17028516

The defensive tower in Pembroke/l'Ancresse
Bay, (Loophole tower no. 6 or 7, there are two in the bay)
 one of 15 built in the 18th century when
the Brits were getting a bit worried about the
French invading AGAIN.