So, I’m on the move again which should please most of you, it gives me much more material to work with, being around other people. Particularly travelling strangers.

Plus I’m on a tiny plane with propellers. I bet some of you shivered just then at the thought. They didn’t even bother to get me to put my coat away. Who cares when you are keeping us in the air with a strategic number of travelling pigs on each wing to balance the weight out!

Don’t worry about the pigs, they bloody love it. Plus they get to gorge on as many tomatoes as they want when they get to Guernsey 🍅. Like Oliver Reed did in the 1970s and 80s.

He was a terribly behaved alcoholic actor whom everyone reveres in a really inappropriate fashion. He threw himself off balconies into swimming pools (inaccurately) and was a general all round drunken menace yet they have his picture up in the OGH (Old Government House, the oldest posh hotel on the Island) and everyone remembers him fondly. These days he’d be sober and take his wife with him everywhere like Robbie Williams.

Tomatoes aren’t as big as they used to be in Guernsey (🥁🎊) It was a tomato powerhouse back in the day. My Dad brought back giant fluffy tomatoes for my sister and me when he went over there to visit family with his brother on time (it was a week of intense boozing I would imagine). My parents also spent a year sorting them. Sounds about as much fun as the summer of 1992 when Willis, Giles, Duncan and I picked excess fluff out of sleeping bags in a factory somewhere in Yorkshire.

As far as the journey goes, I’ve done well so far. I’ve got normal luggage except for a rather dirty odd second bag containing homemade banana and pecan bread (showing off), lots of marzipan coffee sachets (ask my sister, I just like being prepared) and a jumper which the shop assistant in TopShop referred to as ‘ a jumper a unicorn might wear’ when I bought it. You’ve seen it before I think but keep an eye out.

I was driving the car – Kitty’s having a rest – so no drama there other than repeatedly driving the wrong way around the orange car park and almost reversing into someone (I call that a 7/10 at least) but I have successfully managed to leave my debit card at home, in a travel pack of tissues. This might make it rather tricky to find it on my return🙄. Fear not, I’m sure my sister will happily pay for everything I need all weekend 😉 (she’s an avid reader of the blog).

Moving on to more serious matters, as you know, I’ve driven confidently across a large number of long foreign bridges. I’ve driven on a few domestic ones but not recently and they just weren’t really long or windy enough to merit inclusion.

Anyway, surely if ever there was a case for a bridge it’s between the South coast and Guernsey? Since everyone stopped holidaying there (in the early 1990s as far as my records go) and my late Nanna’s ex-husband, Colin the pilot 👨‍✈️, retired, it’s virtually impossible to get there. There is only one airline these days whose name is French (ish) and so very tricky for most people to pronounce if they’re not from the Island which surely breaches all competition rules in the first instance.

I must just tell you, as I mention Colin, that he flew for Air UK. Lovely little airline of the past. They gave out peanuts back in the days when no-one had any allergies, they just died suddenly with no explanation.

Importantly, he thought I was a fascist, at least I think he did. I was 13 at his time of assessment and I only realised this a few years ago. That’s another blog post altogether. And even that’s not the key thing about Colin.

Whenever you called his house to ask for Nanna (back when they were married), he would say ‘Roger’ when you asked if she was there and then follow this with ‘Standby’ when he went to get her – she was usually making scones, or knitting. Or both 😍. This is yet to be surpassed in my lifetime of exciting telephonic experiences. Sadly Colin was also a bit of a nob, which is a shame and while it amused me, I wonder how long it took Nanna to be utterly sick to the back teeth of ‘Standby!’ I also dread to think of when else he practised his pilot lingo. 😳

The pigs on the right wing have just given a squeal of delight 🐷! We must be close to coming in to land (tomato time!); it’s a tropical 16 degrees in Guernsey, the holiday island. The pigs wish the flight lasted longer but are glad it doesn’t go any higher, 16,000ft is just enough for them. They wouldn’t be too happy with a bridge obviously, but I’m sure I could talk them round. The main purpose of the bridge would be to allow Islanders to escape at will and it would just make my life a lot easier and cheaper – if windier. The pigs could travel across the bridge with an accompanying adult but they’d have to get their kicks elsewhere. I could get them a roundabout?

The pilot (not Colin) just asked the stewardesses to get ready for landing by name! That’s intriguing. Do you think? Could they be? Oooh. I don’t get out much as you know.

‘Cheerie’ as they say here or ‘Over and Out’ as Step-Grandparent Colin might have said 😂.

As for my next post? Standby!