Ndrizzle when changing trains in London-Gatwick. The machine disappears into clouds, jerks, twitches, draws wide circles. The actually short flight seems forever. Space and time blur. By the time we land, it’s already dark. Quarry stone walls appear in the headlights, gnarled hedges cast shadows. At the hotel, the taxi driver points to a ledge at the house opposite, 1549 is written over the door. “The ledge is a witch’s stone,” he says. You can often find them on the island. They are an offer to rest with the hope of the witches’ goodwill. Bowls of gruel were also put outside the door on nights like this.
For us there are peppermint chocolate thalers in the room, information brochures on the where and how on the dessert table: “Guernsey”, more precisely “the Bailiwick of Guernsey”, i.e. the Bailiwick of Guernsey, it says, “is a self-governing island that neither to England, the Commonwealth still belongs to the EU”. Elemental forces would have detached them from the continent during the last ice age. Celts, Romans, Druids, Vikings have all been there since then. We pull the covers over our heads.