Dawns rise high over the cliff and green tinges the branches when her people feel the urge to move again. The furred who live nearby have grown wary, leave no prints to follow. The tiny body that she pushed herself inside out to birth stayed thin, sucked only weakly. Eventually it stopped, went rigid like dried tendon. Yet still she carried it, as skin shrunk around stick-like limbs and stretched over shoulder blades. Now the group gathers things to leave, and she feels the pull to join them. But putting down her burden is frightening. Inhaling her infant’s heady birth-smell, still caught in its dark hair, she crouches at the shelter’s edge. The clutched bundle is lowered to the ground and, for the first time, lies apart from her body. The others approach curiously, reach out to prod, pull, stroke; to know. Yet beasts will come later and this precious thing must be protected. She scoops a hollow, slides the already dusty form down, covers it. Embraced by the soft dirt full of their stony leavings, she draws back and joins the people to walk on.

Skies flicker as the days, years, centuries pass. Soils condense and hold the delicate bones tight. Others come and go above but eventually the vibrations of footfall stop. Even icy tendrils from heart-aching cold cannot penetrate to the tiny skeleton. Tens of thousands more winters, then deep thumpings murmur downwards. The weight lessens. Voices come: new people are building a house where none have lived for so long. Patten-shod feet clatter up and down wooden stairs over the small remains, a lullaby of life above death. In a blink, the house too is gone, then sediments shiver and shift as hands pull at the dirt. Clods crumble, and a chink of early summer sunlight grazes the white shatter of eggshell-thin skull. A voice shouts out, ‘Arrête! Os!’ Rough yet gentle hands – like those that last touched this lonely little one – reach down, after so long, to pick it up.

Rebecca Wragg Sykes is as far away from the common preconception of an archaeologist as the Neanderthals are seen as – in her own words, ‘Shambling around in bearskins waiting to become extinct already.’ Her scholarly but highly readable Kindred has each chapter prefaced by a piece of creative, yet relevant, fiction. Ms Sykes reminds me exactly how I fall short as a writer. I’m only part way through but this book is hypnotic. Get it here or at your national Amazon store.

In September 1942, during the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands, an order was received that non-nationals of Jersey were to be deported to Germany. At very short notice an English-born retired sea captain, his wife and five children were ordered to report to the harbour with a limited number of personal belongings. The wife describes in her own words the panic that ensued.

Parcels of larger size new suits and woollies and new pairs of shoes were untied.  String and newspapers were strewn about the floor.  By the window stood seven piles of clothing, but so far, no suitcases.  Exhausted, worried and full of foreboding for the future, I knelt down, flung my arms above my head on to the bed and cried, ‘Oh God!’  At that very moment, I saw behind my right shoulder, and very near me, the tall figure of my maternal grandmother.  She was calm.  She said, ‘It will be alright.’  This she repeated.  My grandmother had died in 1939.  Somehow, I flung my body, fully dressed, upon the bed.  I became unconscious.

The apparition was of the Charlotte of Lowestoft, mother of Caroline, referred to in my previous post. The family were reprieved at the last minute and continued to live in Jersey through the Occupation.

I do have opinions, points of view. These opinions generally fall into two broad categories. Those that are obvious and coincide with most other people’s opinions e.g. Islamic State and climate change are bad things, and those opinions which may be contentious but where I can see and accept the POV of the other side.

Generally speaking, I tend not to impose my opinions, my beliefs on others. Sure, if a subject comes up in conversation I’ll say my piece but without announcing that what I say is the last word on the matter and that everyone who disagrees is wrong. And most certainly I never shout my mouth off on social media where one can be dragged into an inescapable vortex of people baying and shouting into the void where there is no pretence or hope of arriving at a consensus.

But I suddenly became a militant the other day. Sitting in my car, negotiating a long diversion to reach my destination, then crawling back through town at a snail’s pace (this was in the middle of a working day, who was doing the work?) I became a member of the anti-car militant front. One way or the other this has to stop. Jersey has more registered vehicles than people. In many families every adult owns a car. Virtually every piece of land not otherwise designated is full of parked vehicles.

I don’t have the answers, who does? The small measures that are being taken to encourage walking, cycling, public transport and to make town less of a polluted hellhole are the subject of outcry from those who presumably think the present situation is quite OK. It is not OK.

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And from one cause to another. All my (long-ish) life I’ve eaten pretty much what takes my fancy including meat and fish and other animal products, the staple of most diets. Recently, and under guidance, I modified my diet and lost a fair chunk of weight. On looking at my new routine I observed that what I was now eating was, in the main, plant-based. Some lean meat certainly, some fish, but predominantly vegetables, grains, fruit, beans etc. I thought, well I’m pretty much a vegetarian now and it wouldn’t be much of a jump to make it so.

Then, out of curiosity, I looked up what a ‘vegan’ was. Turns out veganism can be as much a form of activism as it is food choices. Animal rights is a proper crusade with its proponents determined to make known the cruel and inhumane treatment of animals during their often sorry lifetimes and barbaric deaths. Tiptoeing into the subject on Twitter, trying to get a grip on what the facts were and suggesting there may be mitigations, I was howled down with something approaching hatred. My first reaction? I’m not going to be lectured, I’ll make my own mind up.

My decision? The activists are correct. There are no grey areas. I might slip up occasionally but I’m now essentially a vegan. But I’m not going to shout at everyone who isn’t, simply explain my reasons if asked.

That’s a trend I never saw coming. Apparently it’s been here a while as well. People don’t wear watches any more. Or at least many people don’t. I only noticed this for the first time yesterday (which says a lot about how much I stay relevant these days, I guess). I work a couple of days on the front desk at Hamptonne Country Life Museum here in Jersey. As part of the entry protocol, visitors need to sign in for Covid Track & Trace. Increasingly, many do so using a QR code – we’ve all become experts on QR codes over the last year or so. But there are also little paper slips which are easily filled in as well. Easily, only for the inevitable, “What’s the date?” followed seconds later by “What’s the time?”

Long ago, when I was growing up, everybody had a watch. To not have one on your wrist meant that either (1) you’d forgotten to put it on or (2) you were some sort of poor person.

I guess that people will say we all have phones, but isn’t it simpler just to glance at a watch? The average woman at least will take many seconds retrieving a phone (or anything) from the depths of her handbag. To digress, after 68 years I still have no clue what women find to stuff inside a handbag. It would take me for ever to find belongings to fill up an average handbag. (Not that I own a handbag you understand.)

Full disclosure – I’ve always worn a watch. These days it’s a Garmin which I use for running but it serves to give the time of day when not called upon to do anything more demanding. But I do remember the pre-digital days when you needed to wind it up, checking with someone else for the ‘right time’ if you’d let it run down completely. I also recall that you could, in extremis, use a public phone to dial TIM and a nice lady would tell you the time. (I read that the service was only withdrawn in 1986.)

Before the Industrial Revolution no one seemed to bother too much about the precise time. You got up when it got light, lit a candle when it got dark and went to bed when you were tired. Then someone invented the sundial which, as I understand, never became a popular attraction.

I understand that the high end of the watch market – the Rolex/Patek Philippe etc – is still holding up though more for investment value than show. Rich people can demonstrate their richness in many other ways these days, such as taking a ride into Space.

So – as I should have asked before I did all that writing, do you wear a watch?

News of the 2020/21 Covid-19 pandemic has been, from the outset, through the power and reach of the internet, widely publicised and commented upon. CLOSE THE BOARDERS (sic) bayed many in Jersey in the early months.

65 years ago there was an outbreak of the dreaded poliomyelitis in Cork in southern Ireland. Though news travelled less swiftly in those far off days, travel it did. And the panic was disproportionate in relation to the damage which, was, in the event, very well dealt with.

Ireland loves its sport, and Cork more than most. That year both Cork’s Gaelic football and hurling teams had reached their respective All-Ireland finals, to be played in Dublin. The women’s camogie (similar to hurling) team had likewise reached the All-Ireland semi-final, to be played against Mayo in Castlebar, the county town of Mayo in the north west of the country.

There was outcry in Dublin and Castlebar. The residents of those places were panicked and demanded that the games be cancelled so that the expected hordes of plague-carrying Cork supporters would not come. The governing body, the GAA, duly postponed the matches but eventually they all went ahead. Cork’s men lost both of their matches, the loss to Wexford at hurling proving to be the 10th and last All-Ireland final appearance of the great Christy Ring, eight of those appearance being on the winning side.

The Mayo ladies refused to play the rearranged semi-final so Cork progressed to the final to face Antrim in Dublin. By all accounts the better team, Cork were beaten by a heroic goalkeeping display by 14-year-old Teresa Kearns.

In the event, the 1956 polio epidemic claimed just five deaths in Cork and 20 across the country. The disease has now been virtually eradicated around the world.

In the absence of a pic from 1956 here is Cork’s All-Ireland-winning camogie team from 1934.