Flat out

REACHING it is uphill all the way. But that’s part of the journey.

The first set of stairs echo hollowly as we tramp the 15 steps. At the bottom a carelessly arranged bouquet of letters addressed to long-flitted tenants awaits no one. Two-for-one takeaway deals never taken up, shop sales unvisited, potential bargains ignored.

At the top a window looks out onto orange pantiles, terracotta chimney pots and TV aerials. The bright warmth of the sun unfelt. In a backyard a leafless tree trembles while hydrangeas nod excitedly like pink- and purple-rinsed pensioners on a 1975 day trip to Morecambe.

In front there’s a black, brass-knockered door which opens onto another flight of stairs. This set is expertly swaddled in beige cut-pile carpeting, a feature that will remain underfoot throughout the entirety of the trek and faintly reminiscent of the wooden childhood ones I was forced to climb nightly to Bedfordshire.

We’re in the flat proper.

At the top is a wrought iron puzzle gate. It’s a puzzle as to why it’s there. An ornate child safety gate? A small reminder of a cherished holiday in the medinas of Tangiers or Marrakech? Insurance against bibulousness? Acrophobia? We’ll never know. It’s great for drying a Continental quilt cover, though.

We are now in the passageway. Cumulus, stratocumulus and cirrocumulus swirl overhead. In Artex.

This is our very own Tornado Alley. A couple of weekends ago when the storms hit Guernsey, as well as the wind raging I could hear continuous knocking and tapping all night. I thought it was outside. In the morning Evangeline texted me from her room saying: ‘Dad, it sounded like someone was inside the flat and walking around all night. I didn’t dare get out of bed.’

I got up to find the passage window had blown open and the pictures from the sill were all over the floor. Even O’Sullivan the Skellington had been felled from his sentinel spot on the wall and was lying among the wreckage. The knocking sound was the blinds blowing in and out and the tapping was the drawstrings’ wooden ends on the glass.

Heading north-west (or left, as we call it in these parts) and then south-west (yep, left again) we enter the smaller of the two bedrooms that are on this walk.

Along the back wall is a single bed with a double Continental quilt and three twisted pillows, suggesting respectively both northern tightwaddery and insomnia. Placed strategically under the windows to capture the first rays of the morning sun (which are duly ignored daily) the foot abuts a chair and a table laden with sheets of doggerel, novels never read, novels read and novels never-to-be-read and a 1950s Royal typewriter the size, weight and colour – and noise when it gets going – of a British Army Vickers-Armstrong Bren Gun Carrier.

Above on the wall there is the Ordnance Survey map OL 21 (where I wished I was now with my beautiful gal, Elizabeth Rose). To the left is a painting of a crow by Evangeline and a photo of The Coalbox Generals (widely regarded as if not the best Guernsey CnW duo, then certainly the tallest).

Next to this is a bookcase crammed with everything from nigh-on 40 annuals from the ’60s and ’70s, The Shell Book of Country Crafts, An Anthology of Erotic Verse (published by the hopefully Trades Description Act investigated Softback Preview), The Viz Sausage Sandwich and the Collected Poems of John Donne.

This settlement, a paean to middle-aged surrender, as you might have guessed, is where I drag my fetid carcass nightly.

‘Are we there yet, dad?’ asks Evangeline.

‘No, not yet,’ I reply.

Wandering back outside, we head south-west again into the last room’s antithesis – a bustling dreamland of laser lights and colour. A tribute to art, hope and inspiration.

On the windowsill a forest of indoor plants that pump out more oxygen than the Guet, bohemian wall-hangings, LP covers by The Pretty Things, Free and Rainbow, statues of cats, an upended keyboard, a bed cluttered with handmade jewellery, clothes, artwork, a ukulele, make-up and a borrowed school computer that is probably a complete stranger to Milk, but on intimate terms with YouTube and Snapchat.

Needless to say, this is where Evangeline resides.

Turning south-east, we ramble along the full length of Tornado Alley where O’Sullivan has been reinstated, replete with his chi-chi turquoise rosary, past the WC/shower room (which we don’t need to enter just now, but suffice to say that the morning shower, if used, is the one thing that all humanity has in common regardless of race, creed, class, colour, faith, sexual orientation or gender, because it’s where everyone’s first waz of the day takes place) and into the living room – and not ‘lounge’ because, as my mate Jane says, ‘Y’dont live in an airport, d’ya?’.

‘Dad, are we there yet?’ asks Evangeline.

‘You only asked five seconds ago,’ I say. ‘Not yet.’

Here we come across the shelf of lost and found things – broken toys, fancy dress specs, a clockwork snake, toy soldiers, a pipe and, passing the Hilda Ogden drying horse, we look out the window at Petit Ruau’s beautiful blue bruise. The baby elephant of Jethou is following its mother Herm across the river.

We trek across the living room to the kitchen, the crucible of fine dinners consisting of baked potatoes, pasta and sardines on toast and where, only a few weeks ago, my other daughter Carney joined us for tea and all three of us crammed in to make prawn noodle soup bomb-splashed with peeled soft-boiled eggs.

I hope we can again soon.

Heading north-east, we make it to the settee and sit down. From here we have a fine view of the library and radio station.

It’s growing dark and the fairy lights tangle the fireplace, glowing red, yellow, green and blue between other lost and found mantle-shelf curios. The three-bar electric fire radiates orange. My eyes blur and for the second time today I think of Morecambe in 1975, this time at sunset during the illuminations.

‘Are we there yet?’ Evangeline asks again.

‘Geographically, yes. Yes we are,’ I reply. Then I add, I believe, philosophically: ‘But everything else, no. We are a long, long way off.’

She gives me that look.

‘God, dad, I preferred it when you were at work.’

THE WALK

Route: Up two flights of stairs, through two bedrooms, down the passage, into the living room, over to the kitchen and finally onto the settee.

Mileage: Around 90ft.

Time: Around four minutes.

Kind of walk: Mainly carpet, terracotta tiles in the kitchen.

REST STOPS

Refreshments: A fridgeful.

Toilets: One along Tornado Alley.