Even if they failed to spell out their thoughts explicitly, I understood that they were wondering why I hadn’t died of chronic claustrophobia long before managing to escape to the wide-open spaces of the ‘mainland’.
I, of course, knew that they had identified the wrong chunk of geography when they referred to a mainland. As far as I was – and am – concerned, the UK is a mere inferior appendage of the place that I am proud to call home.
‘Wait a minute,’ close friends and family might say. ‘Weren’t you born and brought up for the first nine years of your life in south Wales?’
Well, yes, I was. But that serves only to define who I support when international rugby is played. Jersey has had a far more profound effect on me than those few years in the Valleys.
Nine miles by five our Island might be, but I remain amazed how much variety is packed into such a small space. And, on average, I am reminded of this three times a week – twice when I walk for a couple of hours with friends and once when I run with the Crapaud Hash House Harriers.
All three bouts of exercise take me to parts of the Island which are less frequented than our urban spaces, our highways and even our byways.
It is remarkable how often one of my regular walking companion says: ‘Well, I’ve never been here before…’ If I could persuade him to don trainers instead of walking boots, he would be even more surprised by the scarcely explored wilderness that members of the Crapauds plunge and scramble through.
With the exceptions of rivers, mountains and vast rolling plains, we have it all, including a fine selection of wooded valleys, a coastline that’s second to none, and more history and prehistory per square mile than anywhere else I can bring to mind.
Some years ago a bunch of US Midwesterners visited when one of them married one of my nieces.
I think that they were expecting a barren rock, but what they got was fantastic strength in depth, culturally, geographically and historically – so different, they were ready to agree, from the expanses of their home state of Indiana, where I’d be spared claustrophobia but struck down by raging agoraphobia.
