Island in the Sun

It's a good few years no since Harry Belafonte and his calypso songs were popular, but I still like them.

For the last several days - and, if the forecast is correct - the next several days as well,the has been an island in the sun.  We do occasionally have good weather even though many people in other countries seem to have the impression that England is always wet and foggy.

With the warm, sunny days, thoughts turn, unsurprisingly, to holidays.  As a child, and while my own children were young, holidays involved beaches, preferably sandy ones, and the sea.  But once the Old Bat and I were off again on our ownsome, we seemed to gravitate to islands.  We visited Madeira, Malta, Guernsey, Jersey - all of them islands considerably smaller then Great Britain.  Beaches weren't our thing.  We much preferred to do the tourist sights, interspersed with country walks.  Of course, many a time the two were one and the same thing, as we walked through countryside to reach a tourist trap.  That was especially true on Jersey which, along with Guernsey, Alderney, Sark and Herm, is part of the Channel Islands group just off the coast of France.

Although the Channel Islands are essentially British (I think they are termed Crown Dependencies) they have there own governments and tax rules etc.  They are a delightful mix of English and French.  Many of the English chain stores are represented in the towns but street and place names appear to be French.  The language spoken, however, is English.

We enjoyed those holidays, every one of them.