I have never been to the island of Guernsey. This is a large world and we have a finite amount of time on it and must make our decisions about where we visit based on necessarily limited information. We cannot know everything. I have never been to Japan, for example, because I do not wish to be crushed to death by a mass of jabbering humanity, nor take part in unpleasant sadomasochistic sex acts, nor watch people disembowelling themselves in order to affirm their masculinity. I realise that this is not all that Japan has to offer. There is also sushi, for example, and buttock-clenched politeness. I could get both of those things in Harrogate. So that’s Japan off my itinerary.
As far as Guernsey is concerned I have no interest in visiting somewhere which is not quite France and I am also suspicious of their bland and vapid cows. If I wished to look at cows I would rather that they were palpably decent Friesians, or perhaps those shaggy dark-brown lowering creatures the Scots find so alluring.
And yet a recent news story has made me wish to visit Guernsey immediately, because of what the schools there are getting up to. The parents are not happy about it. There is discord. I like visiting places where there is discord. Not too much discord, obviously. Not weaponised discord.
A school in Guernsey got the pupils to write an essay explaining to their parents that they had converted to the exciting, go-ahead religion of Islam and that as a consequence their life was much better. Excellent idea. I don’t know how long this essay had to be, but let me make a quick stab at it:
Dear Mum and Dad.
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