#Les Ecrehous

[sky60038]

Manche, Les Ecrehou par Olivier Boyer Via Flickr : 210921_Huwaei_100521_HDR

[cassie1604]

Bye, Bye week number 30, 2020.

Lockdown Heart-Throb, Joe Wicks. Photo Credit. Conor McDonnell

It’s been an interesting one.  Joe Wicks, the high-intensity interval training workout guru and Lockdown Heart-throb, called time on his 18-week workout.

Back off, Boris, leave poor Eeyore alone.

Members of the Tory party were spouting the words of A. A. Milne during Priminister’s Question Time. 🥱 With Boris Johnson thinking it would be wonderful for the opposition party to stop channelling ‘the spirit of Eeyore‘.  Back off Boris, leave poor Eeyore out of your Prime Ministerial shenanigans.

Meanwhile, the restricted flights and ferry sailings in and out of Jersey are under review.  Especially the sailings to St. Malo, as there has been a Covid-19 spike in Brittany.   And it’s not just the St. Malo-Jersey car ferry that is operating half-cock, the company which handles freight and foot passenger baggage in St. Malo has gone into liquidation.  So the bateau that brings in the Pinot Grigio I drink into the island has not been sailing, and the supply has run dry locally. Au Secours!  Crates of it (not all for me), are sitting on the quayside at St. Malo.

But, such is the draw of our sceptred isle the lack ferries doesn’t seem to be putting some very naughty people off sailing over here in their foreign-registered vessels, including those registered in France.

Determined sea-dogs have been anchoring here, or on a certain rocky outcrop six miles north-east of Jersey,  without following correct Covid-19 procedures. 😱 Listen up you wayward Jack Tars, you have to play the game in these strange times.

While on the subject of rule-breakers, a word of warning.  One Jersey resident has been fine £6,000 for flouting the Guernsey Covid-19 self-isolation rules. When in somebody else’s space, you follow the rules.

Plus ça change.

And me? I’ve been bumbling along, trying to get over last week’s disappointments and, unsuccessfully, trying to draw in new readers, with previously unseen bits of Just Say It! As well as bits that have been.

On Tuesday, I had an uplifting lunch in the sunshine with writer Dreena Collins, and a friend of hers who had just finished reading Just Say It!  She was much more upbeat about it than I have been lately, so I needed that boost.

Later that day, I had an email to say that a 75-word snippet from Just Say It! would be featured on Paragraph Planet on Wednesday.  Two boosts in one day to perk up my flagging morale.

I spent Wednesday trying to reel in family and friends in to gawp at (and like) my 75-words at Paragraph Planet.  Dreena, led the charge, closely followed by T, G, B and P. Thank you, all, plus I made a few new writer friends as well, which perked me up no end.  I do have other family members and friends, but I get it, not everybody spends as much time on social media as I do. 😏

I was also trying to lure my Facebook and Twitter followers into reading my short-story Broken, my only attempt at writing suspense. Broken is about a young woman who takes a sabbatical in the USA and is falsely accused of murder. I read it through again this morning and balled my eyes out.  Think I should stick to writing tongue-in-cheek pieces.

By Thursday, I was focussing on the work-in-progress, you know, the spoofy murder-mystery?  So, I fobbed my social media followers off – sorry – with a 2017 throwback.  A riveting account of being stranded at Exeter Airport and developing a love for Lemon Sherbet popcorn.

Today, I’m freewheeling.  I woke up with that Friday feeling, enjoying the resurgence of my joie de vivre.

One step forward, two steps back; writing is like that, but it only takes a few positive vibes, for me to start taking tiny baby steps toward putting the F word back in my writing.  Fun. And writing that spoofy murder-mystery, The Secret Lives of the Doyenne of Didsbrook does just that.

Anyway, it’s nearly time to say bye, bye week 30, 2020, and to Joe Wicks for making many Lockdown Ladies very happy.

Happy Friday, everybody!  I hope you freewheel your way to to the weekend.  Wishing you blue skies and fun under the sun.  Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend.

        Bye, Bye Week Number 30, 2020 Bye, Bye week number 30, 2020. It's been an interesting one.  Joe Wicks, the high-intensity interval training workout guru and Lockdown Heart-throb, called time on his 18-week workout.

[msmorbidmadame]

Case File: The Innocent Man and The Jersey Beast. The case of The Jersey Beast is a creepy tale of a real life boogeyman. To this day, he is still written about and commonly researched by the true crime community. However, the case didn’t end with the catching of the Beast. An innocent man was wrongly accused of the sexual assaults and consequently lived in self imposed exile for 14 years afterwards. The monsterous tale first began with the case of the Beast of Jersey in the Channel Island of Jersey in 1960. For 11 years, townsfolk lived in fear with knowledge of the fact that the Beast could strike at any time. In the middle of the night, the masked man was creeping into homes and attacking women and children. What made the attacks even scarier was the attire the crazed maniac wore during the attacks. The Beast appeared in an outfit akin to Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; he wore a ratty woman’s black wig over a disfigured rubber mask that nightmares are made of. The Beast’s first attacks began in 1960 on four women, a few months apart, all conveniently waiting at a bus stop like sitting prey. The women were spotted, and wrangled with a noose like cattle, dragged into a nearby field to be raped and abandoned. After those women, he branched out to making home visits. The Beast began widening his targets and raped and attacked women and children, all being lead away with a rope around their neck. The citizens of the island were rightfully in a panic. Jersey police was not supplying any leads, so eventually, Scotland Yard was called in to come take over the investigation. During the span of over 6 years, the madman killed intermittently at random. While the Beast had free reign to not only commit multiple murders, but also write taunting letters to authorities, police staff was extremely anxious to name a suspect. By now, the town was practically in a mass hysteria of fear and anger. Scotland Yard felt pressured to provide the man behind the mask, and they zeroed in on a loner who enjoyed roaming the streets at night- the accusation was the beginning of the end for Alphonse Le Gastelois. Over 30 suspects were called in to the station and questioned, and Le Gastelois stood out in the bunch due to his eccentricity. The odd loner frequently wore a an old, tattered raincoat, fastened with a piece of rope. (Similar to the ropes of the attacks). Le Gastelois was interrogated for over 14 hours and ultimately released, but his name was leaked to the very scared and angry public, and they wanted blood. His house was eventually burned down by an unknown arsonist from town, and he was constantly harassed by police who were scrounging around for evidence against him. Finally, the scapegoat reached his breaking point and he left his home town to live on a nearby tiny island (Ecrehous Reef) between Jersey and France in an act of self exile. Even though life on the reef was rough, Le Gastelois preferred it to the cruel treatment he received back at Jersey. Meanwhile, on July 17, 1971, police were engaged in chase over a citizen who had run a red light light, and sped off to evade authorities in a stolen vehicle. Little did they know that the pursuit would result in the capture of the real Beast of Jersey. Once police finally caught the car, they quickly arrested Edward Paisnel, a local construction worker, and searched the vehicle. To their shock, they found several pieces of evidence of The Beast; after 11 years of terror he had finally been caught. Eventually, Paisnel was convicted of 13 counts of sodomy, assault and rape, and given a 30 year prison sentence. The Beast had finally been caught, but, surprisingly, Le Gastelois did not immediately return home. He stayed alone on the reef essentially living off the land. The few huts on the reef had no electricity, heat, or running water. Le Gastelois lived off the lobsters, seaweed and bird eggs he acquired, and drank the rain water. In a final odd turn of events, Le Gastelois became emerged in reading law books on the isle, and found a law that stated “A person can claim possession of a deserted place if he lives there for 10 years.” He petitioned the Queen of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland to be stated as the “King of Ecrehous.” Unfortunately, his request was denied. In 1999, the states agreed to pay Le Gastelois a large sump of money to compensate for the injustice caused to him by releasing his name to the press as the masked culprit. Case: Solved. -MsMorbidMadame Picture 1: The Beast of Jersey. Picture 2: Edward Paisnel. Picture 2: Alphonse Le Gastelois.

[babyace]

Rescue plane with five on board crashes in Jersey during search for two missing fishermen

By Suzannah Hills

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A search and rescue plane crashed in storms while trying to find two fishermen…

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[cassie1604]

Island RIB Voyages - Jersey - In search of dolphins

Island RIB Voyages – Jersey – In search of dolphins

In my experience, if you live somewhere that is noted as a tourist attraction, you never get around to doing any of the trips or visit any of the historical or cultural sites that are on your doorstep, but for once I can say that I have. For some time now, I have been tantalised by tales and indeed I have seen photographic evidence of dolphins swimming off the coast of Jersey.…