Monday 27 July 2009

Falling Chopsticks and Lonely Streetlights: the path to Sark

I've always liked those Rube Goldberg machines. You know the ones. It starts off with someone nudging a chopstick off a shelf which then lands onto a marble which rolls into a matchbox car which falls into a precariously placed bucket of water which spills into a set of scales which lowers and stretches out a slingshot which fires a yellow bouncy ball into a red cabbage and in the end a little wind-up monkey lights a candle or something. Those born in the 80s might remember that Mousetrap game as a good example (along with the way your 8 year-old hands and body had to stay unnaturally still lest you accidentally bump the board and set off the whole plastic sequence of events that took sixteen episodes of Heman to set up).

Even the simplest of endings, like a monkey lighting a candle or a dart piercing a goldfish, had to go through a meticulously constructed set-up for it to happen at all.

Some people think that their whole lives have been designed like this; that there is some old codger who is setting off seven billion Goldberg machines at once, with different 'end points' for each of them: some of us pierced like a goldfish and some of us choking on a chocolate-coated peanut.

Even if you think that that's a load of codswallop, it's still interesting thinking about all the precariously placed buckets and falling chopsticks that had to happen to lead to whatever you're doing right now. I think about it all the time, usually at stupid tiny moments like when I'm chopping cauliflower or eating hummous.

When I was on the Isle of Sark recently - the smallest of the Channel Islands near Guernsey and Jersey - this 'Goldberg Machine' feeling was particularly potent. If my uncle hadn't given me the Gormenghast trilogy when I was 15 years old, I more than likely wouldn't have caught a bus, two tubes, an aeroplane, a taxi and a ferry to end up on this small island with only one street-light and an adherence to feudal laws.

All sorts of other things had to happen too, of course. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that although all my falling chopsticks and slingshotted bouncy balls may be endlessly fascinating to me, others would find them about as thrilling as watching a dormant cheese-grater for six hours.

Let us test this theory now. Here are some of the things that had to happen to lead me to Sark:

I had to move to London, be introduced to Couchsurfing, plan a trip to Brussels, discover the profile of a Couchsurfing host there who listed the little-known Gormenghast trilogy as amongst his favourite books, stay with him, become friends, discover that Mervyn Peake (the author of Gormenghast) had written another book based on the Isle of Sark, be contacted by my friend months later and told of his intention of making a documentary about Sark (and other 'micro-nations') and asked if I would like to tread the ground where Sir Peake once lived with him and his girlfriend.

If your eyes felt weary half-way through that, please draw a picture of a cheese-grater and post it to me. If you found it utterly gripping, please reward yourself with a spoon of peanut-butter and then post me the spoon. I will add them up and give you the definitive result in the next edition of Testing Things Scientifically (a quarterly publication. Readers of the next edition receive a free spoon that smells of peanut-butter).

I made it to Sark continually wondering if I would have gone there at all if my uncle had given me Latour's Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy instead. That would have been a shame, not only because I probably would have crumbled underneath the expectations put on my 15 year-old mind by my family, but because Sark is an eccentric little island.

Some facts about Sark:

- It was the last feudal state left in the world up until 2008. They have a Lord known as a 'Seigneur' who is in charge of upholding some of the ancient feudal laws.
- One of these ancient laws is that cars and 'modern' forms of transportation are banned on the island. Transport is via horse-and-cart, tractor, bicycle or on foot.
- The population is around 600 people. I think I pass this many people on my way to the tube every morning...
- Children born on Sark are encouraged to leave the island once they reach a certain age so that they can experience other things and see whether the 'Sarkese way' is for them. A lot of these children end up returning to Sark.
- Sark only has one street light, which makes getting home from the Dixcart Hotel Bar to your B&B a slow-moving and pothole-filled task.
- Sark is closer to France than England, but nonetheless remains a self-governing British dependency. English is the official language, but all the place-names are French. In 1990, a French nuclear physicist named André Gardes arrived on the island clad in combat gear and carrying a semi-automatic rifle. He tried to singlehandedly reclaim the island for France. According to the Guernsey Evening Press of August 24, 1990, he was fined £200 and sentenced to seven days in prison. A rather light sentence, you could say...
- Everyone knows everyone on Sark, so a couple of Belgian journalists and their Australian colleague are quite easy to spot on the roads.

Most holidays that I have taken involve cathedrals and squares and monuments and pock-marked maps from where I've tried to circle things without leaning the paper on a flat surface first. On Sark we had a map, but since the island is only 5.45 square kilometres, we ditched the map and just walked in the general direction of an 'edge' we hadn't seen yet. This isn't quite as ho-hum as it sounds, when you consider that the paths looked like this:





And the 'edges' looked like this:


Julien & Salomé at Window in the Rock, Sark

As a result of Julien's journalistic efforts we were introduced to a few locals who explained that on Sark the policeman can also run the shop, tend the gardens of the Seigneurie and teach advanced dentistry (or whatever else), and that for this reason they never really feel constrained by the idea that there is a 'career' everyone must actively pursue. I love that idea, mainly because I feel like I could have been an ace badminton player if only I hadn't limited myself by sticking obsessively to the alphorn. I may be able to play Messe für Alphorn und Chor with the world's premier alphornists, but sometimes I imagine feathery shuttlecocks shooting out of the horn's mouth and find myself wishing I had the time to follow some side-interests. Don't tell my colleagues at Alphornbläsergruppe Oberaargau this, though. Ulrich would be very disappointed in me.

Alphorns aside, after various cliff-top walks and talks, pats of local Clydesdales and strolls through the Seigneurie maze, it was plain to see why Sarkese children come back to the island after their enforced periods abroad.

It is easy to romanticise 'island life', forgetting about the boredom, conservatism and gossip, or even to reach the conclusion that because island life is quiet and slow-paced that it must be 'simple'. But after leaving our doors unlocked when we went out and having only one daily concern - how to dodge puddles in the no-streetlights-blindness of night - all three of us agreed it would be a comfortable and open place to live.

It looks possible, though, that Sark's own Goldberg Machine may be leading it to something less open and comfortable. A wind-up monkey has lit a candle, and this candle is sitting perilously close to a microfibre bathrobe. On one of our clifftop walks, we noticed a sleek black helicopter approaching. This helicopter made a beeline for the Sarkese version of Tasmania: Brecqhou (an even smaller island separated from Sark by a narrow channel of water). In particular, it was heading towards this:




This is the mock-Gothic castle on Brecqhou, commissioned by twin British billionaires the Barclay Brothers. These fellows, who also happen to own the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly and the Telegraph Media Group, bought the island of Brecqhou in 1993.

We had of course heard about these men from almost the first second we arrived, and as we sat dunking chocolate Hobnobs into our tea with a local artist, it became apparent that these brothers are generally viewed by islanders as the possible outcome of a liaison between this man and this woman.

You can read the full account of their spoiled billionaire antics here, but to give you a condensed version, after contesting the 'backwards' feudalism of Sark so that they could have free run of their cars and helipads on Brecqhou, and bring the whole of Sark into the 'modern age' by updating the island's hotels, infrastructure and tourism (I have no doubt that the words 'Sark' and 'Rococo interiors' do not fit together), their representatives were voted down by the democracy they themselves had pushed for. Obviously this did not go down well. Billionaires will have their way, after all. They had invested a lot of money into Sark - in hotels, pubs, restaurants and construction companies - and retaliated by closing all of these businesses, leaving at least 100 people (or one-sixth of the population) suddenly unemployed. With Christmas only a fortnight away, I might add.

The children of Mr. Evil (sorry, I mean Doctor Evil. He didn't attend 6 years of Evil Medical School to be called 'Mister', thank you very much) and Ms. DeVil retreated to Brecqhou and have stayed there ever since. Talking to the lady in the tourist office, there seems to be a general feeling that the Barclay Brothers are over in their Brecqhou castle knitting things out of Dalmatians while they plot and scheme their next move. This 'quiet island life' may be the precious last moments of calm before the next storm.

If another billionaire storm ever happens, I am going to do all I can to support Sark, even if all I can offer is a few illustrations of the Barclay Brothers dressed in Dalmatian suits with knives and dead puppies at their feet. And if that day ever comes, I will be able to douse the flaming bathrobe with water from the bowl of a pierced goldfish, and when someone asks me how I came to be drawing such highly detailed pictures of dead puppies at my kitchen table in London, I will put down my pen and explain. It all began when my uncle bought me the Gormenghast trilogy when I was 15 years old...

5 comments:

Rebecca A said...

When i come to London I'll kill you in your sleep and steal your talent. Then I'll run away to Sark and live in a puddle.

Starkadder said...

Speaking as an uncle who once offered his beloved niece a copy of the Gormenghast trilogy. I feel absurdly proud.

It was, of course, a desperate attempt to get her reading something that was better written than Harry Potter ("Verba expelliamus, pal").

And it worked. Huzzah!

In an alarming development, I note she has developed a passing acquaintance with Proust. She may recall the only time her grandfather and I had a disagreement about literature. He loved Proust, After half a dozen volumes, I thought life was too short and just how inspirational should eating a bloody biscuit be?

Your talent was always in there, Sarah. It was going to explode somewhere. I'm just glad to have provided you with a small spark.

I had to start with Biggles and look where I ended up! Aaargh.

Mike said...

clearly just brilliant!

Julien said...

I knew from the start it would be a seminal moment for you, when you would visit this island.

I can still hear you on the phone when I told you about it, I could see you jumping around with joy - something that could happen only through the phone, since I don't think you would jump around even in the most joyous moments, won't you ?

I can still see you arriving on the island, wearing one of your classy outfits that definitely didn't match with the farmer boots & trousers people were wearing around us - and with my own vintage clothes I think we were both identified as weirdos by the islanders on the very moment we arrived in the "Avenue".

I knew from the start it would be a seminal moment because I knew all that Gormenghast meant to you, and all the feeling of adventure such a trip could summon in your life. Definitely, I wouldn't have go to Sark without Sarah !

Your delightful Uncle said it : you always had this talent. It is even more moving when you have been there. You caught the spirit, you got it right, you captured every flavour in our adventure to Sark, and you found the words to share it with everybody. This would be enough to make you one of my most faithful friends.

Sarah said...

Rebecca, remember what someoneuruther once said: Good writers borrow, great writers steal.

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Rex, AKA John (who is this John person, I wonder?), eating a biscuit is always inspirational! But we are agreed - Proust was too damn fond of those madeleines. He should have summed it up by saying, 'No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body... bloody oath this thing is fantastic!'

Anyways, I was absurdly happy with your comment, so the appreciation is mutual!

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Mike - thanks!

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Julien, oh possible-second-domino-in-this-chain-of-events, sometimes I do jump around. Marc will tell you that I'm a whole barrel of crazy when people aren't looking.

Somehow I'm content to look like a weirdo in a 'classy' outfit when people are looking though...

It was definitely a pilgrimage to remember (as opposed to those pilgrimages you often forget). Thanks for putting in all the hard yards so I could add in the bit about us dunking chocolate Hobnobs into our tea with the Sark artist. Without you, I don't think it would have worked out quite the way that it did...