Chapter 16: Easter

Having crawled through January and February, we fairly galloped through March making it to Easter in record time. Well, almost. Someone somewhere decided that the earliest Easter can be in any given year is 22nd March; it might be to do with the moon, though what the moon has to do with the crucifixion I’m not sure. Our first Easter on the Island was on 31st March, which is above averagely early, and no doubt the justification shops gave for starting to sell cream eggs on Boxing Day. We’ve been Ventnorians and Overners for over a quarter of a year, which seems like a long time. I’d finished a challenging but rewarding term at my new school and was in desperate need of a break. 

The week before, I’d sustained something called a spontaneous conjunctival haemorrhage. I quite like the word ‘spontaneous, but haemorrhage has an altogether more serious aroma to it. Fortunately, whilst this condition both sounds and looks grave,  it isn’t. Basically, a blood vessel bursts in your eye, flooding it with blood, and causing everyone you meet to startlingly inquire “What’s happened to your eye?” Each person thinks they are the first to ask.  This is understandable because for a week or so you do tend to look like a vampire from a third-rate horror film, but it did become somewhat irritating. To commemorate the 100th time someone asked me, I picked them up and hurled them through a window. Eventually, I had a T-shirt printed saying: “It’s a spontaneous conjunctival haemorrhage. Now F**k off!

I was grateful to the very few people who didn’t mention it - for example, Penny, the receptionist at the Mountbatten Hospice, who is now on my hypothetical Christmas card list. No individual under the age of 16 didn’t ask me, and one girl kept going on about it so much she almost got the window treatment as well.

On the morning I woke up with this new look, Eve and I walked into school and I asked her to what extent people would notice it. “It’s not really noticeable,” she reassured me. We signed in and I was immediately surrounded by small children trying to examine me and my eye and asking if I was going to lose my sight and even die, and if not was I going to audition for the part of Dracula?

I don’t think Eve is very observant. The following week, after yet another sleepless  night, I again asked her if I looked ok, as we walked into school. “You look fine,” she said soothingly, and I was therefore surprised when ten minutes later, Rachel the student teacher informed me that I had toothpaste round my mouth. 

“What is the point of me asking you if I look ok,” I berated her later, “if you can’t see I’ve got toothpaste round my mouth?”

“Sorry - I didn’t see it”, was her unconvincing explanation.

“If you’re not going to look properly, what’s the point of me asking you? I could have had my flies undone, my sock trailing from my trousers, urine stains on my crotch - it could be very embarrassing. You do realise small children eat that sort of thing up for breakfast You need to go and see an optician!”

“You’re a grown man - sort of,” she qualified. “And they’ve invented something called a mirror!

In fact it was me that went to see the optician. I’ve had one or two of these haemorrhages over the years, normally to do with cycling with too much intensity. Apparently you can get them giving birth or just by sneezing. Anyway the advice is to see an optician, so I wangled an hour free from school and trotted off to see one in Shanklin up the road. Obviously it was all fine, but the optician’s story was interesting. 

Like a lot of Overners, he was from the West Midlands. I don’t know why there is such an influx of Brummies on the Island; I suppose the sea views are a little better. On meeting him, it was immediately apparent even to my untrained eye, that he only had one arm. I gathered he was called Colin, and we went through to his surgery.

Colin congenially bullied me for the 40 minutes we were together.

“No, don’t slouch - sit up and put our chin on the pad. Look into the light. No, the middle. If we have to do it again you’re paying for it. Come on, I haven’t got all day. You can see I’m having to do everything with my left hand.”

“Sorry!”

“High blood pressure can cause these haemorrhages. Go to the doctor. Have it checked and ask for a platelets blood test.”

I mentioned something about keeping fit and riding bikes.

“Push bike or motorbike?”

“The former, but I used to ride a motorbike as well.”

“Let’s not talk about bikes or we’ll be here all day. I had to give up riding them twenty years ago after a bad accident.”

“Is that how you lost your arm?” I asked, addressing the elephant in the room.

“Yes. A woman in a mini pulled out in front of me and I was thrown 90 yards down the road. I was in intensive care for 4 weeks and had multiple operations.” 

He continued placing different lenses over my eyes.  

“Better or worse?”

“What? Oh, slightly better. I think.”

I hate this game opticians play, putting marginally different lenses over a pair of blank, round goggles and expecting you to be able to tell the difference. Obviously sometimes you can, but often it’s such a slight difference you end up saying anything just to expedite the process.

“They tried to make out I was going 90mph in a 40,” he continued; “I proved I couldn’t have got up to that speed because it was between two roundabouts 300 yards  apart. Better or worse?”

Better. No worse, Er, I’m not sure.”

“Mind you I was once done for doing 130 on the A34. Better of worse?”

It seemed incongruous that a chap called Colin with his erstwhile laissez-faire approach to the rules of the road was now a one armed optician in Shanklin.  He’d obviously reinvented himself from a fast-paced youth and was now a skilled practitioner with an eccentric bedside manner. It reminded me of the Monty Python sketch when the accountant goes to the career advice centre and says he wants to be a lion tamer.

“It’s a bit of a jump, isn’t it”, he’s told. “You don’t think you should work your way towards lion taming, say via banking, or insurance?”

I reckoned the likelihood of haemorrhage could have been exacerbated by insomnia as well as high blood pressure, and a break was much needed. The day after we broke up was Good Friday, which was to be filled with some local events. In the morning there was a ‘Walk of Witness’. This was an ecumenical walk starting outside St. Wilfrid’s catholic church and ending at St. Catherine’s. 

Nicola sprang towards us as we arrived.

“Have you seen the inside?” she asked us, pointing to the unprepossessing church on our left. And it was unprepossessing from the outside, but from the inside it was amazing. To quote from the leaflet kindly provided, “In 2006, a devastating fire gutted the old church, and all but a few items were burnt beyond saving.” The inside needed a total rebuild and the church was opened again in 2015. 

It was everything a modern church should be, complete with the most beautiful stained glass windows. The window at the end was cross shaped, orange at the top morphing into blue at the base. We were told that when the light was right, you could see an image of Jesus. A bit like the type of optical illusion puzzle that occasionally does the round - you know the one “if you squint and look from the right angle you can see a giraffe jumping over a sofa”. They are called autostereograms. I couldn’t see the image, and after a few moments, gave up and admired the gorgeous narrow blue stained glass windows that ran along the side. It reminded us of the windows in All Saints Tudeley, a couple of miles from Hadlow, which were designed by the French artist Marc Chagall. 

The windows in St. Wilfrid’s were created by an artist called Sarah Galloway. Most people have heard of Chagall; hopefully a few more people have now heard of Sarah Galloway. I just don’t understand why these features aren’t better known; even us locals were unaware of their existence. I mean how can we live in a world in which people have heard of Joey Essex (and well done if you haven’t) but not Sarah Galloway’s stained glass windows.

In fact we were still unearthing wonderful, strange things about Ventor three months into our stay. That afternoon, on our way down to the Esplanade for the official opening of the new cascades walkway, we noticed a small shop with a blackboard proclaiming the following.

“Tarot readings done here by the famous Madame Constance of Ventnor. 40 years experience.”

I turned to Eve.

“How does experience help you if you’re a psychic? You can either see into the future or you can’t. Saying you’ve got experience just implies you’re good at the dark arts - pulling the wool over people’s eyes and pretending they’re communicating with your late Uncle Earnest.”

“Exactly what I was thinking”, she agreed.

The Esplanade is book-ended by two extremely steep, winding roads: Bath Road at the west end, and Shore Hill at the east. Because it’s so steep, a walkway was built which is a little more circuitous, named Rene Howe Walk. This takes some of the steepness out of the hill, ensuring locals and visitors  descend without all falling over  each other and rolling to the bottom in an undignified heap (are there dignified heaps?).

Rene Howe was a local lady who gave her life to community projects in the town in the second half of the last century. If there was a committee, she was on it. Scouts, girl guides, knitting club, naked trampolining club - she was the instigator, the brains and the power behind all of them and more. These days she'd have got an unsung hero award, (thus becoming a sung hero - or heroine). For her troubles Rene got a walkway named after her, which is nice, but the said walkway had become unsafe and a little dilapidated over the years; over the winter it had been transformed into a sexy new path with funky railings, and everyone was very excited, including us. 

It's a seminal bit of the Ventnor landscape. As you walk down it, you can see the famous Isle of Wight Paddling Pool below and the vertiginous cascades gardens, through which a winding fountain flows (you’ll have gathered that everything is ‘winding’ here.) It’s all a conservation area, and the new walkway had to be built in keeping with the character of its surroundings.

The opening was choreographed by councillor Steph Toogood - she of the pink house who we’d met at café church a few weeks earlier. Ventnor does these things very well, and there were games, people dressed in green Ventnor carnival outfits, girls with white carnival princesses costumes incongruous chewing gum, and a ukulele band - or V.U.L.G.A, to give them their full title: Ventnor Ukelele Lubbers General Assembly. They were an enthusiastic, exuberant  group made up of about 20 assorted ukelelists of varying ages, dress and ability, whose energetic and eccentric rendition of ‘Jolene’ was especially noteworthy. Needless to say, the Comic Jazz Band also made an appearance, competing with V.U.L.G.A for the most bonkers musical group in the Northern Hemisphere award; no event here is complete without them!

Steph pronounced the walk open, which was just as well as people had been walking on it for the last hour. Kids played in the paddling pool, people milled about drinking and  chatting, and it was all extraordinarily convivial and relaxing. 

On Easter Sunday, Ewan and I went for a Sunday afternoon mooch around Bonchurch, a gorgeous little village which joins Ventnor to the east. It’s fair to say that Ewan isn’t one of life’s great moochers, preferring a walk that has a purpose; he’s more of a marcher than a moocher. 

Ewan has to be prised out of his bedroom; it’s his kingdom, his safe space and his sanctuary. If you have teenagers, this may sound familiar. Unfortunately for him, however, he has loving parents who insist on him having a bit of exercise and enjoying some fresh air from time to time. 

“Have you walked Ewan today?” we’ll ask each other, as though he’s a dog. 

Bonchurch is synonymous with the infamous December landslip, although this occurred a little further out towards Shanklin on the road between the two - fortunately the village remains unaffected. Eve described it once as a ‘boutique village’, which reflects its character wonderfully. It’s kind of picture perfect in a way that only English villages can be; if you hired a giant crane, picked it up and dropped it randomly in the south Cotswolds it wouldn’t look out of place. There is a slightly eccentric pub, The Bonchurch Inn, a café opposite the pond called The Pond Café,  two churches, a pottery and a labyrinth of footpaths. Oh, and it goes up and down quite a lot like most places around here. 

The views of the sea glimpsed between trees and houses are scintillating, and the light brown stone walls that border the meandering road through the village, quintessentially English.  I say houses - but actually ‘villas’ is a more appropriate word. In the 1830s, everyone in Bonchurch decided they wanted to build a villa for some reason, which gives it a slightly south of France feel. It’s a world away - an absolute universe away - from the gauche tourist trap that is Sandown 6 miles or so up the road.

Bonchurch has some interesting historical connections. If I were to list the things I’ve found out writing this book that I had no idea about, The Battle of Bonchurch would top the list. This battle took place off the coast in 1545 and was part of the Italian War of the 1540s - something else I hadn’t heard of, and I suspect neither had you. The real issue isn’t our ignorance, however, but why Bonchurch was involved in an Italian War. I get that these things can be complicated but it seems a bit ridiculous; aside from the fact that, as usual, the French have something to do with it, it’s not a wormhole I propose to go down.

The aforementioned hilly road through the village is called the Bonchurch Shute. Shute, or occasionally Chute, is an Island thing, and describes the steep roads that crisscross the island perfectly. My favourite Shute is the unimaginatively named Newport Shute which descends like a black ski run from the main Downs Road to the fragrant Garlic Farm. The Lime Kiln Shute to the east has a much more interesting name which must be investigated; the Island is a haven for geographers as we’ve seen.

The highlight of our mooch was the tiny St. Boniface Old Church. It's probably the smallest church I've ever been in - a 'churchette' if you will. A sign outside informed us that it was rebuilt in 1070 - I don't know whether an 11th century builder looked at it and whistled through his teeth before taking on the commission, but he did a bloody good job, if you'll forgive the French. It has a muralled wall from the 7th century and is just so - cute! (I hope it doesn’t mind that description; I used to hate it when girls called me ‘cute’; I felt it didn't reflect the macho, handsome beast that I was.) 

There was a booklet on a table entitled ‘Historical notes on The Ancient Church of S. Boniface, Bonchurch’ which I obtained for a small donation. It was written by Henry de Vere Stacpoole, which you must admit is an interesting, and if we’re honest, a quite pretentious name. H de VS, if he doesn’t mind me calling him that, was a writer who lived in Bonchurch from 1922 to 1951, mainly known for a romantic novel entitled ‘The Blue Lagoon’, which seems the sort of title a small child would use for his first story, so it’s probably piffle.  And surely all lagoons are blue. 

Bonchurch is well known for its writers and poets. There’s a blue plaque close by informing one that Charles Dickens stayed in the village for a while; for me that has no real cachet. Dickens stayed everywhere: there should be a blue plaque in the places he didn’t stay. H de VS’s booklet starts by advising us that “The call comes for a re-issue of my Notes on the ancient Church of S. Boniface”, which you’ll agree is a slightly pompous opening. (I have a good antenna for pomposity.) I don’t know why I’m so down on the guy - I just get a sense of haughtiness and self-importance. Actually, once you get used to his florid Victorian style, it makes for an interesting read. At the end, amazingly, there is a list of every rector of the church from 1283 onwards, starting with a gentleman called Ricardus de Leckford. History, folks - you can’t beat it.

All good things come to an end, and in 1848, everyone got fed up with banging their heads on the ceiling every time they stood up to sing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’, so rubbing their bruises, they all decamped to a newly built church up the road - the current St. Boniface Church.

Ewan and I both noticed a preponderance of benches in Bonchurch and, come to think of it, in Ventnor and across the Island. I suppose there must be a correlation between the number of benches in a place and how pretty that place is. I was in Stoke-on-Trent once with my brother Pete and don't recall too many benches, - though we were enjoying the Potteries Beer Festival and so I may not have been at my most observant. 

Many of the benches on the Island are in entirely sensible places; placing a bench in front of a nice view of the sea is a logical decision taken by a bespectacled, conscientious and diligent member of any council, and I applaud that official; I can picture him or her with a furrowed brow working out the exact placement of said outdoor, timber seat (I mean he or she has the furrowed brow, not me). 

But I do wonder if the member of the Parish Council responsible for benches in Bonchurch had enjoyed one or two lunchtime pints of Goddards (the oldest brewery on the Island) prior to deciding where to place the benches in that village. We came across one (a bench, not a bespectacled council official) in the middle of a road outside a house. Also, how wide does it need to be to be called a bench? This was half a bench at most, with only room for one person - or half an American. So basically it's a chair. But because 'bench' is the only word for an outdoor seated area, we can't differentiate between a bench for two or more people, or a bench for one. I accept this is pedantic, but imagine the consequences if you met three people on a walk desperate for a rest.

"Excuse me. Sorry to bother you. We've walked for miles and are exhausted and Granny's lumbago is playing up. Do you know if there's a bench nearby we can rest on".

"Yes", you answer. "Round that corner. You can't miss it. It's dedicated to Anita Dump, 1878 - 1943."

You mention this because this is the other law of benches. They are always dedicated to someone who has died, in the way that no other furniture is. I mean I'm not writing this sitting on a sofa dedicated to Mr. Ernest Phartington, 1913 - 1988, am I! On the path below the ‘churchette’, opposite a beautiful miniature waterfall, there’s a bench which simply and poignantly states 'Jane's Bench’. I liked that very much.

Twenty minutes later, you see the three of them sitting on each others' laps on Anita Dump's bench (though obviously the person on the bottom wasn't on anyone's lap, but you see what I mean). The exhausted ramblers abuse you (especially Granny), claiming you didn't inform them that it could only accommodate one person or half an American. So you see it could have serious consequences; we need a name for a bench for one person. Suggestions on a postcard. Or via Snapchat.

As we walked back to Albert Street I was pontificating to Ewan. I'm an able and experienced pontificator, as I may have referenced before.

"It's good to get out, isn't it, Ewan?", I preached. "Firstly, it breaks the day up, secondly it's good exercise, and thirdly, it's good to get to know your local area, don't you agree?"

He looked at me with exasperation, trying to rein in his disdain.

"Why do you always say such obvious things?"

Then he went up to his room to resume writing his book on General Elections since World War II.

We ended the Easter weekend by coming 4th out of 9 in a quiz at the Ventnor Exchange, in which we learnt amongst other things that Don Maclean’s American Pie was about the death of not just Buddy Holly, but also Ritchie Vallens and a chap called JD ‘The Big Bopper’ Richardson. There were no questions on the Battle of Bonchurch or the Italian War of the 1540s.