A HOLIDAY ON THE ISLE OF MAN always seems to remind me of certain qualities of Britishness, or even, paradoxically, Englishness, that have disappeared from the face of life in the United Kingdom itself, of which the good island is not a part. Almost as soon as one boards ship in Liverpool before embarking upon the 72 mile journey to Douglas one begins to feel as if time is being turned back.
CONFIRMATION OF THIS IS PROVIDED by the impressions upon arrival and the short walk to my hotel on the bay: smart, friendly policemen with apparently nothing to do, steam trains, horse-drawn trams, white walls without graffiti, pints of beer at a pound, a double whisky for one pound seventy pence and then the receptionist at my hotel addressing me by my title and surname. There is also other evidence of England in the nineteen-forties which I must not mention for fear of being clapped in irons.
NOTHING APPEARS TO HAVE CHANGED on Man and Sodor for at least fifty years if not more. One feels strangely cut off from the real world, thrust back into a bygone age and out of touch with today. The curious animal life, such as the cats without tails and the odd Loaghtan sheep (above) with four or even six horns, seems to be the result of close inbreeding.
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH THE ROYAL FAMILY? I imagine you may be asking. The reason is that this brief holiday was curtailed in order for my good lady wife to be present for the wedding today of our dashing Prince William and his paramour Catherine Middleton, an actress who, I believe, played Hermione in the dreaded Harry Potter films, and who has since grown up.
WE FELT THAT CELEBRATION OF THIS EVENT should not be spent eerily trapped in a past that stubbornly refuses to move forwards – we can leave that to the Windsors themselves.
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