If it's not too dear...

My journey to the Isle of Wight was free of incident. The high-speed passnger ferry (a catamaran) gives the crossing more of the feel of a short airplane flight than an adventure on the high seas, but I compensated as best I could by listening on my portable CD player to that immortal sea chanty, "Chicken on a Raft". (If you don't know, don't ask!)

It is no exaggeration to say that within ten minutes of landing I had found (without looking) an antiquarian bookstore, and within ten minutes after that I had purchased a very nice edition of the "Memoirs of Giacomo Casanova". Fortuitous, that. Only the night before I had been watching the BBC miniseries, wondering in which Bodleian library I could find the original source, and whether it was still in print. So, three hardback volumes, £15 for the set, not bad. But heavy to carry!

The Island is very mediterranean in feel. The sun is brilliant, the sea is blue, the grass is parched, and there are palm trees everywhere. With all the houses painted white, it hardly seems like England at all.

After dropping my bags off at the hostel, I went out to see Sandown, which didn't take much time. It is a small, fading, somewhat naff resort town, like a significantly less exciting and less busy version of Scarborough. I got some lunch in Somerfields and then after some searching found a shady, leaft vantage point whence to sit, eat, look at the sea and admire my new purchase. There is a pleasure pier, but sitting in the gardens and watching the ships go by far out to sea is much more pleasant.

It is shocking how much of Casanova is straight out of the book. I had assumed that RTD just made up most of the plot, but it isn't so. The two sisters... the castrato... all true. There is nothing new under the sun, saith the historia, and feels rather pleased with herself.

This morning I went off with Xenia, a girl who is staying in my dorm at the hostel, to sit on the beach near Shanklin. She is doing an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent, and does lots of coastal walking. An interesting sort, fervent believer in astrology and comparative literature. We talked, and waded, and all in all it was a pleasant morning.

The park in which I sat to have my lunch after coming back is like something out of the 1950s. Putting greens, croquet lawn... no trees... the wide blue sky... Technicolour beds of marigolds... and exposure to the bright sun seemed to have faded everything else: the short grass, the greens themselves, the flags of the ice cream stand, the signs of the tea garden. Elderly people and small families wandered by, or played golf quietly and very intently. If I had taken a photo I'm sure that it would look just like one of those old postcards from Butlin's. A place out of time...

Back to the hostel to take a shower now, and then off to the wedding!