There is only so much bad news I can absorb. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention recently added four European destinations to its highest-risk category for travelHungary, Iceland, the Czech Republic and Guernsey. I can accept not being able to travel to Hungary, Iceland or the Czech Republic, but I don’t know how I am going to survive not being able to go to Guernsey.
Forgive me CDC, but I always thought Guernsey was a kind of cow, not a destination. I know nobody who has been to Guernsey, and it certainly is not on my list of travel destinations. (I apologize to the 63,000 people who call Guernsey home.) When Guernsey is linked with three well known countries, I can only think of the Sesame song, “One of these things is not like the others; one of these things does not belong.”
Okay, now I have to find out what and where Guernsey is, since it is apparently more than a breed of dairy cows. Guernsey is a bailiwick, whatever a bailiwick is, and it is located in the Channel Islands off of England. We who live here in Southern California are apparently not the only ones who have Channel Islands on our horizon.
The French and the Brits played tug of war with this island until a Pope issued a Papal bull in 1483 declaring Guernsey neutral. The neutrality only lasted a century when the English took it over. As a bailiwick, Guernsey is one of three Crown Dependencies run by a bailiff, whatever a bailiff is.
The weather is temperate there with fields of tomatoes and herds of dairy cows. The island actually hosts a great many tourists although I will not be one for the foreseeable future because I can see tomato fields and Guernsey cows in New Jersey. And because of the CDC, I can’t go there even if I wanted to, which I don’t.
There is a street in Malibu which is namedyou guessed it”Guernsey.” I assume I can still go there despite Covid restrictions, and I have an infinitely better chance of being spotted there than on the bailiwick, whatever that is.