Stare as Long as Sheep or Cows

Time on the Isle of Man

“No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.”

-               William Henry Davies

My wanders around the British Isles took me, now and then, to the really quite tiny and totally perfect Isle of Man.

There is nothing anyone can say and no evidence anyone can show me which could convince me that this is anything other than a perfect place. My feelings about the island were not influenced by the things I saw there or the people I met, though they were all wonderful, I have simply loved it since first sight.

It is home to 83,314 very lucky people and that is the perfect size for a community. That’s about the same size as Weston-Super-Mare or Hemel Hempstead or Twickenham stadium but they’ve got an entire island all to themselves. You can be fairly self-sufficient with that number of people but it’s not such a huge number that you can’t imagine it all in one place.

Perfect

The island itself is perfect, did I mention that? It’s just thirty-three miles long and thirteen wide; it’s the sort of size where a person could get to know it properly in a lifetime. The island also packs in every kind of view that you could wish for. The coastline is glorious and has everything that the coastline of the neighbouring larger island has. It really is worth taking time here to take in the views and, somehow, the pace of life seems to allow for that.

The island’s mountain, Snaefell, is over 2,000 feet high and, on a clear day, gives you a view of the seven kingdoms: Scotland; England; Ireland; Wales; Mann; the kingdom of Neptune, the sea; and the kingdom of heaven. Okay, that’s tourist schtick and clear days on Snaefell are as common as politician’s straight answers but I do love the place. I am behaving well in this life in the hope that I can be reincarnated as someone who lives on the Isle of Man their entire life next time round.

Speaking of politicians, no-one has been at the politician game longer than the Isle of Man. Their parliament, the Tynwald, has been in existence longer than any other, or so they say. They celebrated a thousand years of continuous existence in 1979, even though the evidence for there having been a Tynwald in 979 is a tiny bit non-existent.

Tynwald comes from a Norse word meaning a meeting place or even an open place, it may be where we get the word “weald” from, too. Like many of the newer parliaments, such as Britain’s, it has two houses: the directly elected House of Keys, which has twenty-four members – two for each constituency - and the Legislative Council which has just eleven members. That’s a good size for a parliament. With that many people involved, you might even be able to achieve something rather than just talk it to death. Everyone over sixteen can vote for Members of the House of Keys and those members then vote on who should be in the Legislative Council. Nobody has tenure beyond five years and, indeed, after five years on the Legislative Council, you leave and are replaced.

The Tynwald generally sits in Douglas, the island’s capital, except on Tynwald Day - 5^th July - when they meet in an open-air ceremony on Tynwald Hill which, even in July, is a brave step on a tiny island in the middle of the Irish Sea. Douglas is where around a third of all islanders live and where I generally stayed when I was on the island. To get there is a twenty-minute taxi ride from the airport. The first part of the journey is along the island’s only dual carriageway, all 1,407 feet of it. After that it’s country roads all the way to Douglas. The things that you pass give you a flavour of the island.

First of them is the Fairy Bridge, a tiny road bridge over the Santon Burn. By tiny, I don’t mean fairy-sized, it’s a proper bridge for cars and things. Our taxi driver informed us that it was tradition to wave and say hello to the fairies as we crossed the bridge. In fact, he made it pretty plain that if any of us middle-aged men in business suits failed to greet the fairies when we reached the bridge, he would be taking us no further. Apparently, buses passing over the bridge have a tannoy announcement requiring people to say good day to the little people.

Mooinjer Veggey

I’m not entirely sure how seriously most of the residents take the tradition, it could well be something that they take seriously only when visitors are present. Either way, I have never crossed this bridge without greeting the Mooinjer veggey and I’ve visited more than a dozen times and often crossed the bridge five times in a visit. Soon after the bridge is Murray’s Motorcycle Museum, I think that Murray should go the whole alliterative hog and insert the word Manx in there but, nevertheless, it’s a museum dedicated to motorcycles. There are lots and lots of motorcycles, there are models of motorcycles, there are pictures of motorcycles and there’s a whole load more motorcycle memorabilia. That’s what it should be Murray’s Marvellously Massive Manx Museum of Motorcycles, Motorcycle Models, Motorcycle Montages and Motorcycle Memorabilia.

Motorcycles aren’t just a big deal for Murray, they’re a big deal everywhere on the island. It doesn’t matter when you visit, the date will be counted as weeks from or weeks to the TT races. Halloween? Bonfire Night? Christmas? You can stick them all up your arse, what these people care about is the TT.

The Tourist Trophy races have been held here every year, except during the two world wars, since 1907. That year the fastest rider was Charlie Collier who clocked an average speed of 38.21 miles per hour on his 431cc Matchless motorcycle producing three and a half horsepower. The record is currently held by Peter Hickman who rode a two hundred and one horsepower BMW S1000RR which took him to an average speed of 135.452 miles per hour. That’s his average, by the way, top speeds approach two hundred miles per hour. That’s on public roads, okay, they’re closed by an Act of Tynwald on race days but they’re the same roads.

One famous fan of the TT races was Fairhaven resident, George Formby. His third film, the one that really shot him to stardom, was No Limit which sees him playing George Shuttleworth, a Wigan chimney sweep with a dream of winning the TT. The big song from the movie, which George sings on a train on his way to catch the boat to the island, is called Riding in the TT Races. The climax of the film sees George in the lead but he runs out of petrol and has to push the bike to the finish. I won’t tell you how it ends because I don’t want to spoil a movie you’ve only had eighty-odd years to catch. It was filmed on a hot day in June and the finale had to be shot fifteen times. Formby really did collapse after crossing the finishing line and that’s the take that’s in the film, I’m telling you no more than that.

Wisdom

He’s not the only comic film star connected to the island. It was, for many years, the home of Norman Wisdom. After leaving the army at the age of thirty-one, Norman broke into showbusiness and was best known for the movies he made throughout the 1950s and 60s. He had been married during his time in the army but the marriage was dissolved, mainly it seems due to the fact that his wife had a baby and Norman was not the father; that sort of thing can make relationships tricky.

He married again in 1947 but they divorced in 1969 and Norman was granted full custody of the two children from that marriage. He purposely turned down work to be a father to his two teenage children. He first visited the Isle of Man in 1978 for a summer season at the Gaiety Theatre in Douglas. He fell in love with the island, as I have, and lived here from 1980 until his death in 2010. There is still a statue of him, sat on a bench outside the Sefton Hotel on the promenade, the first hotel I stayed in.

It was while staying here that I first noticed that my feet were getting really hot and the skin was very dry. Having spent most of the last year walking fifteen thousand steps a day, I assumed that this was the cause. It wasn’t, but I wouldn’t find out what the cause really was for almost three years. It was also here that, for the very first time, at the age of forty-five, I used a bidet for its designed purpose. I’d occasionally stayed in hotels on the continent which had bidets but I just hadn’t tried one. I just hadn’t got round to it before, okay? Nobody said I was sophisticated. Let’s just say that I found it to be very effective and refreshing and much easier than doing a handstand in the shower. Washing my feet really cooled them down.

See some more images from my visits to this marvellous island here.