The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a wonderful book that gives some historical background on Guernsey during and just after World War II.  My mother lent me her copy to read when it became clear that I would be moving here.

In addition to being a good story, the book gave me some interesting historical background on Guernsey.  It also meant that when I was telling people I would be moving to Guernsey at least some people had heard of the place.  Not to bias any potential readers as to the type of story it is, but my unofficial sampling was that almost no men had ever heard of Guernsey, while about 75% of women had heard of it - mostly due to the book.  However, I should note that there was the occasional person that had heard of Guernsey cows.

My mother’s book club read the book just before I moved here.  I can only begin to imagine the amount of joy that it must have brought her to be able to tell her friends that her son was moving to Guernsey.

One of the authors of the book (Annie Barrows) is just now in Guernsey for the Guernsey Literary Festival.  Today, I went to her very entertaining presentation and I’m happy to report that my mother’s copy of the book will soon be making the long trip back to Olympia with a little extra writing in it.

As an example of how small a place Guernsey can be, I was having a drink with a friend last night at a local hotel bar.  Sitting at the table next to us thoroughly enjoying a book she was reading was none other than - Annie Barrows. 

The current rumor is that the book is supposed to be made into a film with Kate Winslet linked to the project.  I hope to be able to report on some Kate Winslet sightings in the near future.

The Coach House

The place where I am currently living is called The Coach House.  It’s common here for buildings to have names instead of house numbers, but both do exist.  [More on this later.] 

I have two floors above a garage.  Unfortunately, the landlord has the garage.  I’m in a part of town that has some nice views over the harbor and the castle.  I have a nice view of my neighbors.

The lower floor has a kitchen/dining area, a lounge (living room), and a small bedroom.  The kitchen has some very small appliances – a stove, a dishwasher, a refrigerator, a separate freezer, and a washer/dryer.  Since the place is furnished, the kitchen came well stocked with gadgets, including quite a few things that I can only guess at what they’re for.

The upper floor has a bathroom and a larger bedroom.  The bathroom actually has both a bath tub and a separate shower stall.  Unfortunately, I can’t stand up straight in the shower and I don’t dare drop anything.

The place is heated by hot water circulating in radiators from a small boiler in the kitchen.  The temperature is hard to regulate since the heat is either on or off.  Now, I’m starting to wonder if the place will be too hot if it gets warm in the summer (even with the heat off).  I’m counting on the constant wind and abundant windows on the upper floor to provide natural air conditioning.

Overall the place is older looking on the outside, but fairly modern on the inside.  The front door uses a skeleton key to lock from the inside or outside.  If you don’t know what a skeleton key is, I suggest asking your oldest living relative.

Finding a Place to Live

It’s not easy finding a place to live when you don’t know the area very well and you currently live about 5,000 miles away.  I knew I would be in Guernsey at the end of October, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to investigate the housing market.  My boss gave me the name of some estate agents to contact as a starting point.  I was able to do some looking on the internet to get some background information.  My plan was to call each of the three companies to try to arrange a few hours with each to see places when I would be in Guernsey.  Unfortunately, the people I talked to were not very customer service oriented, and seemed to be putting up lots of road blocks to work with me.  Hmmm, isn’t your job to match a place to live with a willing renter?  With some persistence, I managed to convince three people to at least consider the idea.

Most places to rent are listed with only one estate agent, so you have to work with several at one time to get a good feel for the market.  [It’s basically the same idea when buying, but we’ll come back to that later.]  When visiting Guernsey, I was hoping to see a wide variety of places to get an idea of location, pricing, and what was available.  Two of the three agents didn’t seem like they wanted to show me many places and certainly did not want to spend too much time with me.  The third was much more patient and really seemed to understand my situation.  Between the three of them, I started to get a good feel for where places are on the island and how much I could get for my money.  There were places close to the office and places in the middle of the “country”; places in basements and upper floor apartments with nice sea views; one apartment that smelled bad and one with a nice view of the power station.  The one common thing is that all of the places seemed pretty small and with very little storage space!  It seemed like the best thing was to have an in-town location convenient to the office to start.  I could then further investigate locations after I arrived.  In the end, there were several that stood out above the rest and one place in particular that I really liked.  Now, I had to wait for my housing license.

When the housing license came through a few weeks later, I made arrangements for another trip to Guernsey with the intent of signing a contract on a place to live.  As expected, the license gave me access to local market housing, which basically means that I can legally occupy any housing on the island.  However, there is a catch.  I am assigned a number (TRP) that sets a minimum size of place I can occupy.  This helps to ensure an affordable housing market for true locals.  My TRP would be about right if I had a family of four or so.  Fortunately, they have an exception that anyone can occupy a two bedrooms or smaller place regardless of TRP. 

When I visited in December, I asked each of the three estate agents to show me the best of what was available at the time based on my criteria.  Unfortunately, my favorite place from the first round had just been rented.  I saw about 10 places – two stood out from the rest (one that I had seen in October).  In the end, I went for the smaller of the two places.  It seemed like a better fit, and it came furnished (I had no idea how long it would take my furniture to be shipped).  I was also glad that it was listed with the estate agent that seemed most interested in having my business.

So, I signed a one year lease and put down a deposit on The Coach House (more details coming).

If you are curious about the Guernsey housing market:

http://www.swoffers.co.uk/