Coffee with All4Cure - Jean

I live on the beautiful island of Guernsey in the Channel Islands which is between the UK and France. I’ve lived here for 21 years now. Previous to that, I came from the northeast of England, where it’s a jolly sight colder, so basically I just kept moving south until I found here and I adore it! We’ve been very lucky here, in that we, for months now, have had no COVID-19 cases. We recently had one, which was traced, and sort of not a problem and since the end of April, we’ve been living as normal. Here, if you didn’t know there was a problem outside, everything is just normal. It is great and, of course, easy to do when you can control the borders of an island. The main thing that has changed is that nobody is keen to travel. I have two sons, one who lives in Australia and another who lives in the northwest of England where I also have two small grandchildren, William and Bear, who are eight and ten, two bonus grandsons Sam and Harry through my son’s second wife Sally. Jessica is my very special and only granddaughter who is 24. They’re in a lockdown situation at the moment so I haven’t seen them for the whole of this year. Naturally, we can FaceTime and what have you, but that’s not the same as giving someone you love a hug! While I have lots of friends on the island I don’t have any family here. Normally, my two grandsons come here in August for a week without their parents. They love it here because they have the freedom that they don’t have at home. They can go cycling on the roads, it’s only a 10-minute walk to the beach, and even at their young age I can let them do things on their own because Guernsey is a really safe place to be. Provided we’ve got good weather, there would be lots of nice things for them to do here. It’s just a very difficult situation at the moment.

I was diagnosed with myeloma in 2014. Like a lot of people who are diagnosed, I had never even heard of the disease. We don’t even have a myeloma specialist on Guernsey, the island where I live. I had to go to London to see a specialist at the Royal Marsden. I asked all the questions, including asking what the prognosis was. At that time, it was ten years. I said well… I’m about to change that then! Prior to my diagnosis, I had met some girls who do Morris dancing and I was wanting to learn how to play the concertina. The group practice is Monday evening for two hours. Back in January 2015, I was going to have to stay in the area for treatment, normally I do lots of traveling, so I thought, ‘You know what? I can join the Morris dancing group now!’ Choosing to dance with the troupe was a decision that came out of adversity. Of course, energy levels weren’t the best in the initial stages, but the group hung on with me. They didn’t tell anybody what my problem was. I think I’m one of the eldest people in the group, so already I didn’t want that nor the fact that I had a health problem to colour people’s opinions of me. I just wanted to be treated the same as everyone else. And there was a lot to learn. We do dance-outs; we had one the other day at a retro festival here. I’m very keen on trying to keep myself as fit as I possibly can. I sort of believe that the fitter you are, the better you deal with things. So I’m a gym girl, and I play golf, and I dance. I feel very lucky and grateful for my friends and family.

I’ve always wanted to have a camper van. Last year I thought, you know, there’s no pockets in shrouds, I’m going to go ahead and do this. I did all the research to try to determine which type of van to go for. I think you probably never choose the right one because there’s always something maybe a bit bigger or a bit better. Anyhow, I bought a camper van in September of last year and had planned to do all sorts of things with it. Just after I bought it, I had spent some time in the UK and then had about ten days in France with my brother, which was really good. He and I have a sibling trip every year. The last time I’ve gone away in the van was February, the beginning of March and it’s done nothing since! It’s just been sitting on the drive. I sort of took it around the island and sat with a girlfriend playing cards in it. We were looking out at a lovely view and this guy came up saying ‘Do you want to sell your camper van?’ and my friend said, ‘She’s just bought it!!!’ I believe the interest in campers in the UK has grown exponentially. You can travel around, you’ve got your own toilet, you don’t have to go into services and you can be relatively self-contained. I had all sorts of plans this year that I’ve not been able to do. I’m hoping in December I’ll be able to go over to the UK in it. I’m planning with my brother and his wife to go to Scotland for Christmas, so we will see.