Unrealistic Life Ambitions, No. 153: Get an actual, physical valley renamed "The Uncanny Valley"

There's a concept in robotics known as the "Uncanny Valley", which basically states that as humanoid robots get more and more realistic, people will become more and more comfortable with their presence - right up until the point where they are almost perfect. At that point, they are near enough to being human to make it seem like they actually are human, but...slightly "off" in some way. It's this that's supposed to be so uncanny, the feeling that although things seem almost normal, there is something very subtly but very deeply wrong. I think that's been reached in a few cases (see this video for an example of AAAGH GOOD GRIEF IT'S ALIVE), but perhaps more interestingly, the same principle is also applicable to other situations.

The experience of visiting another place, another culture, is one that can often qualify as "uncanny". The only places outside the UK that I've visited for more than a day at a time definitely count, these being Uganda (a former British colony, where everyone drives on the left, the road signs are the same as in the UK, and almost everyone in towns speaks English) and Jersey, where the most obvious cultural ties are to the UK, but things are still...very slightly odd.

The most obvious way you'll see the difference if you visit is in the amount of influence France has had on the island. Being so much nearer to France than to the UK mainland (the French coast is clearly visible from a number of around the island, whereas I don't think England is at all), it's not at all unusual for street names, castle names and geographical features to have French names, or sometimes names in the closely-related dialect of Jèrriais. Less obviously, but arguably more importantly, Jersey Legal French is the official language of legislation and so on, meaning that buying a house on the island involves negotiating in a completely different language to the one that you're used to. Some of the little twisting lanes in the villages even look like they're in France - and yet, everyone's speaking English, the signs are in English, and the general culture is undoubtedly that of Middle England, just with a dash of extra sunshine.

The sunshine, in fact, is another oddity. Being so far south (about 100 miles south of the UK mainland), the climate is generally much more pleasant than what we're used to over here, and your shadow is noticeably smaller. It's also much easier to get sunburnt - I'm still a bit pink, and I was there a whole 2 weeks ago now. But because the sea is always so close, the climate is variable enough that, just as in the UK, the weather is a major topic of conversation, as it can turn horrible very quickly.

The fact that the island is so small - nine miles by five, meaning that it is sadly far too tiny to put the whole world on it - has more effects than just on the weather. Despite the strict speed limits and tiny twisty roads (and often heavy traffic), it is still perfectly possible to get from one side of the island to the other in under half an hour, meaning that all of the kinds of terrain present, beach, cliffs, fields, small hills and towns, are crammed in right next to each other. The ability to walk out of a town and suddenly be in rural countryside, with seagulls wheeling overhead, is downright weird.

The last aspect of out-of-key-ness that you'll find on Jersey, and possibly the msot disturbing one, is the quiet. The island's status as a tax haven means that the population demographics are skewed towards the richer end of the spectrum, and that in turn means that quite a lot of the property is owned by the kind of person who actually lives in, say, the Algarve, and jets in occasionally to check how their cash is getting along. The effect of this is to make the villages into very well-kept and very smart ghost towns - you can walk along the road, with nothing but the odd shiny 4x4 swishing by, and see only other tourists pottering about. In its own way, it's a little sinister. You half expect to see Hercule Poirot strolling down the road, ready to interview the dysfunctional group of suspects who have gathered in the drawing room to discover who has committed the terrifying, gruesome murder. Meanwhile, just down the road, St. Helier (the only town of any note) is pretty much like any other town in the UK.

Jersey's a lovely place, in its own way, but it really is odd. It's not quite Britain, but it's not remotely France - it's just a bit otherworldly, almost outside the normal rules of time and space. It's really not at all surprising that it's a popular tourist destination...but I do find it odd that people from the UK do frequently end up settling there. You'd have thought that they would have had enough weirdness with the state of their home country, really.