Harry Connick Jnr & Hooters

Where to start? its only been a few days since my last post but so much has happened in that time its quite hard to get it in order! My friends are now in their new home, I would like to say settled but you know what its like when you move with boxes everywhere even after you have filled the new cuboards to capacity you are left with a stack of boxes and wondering where you fitted it all in in the last house. I have to say the new place is impressive. These yanks do know about space! A map to get around in here would be an advantage compared to what most of us in the UK are used to but hey its their way and I for one can see why! On Sunday a perfectly good concert ticket was wasted upon me. Now this was a treat for which I am thankful but I had no clue who the chap on stage was. I am reliably informed it was Harry Connick Jnr who is a big music star who has done some acting as well. A local priest had convinced him to come to a small church (St Marks Catholic) in a small town (Richmond, Kentucky) which for a "big star" is something they rarely do...especially for free! It was a fundraiser for the church's school so a good cause and was full of the full range of suitably doe eyed women along wih boyfriends and husbands who would have rather been somewhere else. Now hang on I think I may be being a bit harsh there as most were having a really good time. In fact I only met 4 other people outside sneaking a smoke whilst the gig was on and out of a capacity crowd of 500 that really is impressive. In fact a capacity crowd of 500 hundred for this level of star in the US is unheard of as its so small so it shows the dedication and persuation of the priest. I was more inclined/amazed with the church itself. I dont think I have ever seen such dedication of religion within a church which is a poor reflection on the state of and lack of faith that now rests within our UK based society. Alot of those followers do pay for the priviledge I have since found out up to 10% of their wages monthly to the church so it does beg the thought of what reasons you may have to buy your way into the great beyound. BUT who am I to judge on what peoples faith is and what brings them comfort even if its at such a cost. The gig went well and I have to admit the band and the singer (The Harry chap) were very good and my friends enjoyed it immensley but the most positive point was $40,000 raised for the school!! Still dont have much of a clue who he was though! Now today was my friends youngest daughters 11th Birthday. How did she want to mark the passing of this day????????? A trip to eat at Hooters! Now of course neither myself or my male friend had no complaints of passing a few hours surrounded by 20 something busty women in tight clothing so off we went. My admition here is that I have never been to a Hooters before. Well the food was good (another american first of a steak Philly sandwich) and the view was most welcome, in a strictly male getting older sort of way remembering your youth whilst convincing yourself that the waitresses really like you even though they see you as their Dads but are being sooo nice because you WILL give them a good tip, and the waiting staff were all very good looking. Apart from ours.... who in all honesty looked like someone had locked her in a cuboard for three months without food and then had dragged her out and backed a pick up truck into her face for good measure! Now being the male Adonis that me and my mate are we were a little dissapointed in this situation but put up with it because A) The British would never like to cause a scene and B) she was very friendly just doing her job to earn a crust with her very big breasts. This paints us out to be letch's but we most definetly are not. We looked at all the breasts in the place and even compared notes so one poor waitress didnt have to put up with all of our attention. All jesting aside the service (food nothing naughty) was superb and the staff sang their version of Happy Birthday to my friends daughter which is a converted clean army song and we all had a very pleasent evening being served "Pitchers" of beer. Theres another American first "a pitcher". You want 3 beers? Have 5 in a pitcher instead!! Suprisingly it never went flat or got warm????????????? How I have no idea but it couyldnt be the rate at which we were drinking it surley ;) I had the pleasure of picking up a few DIY bits from the local store and can report that all DIY stores across the pond look like any DIY store back home. In fact I think they share floor plan designs because everything was also in the same place within the store as at home. Suprisingly the costs are about the same as well. Food update: I have had a Wendys, Starbucks, Subway, Mcplastic, Steak & Shake, Dominoes and a chinese in carboard square boxes. I have had waffles for breakfast which were not sweet like I expected. The full on takeaway menu is of course because of my friends move and the lack of a plumbed in cooker. We are all looking forward to some proper home cooked food now as no one can live on take out for long LOL. I have been to an American sports bar and these guys love their sport!! The atmosphere resembled that of a capacity crowd in a football stadium!! I wish I had their passion! So all in all having a great time with plenty of time left to go. Plans for the weekend are seeing my other friends upstate so I will see some more of this state and report accourdingly.

Jet Lag

Well heres a new experience. Jet lag.

After 32 hours of travelling with the total of 3 hours broken sleep over that time I mentally had sorted out the time differewnce between the UK and Kentucky. (Kentucky are 4 hours behind at the moment but at the weeknd will become 5 hours behind as we enter British Summer time)

I awoke this morning well slept and refreshed with about 6hours sleep, my usual, under my belt. Come lunchtime though my body decided that I had turned quite mad and why wasnt I sleeping more, feeding it more and totally confused with the whole situation! A couple of hours kip seems to have sorted it though and I am quite surpisingly finding myself ready for yet another good nights sleep. Now I am sure that is more an age thing than anything else!

It has surpirsed me how much further your cash can go here the the USA. The average price of a 3 bed home in the UK is now £160,000 but here for that you get a mansion that that would cost in excess of £500,000. Now I know its all relative on the local economy but my god what a difference in standards of living. Yes, it would seem, that here in the USA the old adage of "everything is bigger" would stand true.

All of these observations are of course coming through a first time visitors eyes and I will of course only see the more positive and impressive side of things to start with. But I hope that as im here for a while the novelty will wear through and I will see the true way of the day to day living here.

I am taking great pleasure in ripping the micheal out of my friends new yanky accents, they have been here for 4 years, but the locals are convinced they still have a UK accent which is laughable. Poor buggers talk about getting the pissm taking from both sides!

We have spent the evening in a typical American sports bar where the food and beer is plentiful along with 3 minute intervals of being asked if "is everything ok?" These guys do customer service to the extreme!! Could it wear thin quickly?? I expect so but not in a bad way...they want a good tip!

So so far what I have seen about America in films and on the box is standing true. People seem to think im from Australia but thats apperantly is not uncommon!

There will be pics soon well as soon as I have taken some but give me few days because we start my friends big move in the mornijng and that will take a few days.

So with that in mind im signing off, having a brew and hopefully a full nights sleep in preperation for the hard day ahead.

Off to America!

Well I sit here at Gatwick Airport at a stupid hour in the morning after having to travel down by train last night. I have spent a wonderful night propped up on a plastic chair that must have been designed so you could not sit in it for more than 3 minutes at a time so you will wander the shops a bit more and hand over your hard earned cash.

Why spend a night at Gatwick I hee you thinking??? Well it was all very last minute but some friends in America are moving house this weekend and called and asked if I would like a free holiday in return for humping a few boxes around! After checking with wifey to see if I was allowed how could I say no!???

So it was a mad dash to sort out insurance and the visa to get into america as well as realising the cheapest way to get to Gatwick from Nottingham was on a train but because of the early morning flight I would have to spend the night at the airport and with hotels at over £100 for the night there was no way I was stretching to that for what would have been about 4 hours!

So with book in hand I spent the night awake switching between reading and the strange going ons of an airport at night. Now I have to say most work at an airport is a thankless task as us travellers take no heed or notice of how well the place is kept clean and maintained, in fact I would go as far as saying we only notice when something goes wrong or is broken.

The whole airport ran down to peace from travellers at about 1.30 am and started filling up again at 4.00am so not much of a window for the amount of work that gets down including their current refurbishment work!

It also surprised me how many people actually spend the night waiting in an airport! I thought I was the only tight bugger who would put up with the discomfort to save money but there were loads of folk!

Went to check in this morning and the airline had no record of my ticket but found it in the end after much scrabbling about on their computer systems and they grilled me on why I only bought my ticket yesterday? What difference does it make when it was bought? A bus driver doesnt ask if you want to get on his bus "Now???" when you buy a ticket so why an airline? I figure of course its because in their eyes we are all potential criminals which is now a sad presumtion of life. Innocent until proven guilty?? My arse!

Anyhow Kentucky here I come and seeing as I have never done America before this should be good.

The Pleasure of Kids.

Of course I am being sarcastic here. Thankfully my tribe are old enough so that they entertain themselves alot of the time so no more tripping over toys or having a kid stuck to my hip. But with age there has been a new and improved side that comes through via larger circles of their friends.

Im talking about sickness bugs. My youngest went to stay overnight with her friend on Friday night and unbeknown to me until I collected her on Saturday morning her friends Dad was down with a sickness & squits bug. Well that took all of 24 hours to hit my youngest who spent most of yesterday and last night alternating between her bed and the bathroom.

Being made of sterner stuff I of course was not in the least bit worried about catching a bit of a bug until I arrived bright eyed and bushy tailed to the noise of my alarm clock this morning. It took all of 15 minutes before I was sat proud the King upon my throne with my daughter knocking on the door desperate to be in the same place.

Well it seemed to pass quickly enough and off to work I went which is thankfully only just over a mile away. That didnt last long in fact I was there for a whole hour and twenty minutes, mostly in the toilet. I was then sent off site before I infected the other lads LOL so here I am babling on endlessly to whoever reads this wondering what I will do with the day???


Whatever it is it will be with 15 feet of the toilet!

A big fat update.

Ok then its time for a big fat update. Since it was last November when I posted theres been a fair bit going on....ish.

Christmas was the usual mix of pressure to spend money on gifts for relatives from whom you never here from the rest of the year. Then there was the running around to various other relations over Christmas and Boxing day including the Inlaws. Still we came through unscathed and thank god its over for the best part of another year perhaps buggering off for the next one is a good idea! LOL

The hunt for work was on and took far too long to get something. Best part of 3 months to get in on a refurbishment project at a local Mental Health Hospital which can be, lets say, interesting at times with the patients/inmates/clients (or whatever the bloody PC word is this week) coming in and out of what is a building site and us trying to convince them there is a new entrance around the corner before they explode into violence!
Thankfully I have my Nursing experience to fall back on so it doesnt bother me much but the other guys onsite havnt a clue and look terrified most of the time!! Still just goes to show how much ignorance there still is out there in society about such issues. Many still are of the ilk "its not happening to me so I will bury my head in the sand." Its a shame as im sure if there was a bit more education in schools about such things the world just may be a bit of a better place.

I had to put wifeys car through the dreaded MOT. Now I was actually hoping the horrible little pile of crap would fail, its a Hyundai Atoz of which I am not a fan, but no the bloody thing passed with only a CV boot needing replacing! So looks like Im stuck looking at an old T reg battered and dented Hyundai parked on my driveway covered in DOZENS AND DOZENS OF FLOWER STICKERS!!!!! Still she loves it for some reason and a car is a VERY personal choice eh!

My crimbo present this year was an incubator for hatching poultry eggs. Now this is by far the best gift I have ever received!! So far I have hatched 6 Serama (smallest chicken in the world) and 10 Light Sussex chicks. Most have been sold with me just keeping a couple to grow on. These are absolutely hilarious things when they hatch and its an amazing process as well. Take the egg you would quite happily eat pop it in an incubator for 3 weeks and hay presto little fluffy chicks! My plan is to keep hatching over the spring and early summer and as I sell the chicks the cash goes into another pot that pays for the feed etc for my other big chickens! My constant flock at the moment stands at 3 Jubilee Orpingtons, 1 Marsh Daisy, 2 red ones (got given them so havnt a clue), 1 white one (same again), 2 Light Sussex, 1 Aruacana and 2 Ducklings!!!!!!!

Now you would think with that lot we would never have to buy an egg but NOOOOOOOO over winter all stopped laying (some before they started) and only this week have they started to give us eggs again!

So in the incy at the moment there are 12 Light sussex, 2 duck and 16 Serama eggs. These are a favour for a friend to check his fertility rates as he has introduced new cockerals to his hens and we get to keep what hatches!! Good deal or what!

We had some bad news just before Christmas that my wifes Step mum had had a major stroke and it wasnt looking very hopefull for her. So we hopped onto the first flight out to Spain but got bloody diverted to Valncia instead of landing at Alicante so had to grab the hire car from there (luckily the hire car company were great and the lady receptionist bent over backwards to help us). So we then had a 4 hour drive south to the hospital to see her. That made us up to 22 hours travelling just to get there..very long day! She had amazed everyone by surviving at all as she had been in intensive care for a couple of days. She was released from hospital a couple of weeks later but we have just had the updated checks and its not good news. She has until this coming Christmas if shes lucky which is so tragic at the age of 64. Now she has been planning her 65th birthday party for over a year now and thats this coming June so everyone, and I mean everyone, is going out there for that so she will have the most fantastic day surrounded by her friends and family which is an excellent thing. I havnt a clue how we are going to afford it yet but we will find a way because we are not missing that.

My oldest daughter has started her guitar lessons as a well doen on her school marks. She has started her GCSE courses a year early and is doing well so had to be rewarded.
My Son has started his driving lessons!!!!!!!!!! How the hell did that happen?? He cant be old enough yet surely LOL At 37 it seems strange how old the kids are already but I am glad I had them when I was younger because wifey and I have so many plans on what we want to do starting in a couple of years.

Our biggest realisable dream is renting somewhere that comes with land we can use as a smallholding. We only want to grow the veg on the allotment scale we do now but would love to raise our own meat ie pigs, sheep and goats as well as meat chickens etc. But where to rent? We have decided on either Derbyshire or over in Norfolk in the Cromer/Sheringham regions. Now the long search has to begin to find something suitable.

Well thats it for now and I will pop back in again when I have something of interest to write ;)