Heatwave

The weather has been ultra kind to us since we arrived on Wednesday. The beautiful Secret Garden was swathed in sunshine yesterday for my mate’s wedding. A week ago we would have had our coats and wellies on.

The wedding was superb, my speech went down a storm, even if I say so myself, and it was brilliant to see so many of my old mates and my family altogether in one place.

Wedding bells

No, not mine but me and the family are flying back to London tonight for my mates wedding, the one in which I am one of two best men, the speech is coming along nicely, although I’m finding it hard to keep it below two hours.

The wedding is Friday but before then we are doing a mini tour of Oxfordshire and Essex catching up with friends. This after a late dinner last night with a client and then home to pack in the early hours before getting up silly early this morning to come to work. I can sleep when I’m older.

Non-stop

A couple of days travelling with work beginning this morning. I’m on a flight to Miami in an hour or so then I go to Atlanta tomorrow and back to the rock on Wednesday on the same flight as a friend of mine who is staying with us Thursday night.

I am then desperate for a quiet weekend because next week we fly back to the UK for my best mate’s wedding. That is in Kent on the Friday but we are in Oxfordshire and Essex prior to that. I have the role of deputy best man for the day, or some such, which unenviably includes giving a speech, which I’ve yet to write. Maybe the next few days stuck on a few planes will give me some time and inspiration.

From Barça with love

It was 21 hours from the time the alarm went yesterday morning at 4.30am (after getting in bed at 1.30am), until I got home last night. Today I am shall we say, a little bit fuddled.

But it was all worth it to spend a weekend with a great set of lads and the groom, to whom I am deputy best man, a role I have yet to fully understand except I do have the (dis)pleasure of making a speech at the wedding in a months time.

I left Barcelona with a real positive feel about the Catalonian city. I didn’t get to see anywhere as much of the city as I would have liked, stag weekenders strangely are not always about flying around monuments and museums taking photographs, but those of us that did so on Saturday were joyfully rewarded by a city with spectacular architecture and a bewitching personality.

To Barca

For this Addick, it is not to SE7 on Saturday to party but to Barcelona.

Some while ago my mate, a fellow Addick, was planning his stag weekend. The dates bounced about a bit and every time he proposed a weekend I would take a quick glance, as I am sure he did, at the fixture list.

Blackpool was toyed with to coincide with the Preston game, I seriously proposed a good old knees up in Blackheath for this weekend and varying other European destinations were deliberated. Football was central to the outcome so Lisbon, Belgrade, Rome and even Dortmund were considered.

Winter Park

Bermuda’s winter is finally looking like it’s arrived. Rain is lashing sideways at the kitchen window as I look outside and the ocean is full of large frothy white capped waves like a sea of cups of cappuccino.

A Bermuda winter normally consists of a lot of driving rain, with intermittent drizzle and dampness accompanied by strong winds during the months of January and February, with March changeable. I can see a number of your hearts bleeding, so I will tell you that despite the rain today the temperature is still to 66°F!

Last week’s work event in Miami Beach – it rained every day like it always does when we are there – was bloody exhausting. Early starts, long days, late nights. I actually love it but I was glad to get home.

Oh boy!

Up until 2 years ago I used to join a collection of mates from both sides of the Atlantic for Superbowl weekend in a chosen city, but then baby came along and some of the finer things in my life had to be ended or put on hold.

Fortunately the Superbowl weekend was only on a temporary hold and tomorrow morning I fly to Orlando to meet up with some of the lads to play, explore downtown Orlando (I’ve been before and there’s not much to see, unless it is a mouse called Mickey) and then spend the whole of Sunday in a pub somewhere watching men in tight pants run into each other while chasing after an oval ball on a gigantic television screen whilst drinking a few lagers.

Zooropa

Amongst bundles of discarded wrapping paper, turkey leftovers and bags under the eyes during our trip home I also made my first ever visit to Colchester Zoo, re-discovered some old London stomping grounds and had a couple of cracking pub lunches.

Colchester Zoo was much bigger than I imagined. Our friends had suggested a 4-hour visit and as we drove up there in the drizzly rain I truly wondered what an earth we were going to do for 3 of those hours.

But I should have feared not as we comfortably strolled it’s 60 acres during 3 hours and still left some for another day, although there were a fair amount of exhibits that had migrated for the winter. There are apparently over 260 different species and they are laid out in numerous zones where you can get pretty close to the animals.

Free-kicks

Funny the difference a year can make. 12 months ago our daughter was barely crawling and would sleep pretty much where we laid her. Now she has a personality as big as Greenland and the cheek to match, doesn’t want to go to sleep and when we finally get her eyes closed and dreaming of Yann Kermorgant free-kicks (well, it’s what I dream of), it is the only time she is not running around like a banshee.

Hence, this year’s Christmas trip home has been far knackering for me and the other half. Now though we get a bit of time to relax in the comfort of our friends sumptuous home near the historical town of Shenfield in Essex (photo).

Travelogue: Magaluf, Mallorca

A few people asked me why we picked Magaluf as a venue for a boys weekend, the fact is that it picked itself. It was in Magaluf that 25-years ago me and 12 of my closest mates had our first ever foreign holiday. Most of us are still in touch and we were all at secondary school together albeit spread over three different years. In fact one of the lads I went to nursery school with (42 years ago) and he still harangues me about never letting him have a go on the plastic tricycle!

We travelled in style. Six of us in my mate´s London cab to Stansted (where we met the rest of our group), Easy Jet to Palma for around 100 quid, and then our own mini-bus to the 3 star hotel that we´d booked bang in the middle of it all and next door to the monstrous BCM nightclub, which unsurprisingly smelt like a cocktail of puke, Red Bull and bleach. Despite the fact the Island’s largest nightclub was next door, our hotel was pretty quiet save for the obligatory banging on doors in the middle of the night and loud British voices.

Changing colours

A family orientated week in Chicago accompanied by early nights and late mornings. September is a beautiful time to be in Chicago. Liberated from any humidity, walking the cities convivial streets is an absolute pleasure. The leaves on the trees might be changing colour but the locals are hanging on to every thread of summer despite the pumpkins, witches and skeletons rapidly appearing in readiness for the wintery Halloween celebrations in 6 week time.

Tonight we have our one night out of the week when we have collected together six of our best friends for a dinner at Prasino in Wicker Park, a neighbourhood a short cab ride away.

The Wedding Party

Saturday we were at a great wedding here in Chicago, and what we’ve talked about a lot since was how after pre-dinner drinks we were led into a huge decked out ballroom expecting to sit and eat but instead were met by a 12 piece band and the beginnings of a massive party as everyone hit the dance floor and dinner was put back an hour or so. Then during each course there was another 20 minutes or so of partying with speeches thrown in intermittently.

Leaving Las Vegas

Three prophesied days of fun and frolics in Las Vegas then. Eating, drinking, gambling, a Cirque du Soleil show, shopping and I even managed to throw in a work’s conference as well. The next stop is Chicago, a city that I hold very dear in my heart.

I do like Vegas and if you have never been, it really is somewhere that should appear on your bucket list. A few nights is enough though, for me anyway, because sleeping doesn’t appear high up on the list of things to do and my candle is severely charred at both ends!

Trains, planes and automobiles

Well we made it through. The 25-year Magaluf reunion was a real laugh although it might take my sense of smell a while to lose the constant odour of puke, which Magaluf gratefully bestows!

There were two very late nights, each followed by an unfamiliar early afternoon wake up, sandwiched between two nights of two hours sleep each. Last night my room mate beating me to a deep sleep for the first time this weekend so I had to listen to his cacophonous snoring. Once I piece it all together I’ll write more on our weekend amongst the teenagers and geriatrics that mingle, mostly in a very northern accent, in this little corner of Majorca.

Because I try to make my life as complicated as possible, this trip doesn’t stop there. The Magaluf weekend had been in the diary for long time and so had a friends wedding in Chicago next Saturday. All fine so far. I had even pencilled in a little trip to Milton Keynes tomorrow night after the fixtures came out in the summer.

Air miles

With the announcement that Air Miles is rebranding to Avios I have decided to beat the record of combining the most flights and beers into a single week.

Overnight tonight I fly to Gatwick, and in the morning after a super strong cup of Costa Coffee I will drive down to my parents in the East Sussex countryside for a little breakfast. Then I get back in the motor and will rush back to Maidstone to have a look around my son’s new school, Oakwood Park, and then take him out to dinner.

Thursday is the lull before the storm, when I plan to catch up with a few people and some zzzz’s.