Health, Hurdles and Heresy

So we made it. Work is done, and whether we are ready or not we’re due to fly on Tuesday.

I have to be honest, it has been a countdown that hasn’t been as enjoyable as it should have been for many a reason…

1. Rebecca is not coming with us.
2. The house has resembled the Somme for three weeks and the bathroom still isn’t done!
3. Louise’s Mum has been quite ill and Louise has been worried about leaving her.
4. My Mum has also been ill and has spent Friday and Saturday in hospital.

It has been a rocky road to this holiday for sure and here we are, literally a few hours from departure and only now are we fairly confident that my Mum can travel.

Even work had an unsatisfactory ending. It feels like I have left loose ends everywhere and in the back of my mind there are already concerns about the stuff I will have to return to.

This is normal though right? The trepidation, stress, worry and anxiety? I know it is, but we seem to be off the scale for this trip. Usually those feelings are just about whether your ESTA is really valid, you’ve forgotten something important, that property you rented will turn out to be a vacant building lot or you turn up for your flight on the wrong day. Health matters trump all of those of course and our collective fingers are crossed that everyone remains on the road to recovery.

Assuming all that turns out OK we then have other appendages crossed that we will actually have a working bathroom for showers on Tuesday when we are up at  crazy o’clock to begin our journey. We are close now, but it will be touch and go if that is the case.

Sigh….so my usual joy at finishing work for a US adventure has been tempered. Preparations continue as they must, with the added work of digging the house out from under a three-inch blanket of dust. I have also been digging out T-shirts and shorts from various dark recesses of the house. I’m fatter than I should be so the larger ones are getting picked. I’ll just have to watch what I eat over the next few weeks!!!

So having limped, stumbled and fallen over the line, we find ourselves on the cusp of departure. Louise is a whirling dervish of dust, cleaning implements and vigor and I have been similarly busy throwing stuff into skips, hosing things down and more latterly preparing Ryan for the trip.

Most of the time Ryan is my gig bag, carrying all the leads, connectors and trappings of your every day rock star to gigs and back. Having done our final gig before we leave last night, he has been emptied and restored to his rightful role of holiday rucksack. He is now sat holding our camera, passports, US sat nav and all the other stuff he is so familiar with.

I have also ticked off the equally vital task of going to the driving range with my Dad to make sure I could remember how to hit a golf ball in preparation for our 18 holes of sweaty golf whilst we are at Siesta Key. It’s all go!!

I’m quite glad we are off to Florida now as we will beat the rush created by Ant N Dec’s Saturday Night Advertisement Show. That’s a master stroke by Disney that. A ninety minute ad on prime time Saturday night telly. With a crap dollar rate and a gibbon in the White House I’m sure visitor numbers are dropping. I suspect that one show last night has generated a huge demand for this summer and beyond.

I didn’t see the show myself as I was out being a Rock God, but I caught up with some of the “highlights” this morning. I much prefer them in I’m a Celeb as this Saturday Night Noel Edmonds tribute act is a bit twee for me. I tip my hat to those responsible for the logistics of making that show happen though. Live telly, from the US, in a theme park, with links to folks in the UK strikes me as a military operation to get right. It was very impressive. That thing at the end of the show though had my toes curling I’ll be honest. I know this is heresy and I’ll be in the minority but it was all a bit of a cheesey showbiz cliché and well, I’ve said this before, but like this…

Anyway, enough of being a party pooper. It was lovely to see that the weather looks nice and hot at the moment and it’ll be nice to be back “home” very soon.

So I leave you in peace now for a few Sundays, there is packing to be done, chores to be carried out and those million and one things to get done before we start having fun.

I’ll be tweeting, facebooking, hitting up Insta (yeh, that’s right, I’m cool like that) and maybe Snapchatting but I doubt that as I still can’t work it. It was built specifically only to be used by those under 25. So follow me on any and all of those for some live videos, photos and pithy nonsense.

And away we gooooooooo….

Till the next time…..