If this orange turd starts something in Cuba next I will impotently scream into the void and end up booking a holiday in a dark room on some bleak industrial estate in the UK.
Yep the Dominican Republic is literally next door to Cuba and I am, as I’m sure he intended, exhausted by this constant stream of horror and distraction. With some of his mouthpieces starting to mention Cuba being next, I am worried that there will nowhere safe to holiday oh and yes we will all die in a nuclear holocaust. Hopefully this ridiculous nightmare ends soon in some way for the benefit of the entire planet.
As ever, me pissing and moaning about a holiday while folks are dying in a war is ridiculous but there’s nothing new there.
I, like most of the world, am just looking for some boring normality rather than wondering how far this lard bucket is willing to go to prevent his jail term.
Anyway….
Last night Mustard played a lovely wedding in poshest Cheshire.
Some weddings can be a bit of a slog if the guests aren’t there for a party and more of a chat but last night was the opposite. We had a packed dance floor all night and it makes such a difference.
It was a late night/early morning so today will be a quiet one. Louise is working so it’ll be a visit to my Mum for Mother’s Day, a dog walk should it ever stop raining and then a bit of football (watching) before I settle down to dread the impending Monday as God intended.
I am London bound again next week and that’s always something to look forward to. 🙄.
I’m not one for a load of nostalgic yearning for the good old days. That sounds ironic for someone who for the last good few decades has almost exclusively spent their holidays in a place where the main currency is memories, but I am almost allergic to the boomer porn “things were better in my day” guff prevalent in most Facebook communities.
However, this week I have been looking back all bleary eyed at that time not so long ago that you could book a holiday and know, almost with certainty that it would happen as planned. Sure, the odd volcano eruption or hurricane could scupper your plans, but at least they were natural.
Since those heady days of Covid, it seems that nothing is certain until you are sat on the plane hurtling down the runway. I look back in horror at the endless uncertainty of those early post Covid months and years when trips were endlessly booked, rescheduled and in some cases cancelled.
Ever since, it seems the world has got itself into a downward spiral of uncertainty and simple things like a trip to WDW can no longer be taken for granted. Our upcoming September trip is still in pencil rather than ink, waiting to see if the US descends into civil war or indeed if World War 3 happens before we can get there.
In the last couple of weeks Mexico entered the game, with a “hold my cerveza” with cartel violence ripping through the country. As soon as Louise saw that our trip was in deep jeopardy. I did not appreciate one bit that the cartels waited until we had paid in full before subjecting their country to these horrors.
I was pretty certain it would all calm down by late April, but it didn’t stop Louise from going on a one woman mission to find us an alternative destination, less likely to see us held at gun point in my speedos. So for the last week we have been spending our evenings watching videos on You Tube of lovely looking places all around the globe.
With Mexico discounted, and the US already in our definite maybe pile, pickings were slim. I may be a working class lad from Bolton, but we soon also discounted closer countries such as Greece, Turkey and Spain as, at least with TUI who we would have to stick with to avoid huge cancellation fees, that meant flying with Easyjet or Ryanair and well, no thank you.
Having virtually visited Thailand, Bali, Tanzania and other far flung locations, we had almost settled on a resort in one of those. The search is now such a blur I cannot remember which to be honest. This search was not helped by my current working situation meaning I could devote little to no time aiding the hunt.
On Friday however, I managed to eek out half an hour over what in a normal job would be my lunch and I did one last search on the TUI site before attempting to swap us over. There it was, about half way down the first set of results.
To be honest, I had been reluctant to change our holiday at all, as I loved Secrets Akumal so much and I was very much looking forward to going back. I almost felt like I was betraying them by looking elsewhere. Having spent so long finding somewhere to compete for our US WDW holiday money, we had finally found somewhere that perfectly ticked all our boxes.
So when I saw another Secrets resort, seemingly in the ball park of our budget/spend on the Mexico trip I quickly clicked to find out more. It did seem to tick all those same boxes, and unlike the Thailand, Bali options it meant a direct flight in Premium with TUI rather than indirect flights of over 18 hours in economy with another airline.
Louise reviewed and accepted my choice and it was then down to me to do the business. Now, it starts to get interesting (I make no promises you will find this interesting, but that is sort of baked into all my posts).
Earlier in the week I have chatted with TUI to establish that we could change our trip for £50 each and whatever the difference in price was, so I expected this to be painless. Having priced up the new holiday on their site, I found the “Amend my holiday” option and off I went. At the final stage where the money became involved I thought it odd that the price I was now looking at was 20% higher than the price I had seen on their site.
I opened up another chat and to say the contents of this chat was confusing is like saying I have a restricted fringe. I explained my dilemma and shared the price differences. After a good twenty minutes I was more confused than ever, as I was told that it was both an extra £1700, or maybe £1200 to change my holiday, despite their site pricing it just a couple of hundred more than my original booking or I could just cancel my first booking for £570 and book the new one as a new trip. I declined all options as that just sounded dodgy and not right at all. Apparently it was something to do with brand new bookings getting some automatic discount but amendments did not. The insistence on companies to reward new customers over loyal returning ones baffles me.
I had another go on their site and tried to cancel my existing trip for that £570 so I could book afresh and their site then told me I’d lose £2500 if I cancelled. What the……??
At this point I resorted to the nuclear option and I phoned them. I was raging at this point. Disinformation, uncertainty, lies and an unreliable website were all in play and I just wanted to change my trip for the £100 I’d been told and move on with my life.
The lady I spoke to was awesome. She listened to me moan at length, agreed that was a shit show and vowed to help me. She also immediately spotted that my original booking had the TUI Flex option on it (I had forgotten) which meant I didn’t even need to pay the £100 admin fee.
She patiently worked through a whole range of options of dates and length of stays. We had always regretted only booking for 8 nights originally, and as this was part of our 30th anniversary tour, we figured we should go bigger as we may well kill each other before our next significant milestone. I had also had to cancel a few days off I had planned around Easter due to work being crazy so as punishment to them I figured I would tack on a few days at the start of this trip to make up for it.
So after literally hours of faff (most of which I have spared you) extending late into Friday evening, thanks to that lovely lady on the phone, all those ridiculous and confusing sums of money quoted online went away and we managed to change our booking, extend from 8 to 14 nights all for an extra £460. I was very happy.
If you feel like it was hard work reading that, imagine what it was like trying to navigate it.
Anyway, so what have we changed to?
We have secured another Secrets resort, Secrets Playa Esmeralda, in the Dominican Republic. It’ll be our first time going there, assuming we aren’t all dead as a result of a world wide nuclear escalation.
It is a direct flight, retaining our Premium cabin from the Mexico booking and all in all, if we had to change (and Louise said we did) I don’t think we could have done much better.
We will definitely return to Secrets Akumal, unless of course we like this place so much better, but even so I do feel we’d like to return as we loved it so much.
I don’t think I have it in me to rearrange another holiday so unless the US is literally on fire and/or travel is banned due to world wide conflict, I think we’ll be going. Won’t you all be relieved being spared another of these posts.
Rather than serve up another whiny post about being busy at work (I was) and being sick of being cold/wet ( I am) I have something significant to share this week.
No, not another gig nobody cares about (although I did gig last night) but a much more significant life event. In fact maybe there are no more significant life events.
With it now approaching the 14 week mark I’m delighted, thrilled and very happy to share that our family is expanding.
Rebecca and Tom are expecting baby number three, sometime in August.
Yesterday was a significant day too as courtesy of an early scan they found out that the new arrival will be a girl. Whilst all everyone was hoping for was a healthy arrival, I think it’s OK to say that everyone is delighted that there will be a little girl in the family again.
It has been a rough few months for Rebecca as she has felt and been very sick throughout, and is only now feeling somewhere close to human again.
The boys stayed at ours whilst the scan was undertaken and a quickly assembled gender reveal was convened with a DIY cake, me on FaceTime from my gig and the boys digging glasses into the cake to reveal the pink filling.
It was fair to say Dougie was not enormously thrilled initially to learn he was getting a sister. Few three year old boys would be I guess. He came round fairly quickly and I’m sure by the time she arrives he will be as delighted as everyone else.
Freddie has said ahead of the scan that he wanted a sister so he was immediately very happy but that might have been because he now had cake.
So lovely news all round and many congrats to Rebecca and Tom.
Another week vanished in an eye blink. London came and went over Wednesday night and Thursday and then it was Friday again and I’m a few days closer to the next holiday and my inevitable mortality.
There was no obvious murder during my capital stay this week but I’m came close a couple of times in meetings.
We had no plans for the weekend. Louise had booked us into one of our favourite restaurants for Valentine’s ages ago displaying uncommon levels of foresight but when she checked the booking and saw it was 9.30 she cancelled as that is just too late for anything to start with our current energy levels.
Instead we had the boys for a bit in the afternoon whilst Rebecca and Tom went to the cinema.
So after a morning at the tip and supermarket for me the afternoon was spent baking with the boys.
There were chocolate chip cookies and cup cakes. Neither would trouble the judges on bake off but they enjoyed making them.
To be fair they lost interest once they went into the oven and I was left to finish them off whilst the boys helped Louise shave Bean. This is not something renowned as an activity with grand kids but they were thrilled to help. Bean, less so.
Then we took them out for some tea at a local pub. We were surprised to be able to book a table last minute on Valentine’s but it was at 6pm.
Once seated we were given the Valentine’s menu for us adults. It was bloody pricey and incredibly limited. We were gutted to be honest.
We both chose the only dish we could tolerate in the lamb as everything else was fish, veggie or in the case of the starters, Tartare or Mackerel based.
The boys had the kids menu so were happy enough.
Once it arrived the food was decent enough but not something we’d usually choose.
Imagine how gutted we were to hear the next table arrive after we’d ordered and immediately ask if the set menu was the only option and the waitress tell them that it wasn’t and present them with the full menu.
Sigh. We are too polite.
We had a crème brûlée for Louise and a Chocolate thing for me, trying to fill up and Freddie was delighted with his cheese board. He’s growing up and so is his palette.
We helped him out, as did Dougie. It was lovely.
It was also lovely to have the boys along.
The bill was painful when compared to the enjoyment levels of our food due to the set price of the Valentine’s menu we had endured. You live and learn.
Today I am hopeful of doing as little as possible. Wish me luck. I’m tired.
Last week saw us pay the balance off for our Mexico trip in April. We’d been debating whether to go ahead with this one since we put down the low deposit.
As ever, should we have been sensible and not spent that money on a holiday? Of course. Have we ever done that at any point in the last three decades? You know the answer.
We shall find a way as we always do and cross our fingers that no major unexpected expense bites us on the arse this year. Nothing ever goes wrong with our house or anything so we should be fine.
Our plans for later in the year to visit WDW remain in pencil and will do until balances are due and we see what state the US is in. Hopefully a better one than it is today.
So we are pleased to at least know we are headed back to Secrets Akumal if only for eight nights this time. It is such a lovely place and experience we are both very much looking forward to it.
We are trying to keep travel costs down in this double holiday year to celebrate our 30th anniversary if we can but that did not stop Louise moaning that I have not upgraded us to private transfers from the airport to the resort and back. The provided transfers by TUI look to take about ten minutes longer and it’s not as if 100 people are all going to our resort so it may even be a minibus anyway rather than a packed coach. That £150 may make all the difference. 😏 We shall see how long I can withstand the whinging.
Away from holidays I undertook a less pleasurable hotel stay in London as I was down there for work for three days. The Travelodge around the corner from our office is not quite up to the same standards as Secrets and that was confirmed by what looked like a murder scene popping up outside it on my first night there.
The road was taped off for two days with a police guard. I’ve not been able to find anything online about what happened. It was near Spitalfields and Aldgate tube station if anyone knows?
Last weekend we did a great gig with the 80s tribute band in Brighouse. A great new venue has opened at the Civic Hall there and we had a good night and a packed room.
With a lot venues closing it’s lovely to see such a great place opening and from what we could see being successful. We are looking forward to going back.
I’m in London again next week but just for one day/night this time. Hopefully my stay can be murder free unless one more person asks me to reach out, jump on a call or action something. Then all bets are off.
One blog covering Mexico, Brighouse and London. I am just so jet set.
Not a great deal to report this week, or at least nothing too different to last week.
Work was a never ending stream of problems, emergencies and issues sprinkled in between a million meetings and a Friday trip to London. That was fun.
However on the train back from London I received a message from my friend Paul who I have known since I was 18. It contained a video that I thought had long since been lost to landfill as when it was recorded, the internet and the cloud did not exist. The VHS tape on which it existed was as far as I knew now no longer in existence.
It seems not. Somehow Paul had come across it and it has been uploaded to the internet where it can now live forever. Whether it should or not.
Way back in the late 80s and early 90s I was in several bands with Paul. We were hoping for pop stardom and for a few years we gigged a lot locally, gaining a decent local following and even got onto local radio at one point.
Of course, just like our hairlines those dreams went away but we all carried on getting enjoyment from music and we stay in touch from time to time.
As toe curlingly embarrassing as this video is, it genuinely made my day. It was so lovely to see something that only existed before the internet as so much of what we did in these bands is now lost.
Anyway, here is a video we shot in Paul’s dining room to send off to some TV competition for unsigned bands. The song is called New Foundation which you would quickly realise if you can make it beyond the early parts of the video where we do a terrible job of trying to do some kind of cool band intro.
The hair, fresh faces and fun we had reflected how much we all enjoyed being in bands with people you genuinely like and get on with. That is still the case today. For anyone that showed any interest in the book I did a while back, my experiences in bands at this time formed much of the “research” done for it. Write about what you know and all that.
I didn’t have time to post last week so I just didn’t. That might sound obvious but when you are wired as I am that sometimes can be more problematic than you might imagine.
Anyway, the week was a blur and the weekend got away from me. I was out for most of Sunday filming again for band stuff as we recorded a new promo video for the Pink tribute stuff.
I’ll inflict it upon you once it’s finished in a couple of weeks.
I’m not sure how glamorous that sounds or looks but all I can tell you is that no matter where we film these things it is always absolutely freezing cold. It was painful.
This week again whizzed by in a maelstrom of one seemingly unending Teams call. I’ve never been busier or more stressed and I really look forward to when the extra stuff I am doing is over and some form of normalcy returns. I had to go to Leeds on Wednesday for a meeting that seemingly required being in the same room all day but we did get to go for a curry in the evening as reward. We went to Mowgli and it was good but not spectacular.
I always look forward to our holidays of course but never more so than right now. April seems a while off still so there is much hunkering down.
Whether we get to the US in September is anyone’s guess right now. His determination to avoid the Epstein stuff coming out seems to be driving him to start foreign wars and kill his own citizens. In the time frame of his madness September is a long, long way off so we’ll just have to wait and see what’s happening nearer the time.
In other news I should record the fact that our problematic leaky roof that has been an issue on and off for years seems to have been sorted. A guy came a few weeks before Christmas and did some stuff that looks to have kept us dry. I’m not counting any chickens but we’ve had a load of rain as we always do in these parts and so far so good. As penance, our tumble dryer has broken but forking out bundles of cash for the pleasure of living in a house seems to be the status quo.
With no sign of a let up in the chaos of my working week let’s see what the next one brings and who knows we may meet here again in seven days.
I’ve not had time to blog this week. We’ve had the boys all weekend as Rebecca and Tom went to London to watch Cabaret so I’ll just share some pictures from the last couple of days which have been been fun.
Saturday we were at home so we went for a walk in the local countryside.
The boys decorated a giant gingerbread man each, played games and we went to visit my Mum before they had a McDonalds for their tea.
Thankfully they both slept well and today we’ve taken them to the Hot Wheels Monster Truck show in Manchester.
We had time for a pre-show coffee/hot chocolate/milkshake….
Then we had a chilly walk through the city centre after paying a small mortgage to park.
The show was very loud and the boys enjoyed it. I paid an amount of money for pick n mix that would fund a household for a number of weeks and then we went to Pizza Express before heading home.
I did my usual trick of leaving my phone in the venue and having to run back in a panic. A steward rescued it for me thankfully but that didn’t stop me then leaving the checkered flags we’d bought the boys in Pizza Express!! I am losing it clearly.
It was snowing a bit during our walk back to the car. The boys played in the snow on our drive once we got back and they left us not long ago.
All that remains now is for me to contemplate the impending horror of my return to work tomorrow. I cannot describe the impending doom.
If I survive there might be another post next Sunday.
This week’s title is homage to the only response possible when someone asks how your Christmas was. Well, maybe that’s just me, as our festivities are typically quiet and uneventful and by the time I meet any human beings again post xmas I am in no mental state to be having actual conversations whilst also dealing with the existential crisis of returning to work.
To be fair, our festive period was exactly as described, with just the four of us on the day itself, (Me, Emily, my Mum and Louise once she finished work), and I’ll be honest, the majority of hours of my xmas day were spent cooking things. But the meal was nice, despite feeling so full I might die within minutes of starting to eat, due in no small part to deciding upon the wrong starter. A whole baked camembert with bread each was perhaps not the smartest choice with a turkey dinner to follow.
The gifting theme this year was driven by Louise finding these things online. So my Mum, Emily and Mikey and Rebecca, Tom and the boys all got one of these.
Boxing Day saw the boys visit us for their round two of present opening and a Carrs pasty bonanza for tea (if you’re from Bolton, you’ll know). That was Louise’s one day off as she returned to work again on Saturday to continue her less than festive “break”. I just felt quite pleased to recognise that it was actually Saturday. There was a bin collection on the same day that had it not been for the kindness of our neighbour I would have completely missed. It was the cardboard bin too, so that would have been a disastrous post Christmas omission.
I’ve done a few decent dog walks and generally just loved not being on a Teams call for a percentage of my life I never thought possible. For as long as it lasts I intend to savour every non working moment.
Last night, we mopped up some of the remaining Stranger Things episodes whilst eating leftovers from our Christmas meal in a more peaceful house than normal as Woody is with Emily over in Liverpool. It’s amazing how much calmer the house is with just the one dog around! He likes his Liverpool weekend getaways as he gets (more) spoiled over there.
Typically, during my festive holidays my thoughts would turn to planning our inevitable WDW trip the next year, but there isn’t a great deal to do in all honesty. We are a long way from ADR territory and those dining choices are the only things that should take any real thought and those will determine and fit in with what parks we may do on each day.
If anyone has any suggestions for eateries we do always like to fit a couple of newbies in amongst the greatest hits.
Before that, we hope to get away to Mexico in April. I can’t wait to go back for all kinds of reasons but right now I am just so sick of being cold and almost always wet.
As I am now risking sending you all (both) to sleep I shall return to my Twixmas hinterland to do as much nothing as possible.
Hello again. Turns out I’ve had, and needed, a little break from the weekly blogging so apologies to anyone….anyone??? who missed these on the last few Sundays. It wasn’t really planned and just happened but it was very much required and unavoidable.
I return today unable to promise a weekly delivery but for now, mainly as I’m off work until the new year, we blog again.
Over the years I know I have regularly moaned about work being busy, but I was a young naïve fool, as only now do I feel justified in claiming that. In the late summer I was asked to take on some new responsibilities at work as well as my real job and it’s been carnage ever since. It’s involved some travel too with visits in recent weeks to London (a few times), Southampton, Birmingham, Leeds and of course our Manchester office which, with the commute as it, is qualifying as a trip all on its own.
I can’t say I am deliriously happy at work, but that’s not really related to the silly levels of busy, but more the over arching landscape since a new boss and some changes came around during this last year. Everything will pass I guess and when you’ve been there as long as I have, these Johnny come latelys don’t seem to stick around for the long haul so hopefully this is a temporary thing as I could do without having to find another job at my time of life.
So that work stuff meant that for the last few months I really haven’t had a minute to think about much else, and the prospect of sitting back at the laptop at the weekend to write this nonsense did not appeal. I’ve already been spending good chunks of evenings and weekends either working or travelling for work so I decided to not spend whatever free time I did have typing these posts for a bit.
How’s everyone doing? Well, Louise keeps on nursing despite not really wanting to, Emily still works with me and Rebecca, Tom and the boys are all good, with Rebecca now working part time in a local nursery.
Yesterday we went to see my Mum to commemorate what would have been her and my Dad’s 67th wedding anniversary had he still been with us. She’s doing well, is fit and healthy for someone in their mid 80s and she’ll be joining us for Christmas Day next week. Louise is once again working on the day itself and for a lot of the festive period, such is the life of a Community Nurse and she tends to volunteer to do/get stuck with Christmas Day as many of her colleagues still have young children and they want to be there for the big present unwrap.
Both of my readers may have been wondering if we have any holiday plans for 2026. Well, next year is a significant anniversary for Louise and I, as we will hit 30 years of marriage, so we are hoping to gift each other not one, but two holidays, if funds allow.
We have hopes of a return to Mexico and Secrets Akumal in April. We’ve paid a low deposit to secure our dates and have to decide by February if we’re going. It ain’t cheap so we’ll make a call then as to whether it is wise to once again blow all our available funds on overseas travel rather than more sensible uses. Our house continues to conspire against us financially so we’ll see what major bills hit between now and then before inevitable saying sod it we’re going anyway.
However, our main trip next year is a, perhaps surprisingly a Disney one.
In September we have booked to return to Florida, this time with Emily and her boyfriend. It’ll be an off-site affair in our usual villa, flying with Virgin and that’s about all we know at this point. Our boycott of the US was not an easy thing to lift, but after Emily went last year and found that inside the WDW bubble all was well, we decided we didn’t want the orange turd dictating our holiday plans for the next three years so we’re going despite our strong objections to current events over there.
So let’s see how long I can keep this blogging up, and I’d like to as I do like to look back on these things many years later, and to do that, I suppose I have to write them first!
Well, as punishment for daring to go on holiday, last week at work was one of the worst I’ve experienced in all the decades I’ve been sucking this shit up to pay the bills. Just two more similar days to go before I can pretend to not think about it for two weeks.
I can feel the stress coursing through my body and my neck and shoulders feel like I’ve done something that is very bad for your neck and shoulders.
All that meant that yesterday was also stupidly busy as I had to do some work that has to be finished before I go and I’m in meetings for every hour God sends from the start of Monday to the end of Tuesday and then start to try and prep the stuff I prep for the holiday. That meant printing off the stuff we might need (I’ve been over cautious as this isn’t our familiar journey) and can I say, how is it that in 2025 AI can do your job for you but we still can’t build printers that print? I also filled the rucksack, which won’t be Ryan for this trip. Louise says he’s too scruffy to go a resort like ours and I gave in as his role is solely for US based trips. Instead I’m taking son of Ryan, the brand new exact replica Louse bought me a few years ago.
Filling the rucksack is faffy, ranging from the essential passports and docs to the relevant phone and watch chargers, camera, kindle, painkillers, money and credit cards etc.
What I also learned this week was trying to order some US dollars in specific denominations appears to be impossible. I tried a load of websites and nobody gives you the option to request smaller bills (these dollars are only for tipping folks) so in the end I had to go old school and rock up the local post office and ask them to give me the smallest they had. They were still mostly too big.
With Louise out working I was also in charge of doing multiple washer loads, mainly of the dog’s bedding, and our bedding despite the fact that our house sitter is Emily, who lives here. I waited in for a delivery for Louise, which I “missed” as when it arrived, the chap rang the bell and then seemingly sprinted to his van and drove away by the time I walked the thirty steps from the couch to the front door.
Then I had to do some mowing up on the field as the grass was getting ridiculous despite me attacking it with a strimmer for the past week and I had to at least cut some walking paths in it for when Emily walks them whilst we are away.
I took delivery of an obscene amount of pet food for the dogs and cats and then nipped to the supermarket to get enough food to feed us until Tuesday and then I made tea.
It was a busy Saturday and today is looking similar. I’ve done some more work this morning, wrote this clap trap and then I have to go to a shop to collect an order Louise clicked last night and then go and see my Mum.
Anyway, as it always does, time will pass, I’ll get through work and we’ll be off soon enough. I’ll probably share some stuff on the Mkingdon Facebook page whilst away so do what you need to do if you want those. A day by day trip report is unlikely as it would be (more) boring than a US trip and I almost certainly won’t have time to write it, but I will of course share thoughts, highlights and food in some way.
Cheer up. Just two more of these things and you get a couple of weeks off from them being inflicted on you.
Yes the holiday is so close now I can almost smell it, literally. I don’t know if it’s only me but when the warm weather hits there’s a certain smell that I get that just evokes holiday. I used to think it was sun cream or Florida but I get it here too. It’s either that or I’m having a stroke.
Ahead of me are seven more work days and they feel like a marathon right now but this is always the way.
Other than wishing my life away it’s been another week of being busy at work and none of that is worth documenting here but at least I didn’t have to go anywhere and sleep in a strange bed.
Yesterday I did leave the country as we had a gig in Wales. Denbigh to be exact. It was a wedding at an unnecessarily rural location. The last four miles, yes, four miles involved a single lane country road that did nothing for the blood pressure. It was, as you might expect a lovely location when we got there and we were surrounded by alpacas, peacocks and most importantly freshly baked pizza.
They were a good crowd and the dance floor was full from start to finish which is always lovely. I don’t know if it’s some sort of Welsh tradition but we witnessed our first ever conga to AC/DC.
That clip is quite short as I started filming before very quickly realising that I had to play in about nine seconds.
Being a fair distance away it was a late night and necessitated a lie in this morning. With Louise working and Woody away in Liverpool with Emily it’s just me and Bean today taking it easy. All I’ve done so far today is clean the kitchen, do the recycling, had the big shop delivered, got all my band gear out of the car and packed it away and had some toast. I suspect all international rock stars have similar mornings after a gig in Denbigh.
Speaking of the dogs Emily recently created these lovely pics of the dogs using some AI magic and I love them. So I’ll leave you with those.
My recent tour of the UK continued last week with a couple of days in Marlow doing things considerably less fun than playing bass to people. Work required my presence and so 450 miles of driving, a night in a Travelodge and two days of meetings made up most of my week, as I was off on Monday.
I think/hope that might be it for travels until after my next proper travels to Mexico but with a couple of weeks still to go, who knows. Work is a bit like that at the moment.
My night away did afford me an expenses paid meal at a place called the Giggling Squid in Marlow which was very nice, even if the main course I chose snuck up on me with its spice. A wander down by the Thames on a summer evening did beat more recent trips of staring at a concrete tower block in London with a Tesco meal deal, but I’d still rather be at home.
My pre-holiday prep is complete with two deliveries this week. Louise has “toiletries” to procure, mainly sun cream, but it’s almost time to get the cases out. I am unusually anxious about the trip as I lack my normal levels of certainty of what is to come. Louise’s uncertainty was I suspect none existent until Friday’s Air India crash and now all of her long held fears around flying are re-surfacing.
Any last minute buying will need to be done outside of the next two weekends as she has somehow been rota-ed to work both of them. I’m at the stage now where I am scouring my work diary and counting how many really crappy things I have to endure before we go. Anyone else do that?
Aside from the mundane details of how I’ve passed the last seven days, today is Father’s Day which has been weird for me for the last couple of years of course. I think about my Dad a lot, but I suppose today is the a day when that is bound to happen more than it might normally.
I still don’t think I have fully accepted that I’ll never see him again. It’s very weird and for reasons I don’t understand I regularly play back those last few hours we spent with him in the hospital before he died. I somehow feel like I did it wrong or could have spent those more wisely even though he didn’t really know we were there.
Anyway, I love you Dad, and I miss you every day. It’s a cliché but if you’ve still got one, try to appreciate them as when they’ve gone and you think you can’t even remember their voice, you start to panic a bit and feel like you’re letting them down. Enjoy your Father’s Day and here’s mine as he would probably like to be remembered.
Another week with a half baked post. I’m currently in the back of a van heading back from a festival/gig up in Scotland. This rock n roll lifestyle is getting out of control.
As typing is difficult in these circumstances I’ll just share some photos of the very scenic journey up to Dunoon and the journey so far back where we played at a Harley Owner’s Group event.
That bed was not built for a man of my width.
The gig itself went very well which is always nice. It’ll be a good few hours before I’m back home so forgive the poor posting and enjoy your weeks.
Another four day week leaves me wondering why we splurge them all at this time of year. I suppose it gives us all a chance to enjoy the lovely weather, unless, like last week, we reverted to mid winter up in the frozen north anyway.
With four weeks to go until our holiday our minds have turned to preparing a bit, and at least thinking about what we need to take from a clothes perspective as our needs will be different to a Florida trip to some extent.
I already actually wrote down in words my trouser buying experience a few weeks ago, so believe me when I say I shall also detail other irrelevant and uninteresting details about my wardrobe.
I did a “try on” yesterday, digging out the summer stuff that hasn’t seen the light of day since our last trip. I have a lot of holiday clothes. That may not to be too surprising I suppose, but having managed to drop a few pounds in my usual pre-hols preparation I do have slightly more options than otherwise I might.
So thankfully my need to go out and do any actual shopping is limited to stuff I can buy online like some shoes, a new cap and some socks. Yes, I am actually spending time writing this stuff down on the internet.
Louise enjoys the madness of a real shop so her buying started this week with a couple of dresses and some shorts.
The rest of the week was of course dominated by work as it always is. However, there was a mild drama on Friday afternoon. I was, as ever, on a Teams call with the doors open as the temperatures had recovered to at least double figures and the dogs were pottering about in the garden. All of a sudden I heard Woody yelp in pain and he came running to the door feeling very sorry for himself. It took a few minutes for him to stop crying and I got him inside and up onto the couch in the conservatory where he literally flaked out.
He was worryingly limp and his eyes glazed over. For a few minutes I was genuinely worried about him. I comforted him for a bit until he started to come round and after half an hour or so he was up and about again.
He’s been fine since so whether he was stung or stood on something, we have no idea. There was no sign of any damage and he wasn’t paying particular attention to any part of his body so it was a mystery. He took himself upstairs to his proper bed for an hour or so and then seemed to be fully recovered. We went out for a decent walk yesterday and he was absolutely fine. It was all a bit strange.
He’s now gone over to Liverpool with Emily to spend the rest of the weekend there at Mikey’s where as you can see he struggles to settle!
Emily’s prep for her August WDW and Universal trip continues. They have booked Mickey’s Not So Scary and have what looks like an action packed and fun plan.
They are taking some first timers with them who of course are listening to almost all of Emily’s advice. However, she did share some shocking news this week. Apparently the newbie couple have bought new trainers for the trip but are refusing to wear them until they get there despite Emily’s advice and pleadings to wear them in. Is this the most rookie of rookie mistakes for a WDW newcomer? It’ll end in tears.
Sorry there has been no time today for a post even though you are now reading one.
I’ve been out at a music festival with my band mates. Not to worry I thought, I will take some photos and videos of the day to post instead. Then I forgot as things are always hectic when getting set up and ready to play in the very short time afforded for such things.
All I managed was this brief backstage clip ….
We just did half an hour of 80s tunes and it went pretty well. It was a charity festival for Cancer charities. The weather could have been kinder of course but it was dry if a little windy and chilly as bank holidays tend to be.
Now I’m planted on the couch watching Liverpool and waiting for them to lift the Premier League trophy. Add to that not being in work tomorrow and I’ve had worse Sundays.
So apologies for the size and quality of this micro blog and enjoy your Monday off if you get one.
The main thing of note to share from the past few days was our gig last night, which was our first public outing as the Neon Vortex, our 80s tribute band.
We had rehearsed on Wednesday and felt completely unready for public performance, mainly due to a lack of rehearsal time due to our collective busy lives. Anyway, that fear drove us all to do enough homework before last night for it to go off almost mistake free.
It was pleasing to see this new show go down so well with the audience and hopefully things can only get better from here on in.
Earlier in the week something a bit odd happened. I started to get alerts that my blog was getting large volumes of traffic. Now, those days are long gone so it felt weird and certainly unexpected and I wondered if someone had uncovered my secret scandalous life of drug abuse and crime, but no. After a bit of digging into the stats and the source of the traffic almost all of it was coming from Facebook but in Germany.
Of course I have legions of readers all over the world as you would expect but the sheer volume was off the scale of even the height of my relevance and readership.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, mainly as I stopped researching it as soon as I figured it out, it would appear that I am not the only one who can’t type kingdom. A typo decades ago on The Dis saw me create a username of mkingdon rather than mkingdom and here we are. Still, it made buying the domain cheaper and easier.
At some point during last week something happened in German politics which saw a group or party get banned or something and they were called Kingdom of Germany. I have no idea how, but it seemed folks searching for that somehow then led them to click through to my blog.
I can only chuckle at the bizarre and surreal experience my new German visitors had when trying to make sense of the absolute trivial nonsense I pump out here when they were looking for some insightful information on whatever these Kingdom folks said, did or had done to them.
I only hope they used Google translate on my posts to see what it was all about and suffered whatever Google made of my drivel. If any of my German friends have stuck around, literally all I can say to you is Ich mochte ein stuck shwarzwalderkirschtorte bitte.
Two years of German study in the mid 80s has not gone to waste.
Ironically, one of the songs we did last night was Nena’s “classic” Neunundneunzig Luft Ballon. We did however take the easy option and do the English version. It’s spooky how different themes collide or at least how I can desperately mash them together in an attempt to churn out a few hundred words every week.
At this point doing these posts is solely driven by my “completion complex” (not a euphemism). I’ve been posting nearly every week since 2009 and every cell in my body rejects the idea of stopping now, and of course once I pop my clogs, all this inane crap will be a fitting testament to my time on the planet. Take from that what you will.
In an unpleasant and unwanted turn of events last week I was once again in London.
I’m not really saying I want another pandemic to obliterate travel for work and in person meetings but it was a silver lining in the heaviest of clouds.
I left on Tuesday afternoon on an uncomfortably packed train from Piccadilly and arrived in my “digs” that evening not too far from the Gherkin (not a euphemism).
I doubt that anybody’s company’s travel budget affords them luxury but a London Travelodge is never going to evoke memories of the Yacht Club. I settled into the room desperately trying not to think of everyone else who had slept in that bed and I took in the view.
I was not expecting a glorious vista with herds of wildebeest but perhaps the odd London landmark would have been nice.
With a Tesco Express meal deal secured I returned to the room for an evening of freeview telly and an early night.
The work itself was nothing I wish to recall. It was bad enough going through it once and I escaped the capital around 5pm on Thursday thankfully being able to secure a train an hour earlier than the one I had booked so I got home around 8.30, tired and all Londoned out for the foreseeable. The parking fee at Manchester Piccadilly for those three days will be given our finance folks heartburn for a while I’m sure.
I was very happy (relatively speaking) to be back at my desk at home for work on Friday. Sure it was an unacceptable day of back to back Teams calls but at least I didn’t have to wear proper pants.
Saturday saw me gigging with Mustard down in Knutsford at a 4×4 car festival thing.
Our first outdoor gig of the year, albeit within a marquee. Luckily it was a dry sunny day but as we crept into darkness the temperature dropped and my already average playing skills were tested as I started to lose all feeling in my fingers.
It has been nice to see the sun recently and experience some hint of warmth as the weather improves. I am so tired of being cold. It makes me look forward to our July Mexico trip where we can hopefully forget all the coldness for a couple of weeks and instead moan about it being too hot.
Thankfully next week has no requirement for me to be anywhere for work so it will just be the standard level of horror. Can’t wait.
It’s Bank Holiday season. Damn these pesky four day weeks preventing me from spending all the time I’d like to at work! Since we last spoke it’s been a proper busy time and it whizzed by in extra fast fashion as it was broken up by a visit to London for work. I’m never a fan of work involving leaving my house but it’s becoming more of a thing in recent times as things change at work and it all gets busier.
It was fairly painless as work trips go with a 8am train out from Manchester and a 4.15pm train back out of London with a 3 hour meeting in the middle. So just the 13 hours end to end journey.
Despite the horrific Wi-Fi on the train I even managed to get a little bit of work done on both legs of the journey.
The rest of the work weeks have followed the recent pattern of absolute chaos, back to back meetings all day every day and the feeling at the end of each day that I’ve been run over by a train with a brain that can barely remember how to eat my tea.
There was more travel and leaving the house last weekend too as Louise and I went to see Calamity Jane in Liverpool, which was a recent birthday present from Emily for Louise.
It was funny to watch the show as a million years ago both Louise and I “starred” in a local production of this show. Well, Louise starred as Calamity Jane and I had a slightly less vital role as Joe the bartender, but I feel I added my own unique take to the character.
The lead role was taken by Carrie Hope Fletcher, who you may know is the sister of Tom Fletcher from McFly, both huge Disney fans and regular visitors to WDW. I’m sure both of them read this blog religiously of course as every Disney fan on the planet tends to.
We arrived in Liverpool nice and early and of course immediately had some food. We stumbled across an eatery called Smoke and Dough and were glad we did. It was an unlimited meat platter kind of deal.
They had me at assorted breads.
The main platter was very nice and we could not take advantage of the ability to order any more.
Following our meal, still with time to kill we took the opportunity of being in Liverpool One to do some holiday shopping.
I have secured my holiday slacks. I confirmed my middle aged middle class status but procuring four pairs of summer trousers from M&S. That blew my usual clothes budget for the year.
The day after I was busy mowing and choring around the house and then had to enjoy watching Liverpool secure the league title. All of that was the reason for no post last week. There was just no time. I hope you coped and suspect you didn’t notice.
This week just gone saw a Mustard rehearsal as we enter a busy band time over the next few weeks and of course there were more manic days at work. One day did include a working lunch with a supplier down in Knutsford. The weather was proper summery and we ate outside, lightly toasting my glorious dome.
Tune in next week for, time permitting, more tales of this jet set lifestyle.
Usually, about now, in the standard cycle of our endless Disney trips, I would be elbow deep in all kinds of planning activities. Assuming a summer trip, once we start to see daffodils and daylight beyond tea time it normally feels like a proper sea change in daily life, everything looks literally and figuratively brighter and I undergo self imposed and unnecessary stress about where we might eat in a few months.
Do I miss it, with our plans not involving the US this year? A bit, yes. One of the big benefits of a holiday that takes more than the action of booking it is the continuing dopamine hit of doing the bits of planning that are the milestones in the countdown.
With us heading for Mexico and an all inclusive experience I have nothing to do other than ensure I have the appropriate attire for our activities that might even fit me. On Friday, not being allowed to work, I found myself in the unusual setting of a retail location and did cast my eye over some suitable long trousers for the posher restaurants at the resort which insist on such. After about twenty minutes of pushing things around racks I left with a pack of socks and nothing related to the holiday.
There’s plenty of time yet and I as ever I hold onto the hope that I will lose fourteen stone “in a daaaaay” before July and any wardrobe additions now would be wasted. Socks however, will fit me whatever shape my body is in.
Conversely, not having to keep up to date on all the happenings at our destination to understand what attractions might be closed and what format and price this week’s FastPass system may take is liberating. I’m not saying we’ll make a habit of it but this relaxed approach to going away to relax is definitely a change and in some ways welcome, especially with work being stupidly mad at the moment.
I am even thankful that our chosen resort does not operate a reservation system for their restaurants. I am an animal of extremes! The absolute extent of my pre-holiday activity has been watching the resort post on Instagram.
I really don’t want to wait four years before returning to the US so let’s hope something happens over there to return things to something approaching normality. It may just be my soft lefty liberal echo chamber on social media but I am seeing lots of articles detailing large downturns in tourism to the US. It’s a real shame that ordinary folks in the relevant industries will be affected, unless of course they voted for him, then not so much. Maybe the downturn in numbers will see some keener prices for flights and more offers from Disney and the like, but I suspect any downturn from the UK market won’t be significant enough to make that much of a difference.
So as we enter the season of bank holidays, allegedly higher temperatures (although nobody seems to have told the weather up North), power washing your flagging and unavoidably visiting DIY shops and garden centres I find myself with nothing holiday related to do. It’s different, but I’m not too sure whether that is good or bad different. I am absolutely looking forward to our change of pace and plans, mostly because I am just sick to death of being cold!
I’ll just have to spend the next few months browsing lightweight chinos online I suppose and call that holiday planning.
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