Queuing in the snow!

Today I had the pleasure to witness two American traditions.... The first one I'm sure you all know about, Thanksgiving day. Thanksgiving day is a celebration of the first dinner held between the indigenous American Indians and the Pilgrims fresh off the of the Mayflower. I suppose the dinner was held to symbolize a long and prosperous future for both sides whereas in fact I am sure the local Indians started regretting inviting those pesky pilgrims over for dinner from almost the first day! I know that some people say that the Pilgrims went to America to avoid persecution while others believe the real reason they went to America was to persecute!!

My thanksgiving dinner involved Beatrice - a Delicious succulent turkey of 18 pounds with all of your usual delicious trimmings - really it was very similar to your normal Christmas dinner with the added bonus of being in November, so you have another Christmas dinner to look forward to in about a months time :) In fact I can count myself twice as lucky today as I got to enjoy my thanksgiving dinner with Sheila and Ken (Amanda's Mum and Stepdad) and then another mini thanksgiving over at Amanda's Grans house! yummy!

This is just a quick little post to wish you all a very merry thanksgiving!

I shall sign off now but I shall leave you with something to ponder.... today the temperature outside was-5, it was snowing, most people have eaten too much, so what in the name of god are these people doing, queuing to get into a shop for that other American tradition 'Black Friday'?!?! My Black Friday experience was nowhere near as pleasant as my thanksgiving experience - while braving the cold to take these pictures for you on a Orange i phone or Galaxy Samsung or something fancy like that, Amanda and her car got swept away in a sea of people and traffic, leaving me stranded outside this shop in the freezing cold with everyone staring at me for a full 15 minutes! Poor old Greg! I hope it was all worth it to bring you these pictures :)

the queue stretched around 3 sides of the building!

The Car driving behind the sign nearly ran me down in its haste to be at the front of the queue

These people must be crazy! and no! no amount of deals or offers would ever convince me to queue up in the cold to go shopping! yuck!

Not a picture of the queue but a nice picture of some cupcakes Amanda and me made, aren't they cute :)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING :)

Weddings, Moon Pies and Thunderbirds

My Wedding :)

I just saw in a travel program on the television that in Britain the trains may be the most expensive per mile in Europe but they are also fast, frequent, the most comfortable and the most RELIABLE! What?!?!?! Clearly the host has not been privy to living in Edenbridge, missing his train by a minute and having to wait an hour for the next one which has been delayed due to leaves on the line, oh yes and having to pay an absurd amount for the privilege! Something I don't miss about home is the railways! no public transport is possibly better than that expensive and inadequate piece of....

Some other 'facts' I have enjoyed hearing on the tele about England is that 'hard up' means cheap and in a show called American Pickers (a little like the antique roadshow) they once visited a town "190 miles from London" Well.... 190 miles from London means you could be anywhere from France, Belgium and Holland to Bristol or Birmingham or Portsmouth! ha! I have no idea which town they visited!

This is a Rhino in the city of Southampton, they had erected 40 of them around the city and I went down there aiming to photograph them all (and watch a football game!) However due to a major cock up on the railways delaying me around 3 hours I only had time to find a handful of the 40 rhinos I was hoping to find :(

Well Good Evening world! This blog comes to you from the fingers of a husband, I am now a newly married man, yikes! First of all I suppose I should admit to being a complete and utter moron - in my last post I misspelled dEEr as dear! duh! it must be the American influence! just kidding :) I really wish I did not have to write a blog on the wedding as I really wanted all you folks from back home to be able to attend but as the 5 orangutans can testify the wedding was absolutely marvelous and I think a brilliant time was had by all. even if I did end up with cake on my face, quite literally :) A post about the wedding shall follow soon but as I only have 5 blurry pictures available to me right now it is going to have to wait! Do not fear however, as I still have lots of cool things to talk about from our amazing honeymoon in Savannah GA and Charleston SC

Quick quiz question mainly for the UK folk: what does GA and SC stand for?

if you guessed Georgia and South Carolina you would be correct :)

Our Hotel.

Savannah was our first stop and it has a warm temperate climate which means that it has seriously hot summers and also warm winter weather with stable highs in the 20s, a little like Greece in that regards, it is also prone to rather awesome thunderstorms and hurricanes and unfortunately for us the thunderstorms decided to stay away but fortunately the hurricanes did as well! Well I am pleased that me and Amanda did not decide to stay away as we had such a fantastic time! It can be really hard to find independent places to stay in America and so we were very happy when we discovered the Thunderbird Inn... located on the edge of downtown the Thunderbird inn is just full of retro charm from its red, orange and blue colour scheme to its awesome sign to the fact that when you enter your room you are greeted by 2 lovely Moon Pies on your pillows :) What are Moon Pies you may be thinking? well they are very similar to a wagon wheel except in true American tradition they are about twice the size and come in about a million and twenty flavours! yum! they definitely seem to be the candy of choice in the Southern states as you see them everywhere but unfortunately I am yet to see one in Ohio :(

Me and Amanda surrounded by Sunshine and Spanish moss.

Something that really helps to make Savannah unique is a plant called Spanish moss. Unlike it's name suggests this is not to be found in Spain but in very small areas of the Americas principally in Northern Chile and Argentina, through the tropics into Mexico and Honduras but mainly it can be found in Savannah. This stuff is everywhere! It hangs off of all the trees but seems to prefer large majestic oak trees and gives the whole town a really spooky (and Romantic!) feel. It is really lovely strolling through the tree lined avenues being shaded from the sun by the strands of moss hanging down.

Savannah is famous for it's historical city centre, an area consisting of 24 squares all stuffed full of Spanish moss, statues, fountains and surrounded by stunning colonial style houses dating from the last 400 years (very old for the USA!) the houses tend to have 3 floors - one for the slaves and 2 for the family, one of the houses we visited had up to 13 slaves at one point in it's history. We spent our first day strolling around visiting all 24 of these lovely squares and it really felt like stepping back in time, I have never been to a city that has been so well preserved without a single 60s tower block in sight! America may lack the history of Europe but the history it does have it certainly seems to do a brilliant job of preserving. My pictures don't really do the city justice, I found it so hard to photograph as the sun was so bright and the shadows so dark I couldn't figure out the contrast!!! very frustrating!!!

If any picture epitomizes life in Savannah, I think this must be it :)

Something else that America can do like no one else is food, as dinner in the Mellow Mushroom can testify.... pints of beer for $2 followed by a 'small' pizza for $10... the pints in America may be a little smaller than back home but the pizza certainly isn't! I am disappointed to announce that after 3 attempts at eating in Mellow mushroom (they also had a restaurant in Charleston) I failed to even once finish my pizza :( I think that even my friend Oz of the fish finger challenge fame would struggle with one of them!

For anyone who has read 'in the garden of good and evil' this is Jim Williams house. For anyone who has not read 'in the garden in the garden of the good and evil' I thoroughly recommend it!

A television program that Amanda and myself both enjoy watching is... ehm.... 'Ghost Adventures' where a team of paranormal investigators travel around some of the most haunted locations getting locked inside them from dusk until dawn scaring the living daylights out of each other and providing endless laughs during the process. As Savannah has a history of being one of the most haunted cities in the USA they have of course visited the city and so both Amanda and me were excited for our 'ghost day'! This involved a trip to Bonaventure cemetery in the daytime, followed by dinner in the moon river brewery (as visited by the ghost adventures crew) and a ghost tour in the evening. It was definitely my favourite day of our honeymoon, the cemetery was absolutely stunning, it covered a huge area, surrounded by steaming swamps and was home to a copious amount of sand flies and dead bodies, here are some pictures for you to enjoy :)

The Mercer family plot of Johnny Mercer fame.

A creepy angel with some Spanish Moss behind.

Our trip to the cemetery was followed by an unfortunately uneventful trip to the brewery - no matter how much beer I drank no ghosts seemed to be in the building that night :( The same could be said for our ghost tour, having happily taken quite a substantial amount of our money, the tour proceeded to take us to a 'paranormal location' this paranormal location turned out to be the tour companies own warehouse where they keep the trolleys at night and was apparently the location of a gruesome triple murder at the turn of the century..... hmmmmm.... I am thinking of entering the paranormal profession myself ;)

Me and Amanda at the Owens - Thomas house.

So I think I have written enough on Savannah for the time being.... But please stay tune as next up shall be honeymoon part 2: Charleston, South Carolina :)

in other news, after a lot of thought I have decided my future may lie in politics and have applied to be mayor of Toronto! I shall keep you informed on that one :)

The weather has been doing some crazy things here, I have only been in Ohio a little over a month and during this time I have experienced heat of 35 degrees, snow and -7 temperatures and currently there is a tornado warning issued for the area! ridiculous! but here is a lovely picture of the scene that greeted us on our return from honeymoon.

4 days to go!

Good Evening Everybody! There is only 5 days to go till the big day now, I am so excited! I am also very sorry there has not been much action on the blog front lately - things have been extremely hectic and busy lately and I intend to fill you in in a lot more detail post wedding! But to wet your appetite here are some pictures of things I have done in the past couple of weeks :)

The resident dear population - you may notice the lack of flowers in the gardens and these critters combined with the harsh winters are the main reason why!

Me alongside my lovely new bicycle going for our first ride along the towpath

My lovely new bicycle sitting up against a nice tree in all its autumn (fall) glory

Does this picture need a caption? it was an absolute beast of a burger and the beer is pretty good too!

This is something called a chocolate Smores... it is a chocolate covered pretzels with pieces of marshmallows in it! mmmmmm :)

The perfect place to experience a storm.... in the middle of a really long bridge with no cover at all :(

Another cool shot of the city shrouded in cloud... at the end of the bridge this time :)

A nice view looking over the Cleveland shoreline and Lake Erie 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN PEOPLE :)

Barry or Berry?

Good day to you! So confusion has reigned supreme in my new household this week, it all started over a simple cup of tea.... Barry's tea which is imported from Ireland is by far and away the best cup of tea you can get in America and I am very grateful that it is available in my new home. However I did not touch the stuff for several days as I was under the impression that the tea in the box was 'Berry' tea. In the US Barry is pronounced exactly the same as Berry, so there is no Barry Bonds, he is in fact Berry Bonds, ask any American to say Barry and then Berry and the response you will get bar none is 'Berry, Berry'! So for all you lovely Americans out there... there is in fact a A in Barry :)

 I apologise that after all my talk there has been no blog for a few weeks, I can only begin to tell you how busy I have been - In fact I do believe that trying to tell you how busy I have been is exactly what I shall do! 

The visa which I have gained for the USA is a fiancee visa, this means that it gives me permission to enter the USA once to marry, and as soon as we marry I need to apply for a change of status to permanent residency and a green card. I am allowed to work as soon as I entered the USA, as well as allowed to apply for a social security card, a driving license, healthcare and whatever else I should chose to apply for. That is all well and good, however due to those Republicans and Obamacare the US government has gone into shutdown, this means that the office which would supply me with my social security card is currently closed until further notice - which basically means no security card for me, which means no anything else for me until the issues in Washington are sorted out! so Washington if you are listening... please sort out your problems soon as I am relying on you!!

So as I have been unable to do much official stuff yet I have been very busy instead preparing for the wedding but mainly fun! I have purchased a really smart blue suit, a nice simple silver wedding band, a new phone and a gorgeous new bike (pictures will follow in a future blog) I was also very very lucky to get a ticket to see the Cleveland Indians play in their first playoff game for six years. I got the ticket because Amanda purchased them by mistake - she meant to purchase the actual playoff tickets but got the tickets for the wildcard game by mistake and as the Indians lost the game and there was no playoff it worked out brilliantly for me (the wildcard game is a winner takes all game with the victorious team advancing to the playoffs proper).

The Cleveland Indians came into the season as your typical underdogs and I put a bet on them at the start of the year to win the world series for the first time in 59 years at 100/1, they started off the year well with the best record in the division and hopes started to rise before they collapsed in a August which saw them lose 20 games and had their best pitcher arrested after being caught sending drugs to his own house under his dogs name! However they rallied in September winning their last 10 games in a row to host a winner takes all playoff game against the Tampa Bay Rays on the day after I arrived. If you want to attend any baseball game it would be this one, where 152 games or blood sweat and tears all comedown to this, and I was there - it was a truly memorable sporting occasion and the crowd were fantastic... until the Indians started losing... then my jet lag kicked in and everyone was left gutted after a crushing 4-0 defeat :( Still! It was a great game to watch and I am very excited for next spring where they get to try all over again for that elusive world series that the city so desires.

Waving the rally hankies!

And here is a picture of some more people waving white hankies! 20 thousand people Morris dancing at the Cropredy folk festival! good times!

I also feel I should say a big thank you to my new family over here, Amanda, Sheila and Ken - Thank you so much for allowing me to stay in your lovely home and filling me up with steaks and introducing me to pierogies and stuffed cabbages! Jim and Cheryl and Mackenzie - I'm sorry I have not gotten to spend a huge amount of time with you yet but I had so much fun at the ice hockey and I hope we get to catch up with the mullet men again soon :D I'd also like to thank the weather for being so beautiful! I don't believe it has dropped below 80 degrees since I arrived although I would appreciate a drop in the humidity levels!!!

Travel Tip of the Week this week is how to book a Transatlantic flight: A neat little trick is that they always fill up the economy seats from the front backwards, so to get lots of space all you need to do is change your seat to the back row (unless you chose BA, who charge you £20 to change your seat more that 24 hours in advance!). This trick has worked really successfully for me and so sure enough when I boarded my plane in London there is everyone crammed in at the front and me stretching out in my own row at the back, unfortunately a rather old, smelly, hairy and large English lady was too busy knitting to get the memo, I have no idea where she came from but she just dumped herself right in my row about 3 hours into the flight, fell asleep, started snoring and did not move until the flight landed in Cleveland! Bah!

I know that this picture has nothing to do with my blog, but this is my friend Tim from back home eating a sandwich, I thought I'd include it as a little nudge for him to reply to my email :D

And here is a lovely picture of my mum at Scotney Castle a couple of weeks before I left! I miss you mum!

Thanks for reading :) I promise the next entry will be much more interesting and witty as more silly things start to happen to me :)

The story of Amanda and Me.

So as promised here is the story of how I made it to be in Ohio! 5 years ago, mainly the fault of my dad I was quite a keen stamp collector, I enjoyed it as it is a fantastic way to learn about different peoples, cultures and places as a stamp can tell you an awful lot about the country where it is from, whether that be a famous celebrity from that country, a sportsman or a famous building. Well this hobby of mine led me to look for a foreign pen-pal (that really was all I was interested in at the time, not love!) online and I ended up with a pen-pal in Chile and the Philippines. These both lasted a couple of letters of swapping stamps and postcards before it petered out to nothing but I left my profile up on the website without knowing that it was soon to lead me to the love of my life :)

A small sample of postcards and letters from my collection!

At the same time in Cleveland, Ohio a girl called Amanda was getting incredibly excited as soon as a part of her degree she was going to be spending a six month semester studying in Rome (no, not Amanda Knox!). She wanted to practice her Italian and so decided to sign up to a pen-pal website to find a local to write too, luckily for me all the Italian men on the website turned out to be chauvinistic sleazeballs (thanks Italy :)) and so Amanda instead turned her attention to one of life's most pathetic creatures - a British male.

An Englishman abroad

Lord knows why Amanda picked me to message - I think she is still wondering what she's let herself into herself! But whatever the reason, I'm glad she did as that was where it all started. We started writing letters back and forth from which I got the impression Amanda was of midget proportions but with a personality I loved and could definitely relate too! I was rather reluctant to meet up at first as I did not want to meet someone I had met online and I didn't want to spoil the friendship that we had developed through writing letters, however curiosity got the better of me and.... I needn't have worried! We got on like a house on fire, Amanda definitely was not a midget and I even got a chance to rescue my damsel in distress on our first date as she managed to get stuck on one of the lions in Trafalgar square and ended up falling right into my arms :D

Two lovebirds

Amanda definitely enjoyed herself too as for reasons still unknown to me she decided to make the most of Ryanair and came to visit me at university for her Easter break from Italy. I got to show her the delights of one of England's most prestigious city's in Derby and one of the country's best beauty spots in the peak district national park, the home of majestic sheep and little mountains. Here we are enjoying the view from the top of Thorpe cloud near Ashbourne in the peaks.

Thorpe cloud

After Amanda returned to America that summer I think it hit us both how much we meant to each other, as being so far apart was absolutely horrible and we missed each other like crazy, no amount of postcards and letters can make up for actually being with someone (and we wrote a truckload of them, especially as I inexplicably initially refused to sign up to Skype due to reasons I don't even understand myself!). 

By this time I had also decided it was time to tell people about me and Amanda. This posed some problems for me as I was embarrassed to tell my friends and family that I was dating a girl I met on the internet, which might explain why some of you reading this are a little surprised to find out that we did in fact, not meet in a jazz bar in San Francisco!!!!!!!!

Not at a jazz bar, but at the San Francisco giants baseball stadium!

Since then a lot of money has been spent by us both on flight tickets back and forth, we have visited many different lands and seen many different sights and managed to survive months apart proving the saying that absence only makes the heart grow stronger correct! Last week I had my interview at the US embasy in which my visa was approved and so I shall be on my way to be with my fiancee on the 1st of October, with our marriage following shortly after on the 2nd of November!!! if you are still reading I hope you did not find this post too cheesy, there is a lt more that could be said and I am sure more shall be revealed as this blog progresses :)

Cleveland at Christmas time

hello and welcome!

Hello and Welcome to my blog!! I have decided to start a blog as I think it will be the easiest way for me to stay in touch with people back home when I leave for the USA and I am looking forward to letting you know what I have been getting up to through my words and pictures! I shall try to keep the posts fairly short and please feel free to comment any ideas or suggestions or whatever is on your mind at the bottom of the page. Before I begin I should probably say that I have never done a blog or so much as a diary before and trying to decide what to put in the first post was very difficult but in the end I have gone for a very brief overview of my year so far, it has certainly been an interesting one!!! 

As you are probably aware 2013 has proven to be a very exciting year for me so far, first off was my trip to Spain in January to go to Barcelona, Zaragoza and Madrid which resulted in me very jamily managing to get tickets to see the best sporting rivalry on the planet - the El Classico (Real Madrid vs Barcelona at the Bernabau for you uncultured souls!) I do not know why I thought it would be clever to mention this in my blog as my words definitely can't do it Justice, the atmosphere was incredible, from the moment I walked into the ground the whistles were piercing and just seemed to get louder as the night wore on, especially when Lionel Messi was on the ball - I wonder what was going through his mind knowing that over 90.000 people are screaming for his blood? Whatever was on his mind it definitely wasn't on the game which was a steamy, gritty affair that ended in a 1-1 draw with the young real Madrid defenders Rafael Varane and Fabien Coentrao looking particularly impressive. Why Real Madrid want to sell Coentrao is beyond me, and why Manchester United thought Madrid would let him leave on loan makes even less sense, but that is the nature of transfer deadline day! Was anybody else glued to their radios for the entire evening or am I alone on that front? This chilly winters night in Madrid has definitely been the highlight of my year so far (I enjoyed it even more that transfer deadline day!) :).

outside the bernabau - please excuse my jose mourinho scarf!
 I don't know what I was thinking when I got that either!

I have always likedd living in England because of the opportunities it presents to travel far, wide and cheaply around Europe and I have a feeling this will be something I sorely miss when I leave, my week in Spain was a lovely last trip and provided me with some fantastic memories and pictures to take away with me :D Below is a picture I took of the basilica del Pilar in Zaragoza lit up in all her glory on a crisp and clear winters night - I think she is the most beautiful building I have had the pleasure of seeing!

Basilica del Pilar, Zaragoza

Things took a bit of a turn for the worse after my little holiday to Spain, I decided to leave my job at the cooperative and switch back to my old job with Holland and Barrett which would involve less hours and less stress which are both very beneficial when you are trying to prepare to emigrate at the same time! Things went a little pear shaped after I handed in my notice as I had quite a nasty accident on my bicycle which resulted in a broken wrist, a very broken bike and reconstructive surgery on my knee as I had managed to rupture all four ligaments which hold the knee joint in place. Needless to say I was also off work for several months but unfortunately as I had already handed my notice in at the co-op they would only pay me sick pay for 3 weeks, meaning I had no income whatsoever for 4 months... damn!! There are however also positives of having such a long time off of work, I had time to do things like participating in a man vs food fish finger eating competition where I managed to devour 37 fish fingers in forty minutes! Congratulations need to go to my friend Oz, who did Australia proud by devouring all 60 of his fishfingers in just 14 minutes! his record still stands on the wall of fame in the pub 4 months later!

fish finger challenge

During my recovery I also got the opportunity to accompany my Uncle David on a midweek trip to Baden 'so nice they named it twice' Baden, Germany. Baden Baden is a very posh spa town nestled between the Rhine and the black forest that is a popular destination to unwind for the rich and famous - the WAGS were based there during the 2006 world cup! More recently it seems to have been taken over by the Russian oligarchs who have been buying up property within the city helping to keep the city clean and picturesque as well as keeping keeping BAden Badens casino in business. the casino at Baden Baden looks very nice from the outside however I can tell you very little else about it as needless to say they wouldn't let me inside! 

I think that during this blog I shall also include the odd bit of advice for holiday makers and the target of today's advice is how not to buy a train ticket in Germany. While using the trains in Germany please ensure you validate your ticket!! In order to do this you shall first need to buy your ticket, once purchased obviously before this ticket can be used as a ticket you need to stamp it yourself from one of the many validation machines provide, these are usually lcated at the top of trees or at the bottom of wells, or in my case at the very end of a platform, behind a fence. But don't worry! should you forget to validate your ticket before you board the train there is a nice ticket conductor on the train itself! He will be more that happy to shout at you in front of the other passengers, tel you the ticket you have just purchased is invalid and make you buy another one on board the train for twice the price! he did all of this in English, what efficiency!

In the mountains behind Baden - Baden

After a lot of pain, blood, sweat, tears and physio therapy (and a lot of fishfingers!) I am now finally back at work and on my bicycle, and I hope to be running within the next couple of weeks!! Something I have really struggled with since my accident is controlling my weight, I am now carrying around a rather large spare Tyre and have gained over 2 stone during my period of inactivity, and with only two months to go now until the wedding I think one of the major early themes in my blog shall definitely involve my battle to lose the bulge!

Brighton beach

As if the accident was not enough to cope with, there has also been something else ongoing throughout 2013, the small matter of my wedding day and emigration to be with my wonderful fiancee Amanda Minute - without a doubt the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world :)  Getting to this point (I shall be leaving England at the end of September and getting married on the 2nd November) has certainly been a roller coaster of a ride and this shall be the subject of my next post so please stay tuned :)