TcV His Life In Pieces

This blog is Moving home so if you can't reach it, you know why.

I am taking a well deserved break from work, I had planned on getting away somewhere on a last minute deal. It was half-term so there were no deals to be had.

Meanwhile, some people at work had arranged an inter-departmental darts tournament. I was sat at home (on holiday) checking my work email, what was I thinking? When I saw that my department's team were a man down. I was at a loose end, so I sent an email offering my services.

I am a terrible darts player, apart from a brief obsession with plastic darts when I was in the US (they're like stickle bricks), I hadn't played darts in years and never very well or competitively, but I had participated in a practice session with some of my colleagues the week before.

We met beforehand for drinks and pizza in Revolution.

The venue for the darts was the Bodega, one of the few city centre pubs that still had a dartboard, that dartboard was in a narrow alcove off of the back room, so pretty rubbish for spectating.

Needless to say our team lost their first match, and the subsequent match in the losers competition. The eventual winners were the department who had first suggested the darts tournament.

We stayed until the end of the tournament and continued drinking.

The real fun started when some of us returned to Revolution.

First off we saw the minor celeb, Antony Hutton (he won Big Brother as few years ago), Sam insisted that I take his photo with Antony.

We stayed there for quite a while, I got talking to some American men, from Texas, they were ok, pretty fun actually, I have met worse and I have met better. also at their table was a gorgeous young lady called S, who wasn't American. We got talking and then sometime later we exchanged numbers and email addresses.

I have a theory based on almost everyone I know who works in IT seems to partner up with someone who is either in teaching, medicine or in rare cases IT.

I was already attracted to S, but when she said she was a teacher I though "Ker-Ching!", only negative she lives and works hundreds of miles away and only comes home in the school holidays.

We were both pretty drunk and I can't remember leaving Revs.

I arranged to visit Jenny who is at present studying in Marburg, Germany, she has been since last summer and will shortly be returning home. I think the opportunity to go visit while she was so close overcame my travel funk.

Even after booking my flights I was nervous, my stomach had butterflies. I was to fly via Amsterdam and meet Jenny in Frankfurt's main railway station.

When I packed my bag, I worried, as ever, if I was over the prescribed 31Kg allowance, I wasn't 8.5Kg was the total.

While in the departure lounge. I had the starting of a panic attack ( I began to wonder if I had developed a fear of flying) but I calmed myself and began to relax a little.

Once the plane took flight all fear drained away and I enjoyed the flight; The emergency demonstration was particularly good in Dutch.

Upon arrival at Schippol my heart sank when I saw the Frankfurt flight had been canceled until I checked the number and was immensely relieved to discover it was the preceding flight. I didn't have much time to linger and shop, as it was a short connection and the queues for security and immigration were very long.

When I got to the departure gate I discovered that the flight was delayed but only a little.

The flight was uneventful; I was impressed by the cabin crew managing to serve both food and drinks in 50 minutes.

30 minutes after landing I had cleared security and was drinking beer with Jenny in the Station.

I have barely gone anywhere since returning from my Great American Road trip back in 2007.

I have gone through the motions planning and arranging things only to get cold feet and drop out at the last minute. Fortunately I haven't left anybody in the lurch or out of pocket.

I don't know what has been preventing me from going anywhere; the only reason I could see is that I had used up my internal travel quota and needed for these to be replenished before embarking on any more trips. After all I was away for 54 days which is an awful lot of holiday in anyone's book, almost eight weeks.

Anyway I'm over it now it seems.

After my first trip to the states; I would tell people back home that I had ben to La Crosse Wisconsin, and an awful lot of them would bring up the bit of the film Love Actually where Kris from My Family went to Wisconsin. I hadn't seen the film then.

Now, however, the film seems to be on constant rotation on ITV2 so I have seen quite a lot of the film more than once, but just the other day I finally caught the bit that my friends had spoken about.

Summary courtesy of wikipedia:

"Colin, Tony, and the Wisconsin girls

Colin Frissell (Kris Marshall) informs his friend Tony (Abdul Salis) he plans to go to the US and find love there because, in his estimation, that country is full to the brim with gorgeous women who will fall head over heels for him because of his 'cute British accent'. ('Stateside I'm Prince William without the weird family.') The first place he goes after landing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is an 'average' US bar where he meets three stunningly attractive women (Ivana Milicevic, January Jones, Elisha Cuthbert) who after falling for his Basildon accent invite him to stay at their home, specifically in their bed, with them and their housemate Harriet (Shannon Elizabeth) ('the sexy one'). They warn him that because they are poor they can't even afford pajamas, so everyone will be naked. In the finale Colin returns to England with Harriet for himself and her sister Carla (Denise Richards) for Tony. Carla hugs and kisses a startled Tony at the airport, telling him 'I heard you were gorgeous'."

Well that didn't happen to me in Milwaukee, I spent a dull night in a huge room in the fabulous (stay there if you can) Ambassador hotel, which was undergoing renovation so the bar wasn't open nor the restaurant.

American women did find my accent cute, One girl did ask to see my passport prove I was British because loads of amercans put on a fake English accent to pull; Apparently Austin Powers is to blame for that.

The closest I came to the scene described above was in Chicago, on 13th October 2004; I was staying in a Hostel and my room mates and I hit some bars on Printers Row.

I was sharing a room with Jeff a phys. ed. teacher from Pheonix, AZ. and Mark from Basingstoke, Hants. Jeff was in town to see Notre Dame play American Football. Dave was on the last leg of his around the world trip aiming to be home in England for Christmas.

We had been in this bar long enough to find the local Goose Island lager disgusting and had begun drinking a close approximation of Diesel (Snakebite and Black) a rough concoction comprising Goose Island lager, a nice cider (probably too nice to make Snakebite) and because they had no blackcurrant - grenadine.

The three of us were sharing a table with an Italian American bloke and his girlfriend. and we were in full flow talking about the world, where we'd been and the like. when five lovely barmaids from a nearby bar came in for an after work drinks. We chatted to them until closing time; one of the ladies, Alyson wasn't sure she was working the next day or not but the rest were going onto the South Loop club. Mark went on ahead whilst Jeff and I went with Alyson to her apartment so she could check her messages and find out if she was working or not. It was a fair walk and I remember joking about how trusting she was taking two strange men back to her apartment. She did have to work so she gave us directions to the club and we parted company. Years later I woke up one night and thought maybe she fancied me and I hadn't done anything about it.

Jeff and I caught up with everyone else in the club where we stayed for a few drinks and a dance. but we all went home alone.