Christmas Party

Last week I had my first ever office Christmas party. Instead of boozing it up at the office, or going out for a meal, we decided to do something a little different; something to remember… We went to Medieval Times!

For those of you that don’t know, Medieval Times is a staged medieval-style show, with sword fighting, and jousting, and you get a medieval-style dinner too which you must eat with your fingers, no cutlery provided (think chicken drumsticks, ribs and potato wedges) while you're watching the show. It's even set in a castle.

Medieval Times, Dallas

When you arrive, you are assigned a knight, and he will be the one you are cheering for during the show. We had the Red and Yellow knight, Lord del Font - champion to the Count of Perelada. There was a King and Princess announcing the ‘tournament’ who spoke in terrible attempts at English accents, and you watched as the knights battled for the Princess’ hand in marriage while eating your dinner. We also had unlimited alcoholic beverages which obviously made the show even more exciting, with every cocktail consumed!

it was a 'knight' to remember

All the waiters and bar staff had to address you as ‘m’lord’ or ‘m’lady’ which got a bit annoying after a while but not their fault I suppose. Our waiter looked like the main character from the film Antz which I found hilarious, although no-one else could see it. Come to think of it, I’d had quite a few piña coladas by this point…

Anyway, there was also a falconer (is that a word?) who sent his falcon flying over the audience. He has a long rope thing that had meat attached to the end, which he swung round to make the falcon fly. (On an immature side note, I am genuinely intrigued if anyone gets pooed on during these shows. Luckily I did not find out the hard way, but I’m sure it must happen!)

One man and his bird

It was a fun night, getting to meet everyone at work’s other halves, and getting quite drunk with them! Going to work the next day was not so fun, especially as a few of us decided to go out drinking afterwards, despite having had unlimited drinks at the show. I got home at about 1am and had to be at work at 9, which was an hour later than usual (forever grateful that our start time was pushed back a bit, don’t know if I could have struggled to get out of bed any earlier). 

To everyone at my office, it was a great night to end a great year of working with you great people. Thank you!

I'll miss you guys!

An Ode to Hugh

So I thought I’d write a little blog about my little bro, as I miss him and have also told a few stories about him recently which have made me laugh. Hugh is my insane partner in crime, and is probably the only person to have seen quite how mad I am, other than my poor mother who just despairs in the fact that two of her children should probably be committed. We have a very similar sense of humour, and spent a lot of time together this summer watching Friends and Gavin & Stacy, irritating everyone else as we know all the words and quote along with them. Actually, we normally spoil the jokes for everyone else because we mostly say the punchline before the character on the show does.

Hugh and I haven’t always got along, mostly because when there’s a four year age gap between any siblings, they’re going to fight. I used to slap him really hard on the back when he annoyed me, mostly at the dinner table, as I have a huge intolerance of people eating with their mouths open. Granted he was only about 7 but still, I knew what he was having for dinner, I didn't need to see it as it was being ingested. We got past the physical violence stage and I do feel quite bad about it now, but I’m sure he didn't suffer too much? (Sorry Hug.)

One of my first memories is the night Hugh was born. I remember coming out of my bedroom late at night and seeing my mum’s friend Dimity on the landing, and being really confused. She told me that I was going to have a little brother or sister in the morning when I woke up, and to go back to bed. The next morning, I woke up with chicken pox. Really unfortunate timing, as it meant I wasn't allowed to visit mum and Hugh in the hospital in case I infected him. I maintained that I didn't mind but apparently it wasn't my choice.

When Hugh was about 18 months old, it snowed quite heavily. This was going to be his first experience with snow, and my mum spent about an hour bundling him up in 50 or so layers. My older brother Ben and I had already been outside playing all morning, and I was getting a bit fed up at being really crap at snowball fights. Ben had good enough aim that he pretty much hit me every time, whereas I was yet to land a return shot on target. Anyway, mum brings Hugh outside at last, and he’s wearing so many layers that he can barely move. ‘Finally,’ I think. ‘I’m sure I can hit him with a snowball, and he can’t throw back!’ So I pack a nice hefty snowball in my hands, and sure enough, hit right on target (hardly surprising as he can’t move). I can still picture him, falling straight backwards without even being able to put his hands out to break his fall at all. He screamed bloody murder, and my mum had to take him back inside, despite her taking so long to wrap him up and let him see snow for the first time. I didn't feel too bad though, I finally won a snowball fight!

Hugh had a lot of cuddly toys when he was younger, and most of them had really original names like Ted the teddy, and Cushion the cushion. He was given a crocodile toy for Christmas one year, and wanted to call him Croc. Ben and I persuaded him to think of something more original, but he didn't know what else to name it. ‘Name it after something you like,’ we said, thinking he might call it Thomas after Thomas the Tank Engine, or something like that. He thought for a second, and then said, ‘Yoghurt.’

To this day, I still bet that he is probably the only child ever to have named a reptile after a dairy product.

My grandfather's neighbour once asked Hugh what he was giving up for Lent. He was 3 or 4 at the time. His answer: Girls!

Hugh went through a ‘comedy’ stage, of telling really unfunny jokes to anyone who would listen. He made up his own jokes, and his classic punchline was, ‘I’m bigger than you’:

What did the wardrobe say to the bed?

I’m bigger than you

What did the car say to the bike?

I’m bigger than you

It was irritating, to say the least, and one day it got too much. ‘Stop telling I’m bigger than you jokes!’ we yelled at him. He looked a bit offended, as he clearly thought he was being hilarious, but he did stop for a while. Then he piped up with:

‘What did the table say to the other table?’

‘We’re the same size.’

Probably the funniest faux-pas Hugh made as a child was when he was about 7 or 8. He was trying to tell my grandparents that he was ambidextrous, but got his words a bit muddled, and announced in front of everyone that he was, in fact, bisexual. Now that’s comedy.

Miss you Hug! Merry Christmas :)

Thanksgiving!

Here is a list of the food I have eaten almost exclusively over the last week:

• Turkey
• Stuffing
• Mashed potatoes
• Sweet potatoes
• Green bean casserole
• Cranberry sauce (I’ve eaten so much of it that it counts as a food, not a condiment)
• Pie
• More pie

It has been absolute carb city, but I am still not bored of it. Imagine having a Christmas dinner every day for a week. Heaven!

I love Thanksgiving so much. It's a holiday about food! OK no, it's about being thankful really I suppose, but I'm thankful for Thanksgiving. It was fun, having a four day weekend, and spending time with my friends. It felt a bit like Christmas!

We had an office Thanksgiving Potluck on Tuesday, where everyone brought a dish to share. I made a chocolate mousse pie, which everyone was very impressed with.

It was actual Thanksgiving on Thursday; we had a second (technically my third) Thanksgiving on Friday at a friend’s house; Saturday and Sunday consisted of leftovers, and now here we are!

I really enjoyed Friday. There were about 15 of us; the house was really busy and noisy; we played board games and did a puzzle – it felt like one of my crazy family’s Christmases. We had four types of pie: pumpkin, chocolate, cherry cheesecake, and pecan. I think I really liked that day especially because I’m not going to be having a big Christmas this year, like I normally do. I leave Dallas for Buenos Aires on December 24^th and land on Christmas Day at about 8am, after a 16 hour journey, so Christmas, presents and turkey are going to be way low on my priority list, beneath sleep, sleep and more sleep. (Plus a little dash of stress of trying to find the apartment Josh and I are staying in for a week, on my own. Probably need to buy an English-Spanish phrasebook! And a map.)

It will come as no surprise that I ate until I was about to burst, and then ate a bit more. It’s a wonderful holiday, we should start celebrating it in England. Meanwhile, I need to go to the gym…

A sigh of relief

So it’s been nearly two weeks since Obama trounced Romney in the election. I wouldn’t be surprised if weather scientists noticed a huge gust of wind across the globe approximately 3 seconds after the election was called: it was the whole world breathing a huge sigh of relief.

It’s funny how petty politics can make people. I didn’t quite sink to the low level of texting all my Republican friends saying ‘I told you so’, although it was very tempting, but I did still make a big deal out of it when I saw them in person. (What? I was happy!) But seriously, it causes arguments; people stop talking to each other; they get so worked up that friendships can take temporary break. It’s interesting, I don’t recall it being such a big deal in the UK when we were unfortunate enough to have a stupid coalition government voted in, with stupid David Cameron as Prime Minister, and stupid Nick Clegg as vice deputy PM, who run the country about as well as if a goat were in charge. Anyhoo, my point is I don’t really think I even know who my friends voted for, or if they even voted at all. People in the US seem to be sectioned into colours a lot more – you’re red or blue, no matter what. It doesn’t normally matter who the candidate is, what they say, or how they say it; most people are set for life in their political leanings. I think it’s only about 3% of people who actually make their minds up on who to vote for depending on what their policies are! (I may have made that statistic up. Don’t quote me.)

Well, the world can breathe easy(er) for four more years, and hopefully the Democrats will come up with a good enough Obama replacement that the US will have at least four more blue years after he has to leave office too. And hopefully the Republicans will stop talking about rape as much as they did this election cycle. Seriously, it was scary how many times it came up.

In other news, I recently had my first experience with healthcare in America. I’ve written about it before, but I’d never been to the doctor in the States until last week. I had a stomach virus which, to put it politely, made my body reject its contents for five days. It was not pleasant, to say the least, and to top it off, it somehow triggered my eczema, something I haven’t suffered from since I was about 9. So it was a fun few days. I went back to work after a few days, and probably between not eating more than a few crackers in four days, and barely keeping water down, I was still a mess. About 3 hours into the morning, I decided that I should probably go home before I collapsed, but was talked into going to an Urgent Care place to be checked out first. Urgent Care is basically like a doctor’s surgery where they don’t let you book appointments, it’s just first come first served emergency care. It’s a bit like A&E but not in a hospital, so generally lines are much shorter because people aren’t coming in with really sever emergency illnesses or injuries, its more if you have the flu and want a prescription asap. It turns out I was severely dehydrated, and needed to be put on an IV, which I’d never had before. They also gave me a steroid injection for my eczema, and the very attractive male nurse administering my injection had to break the news to me that the shot didn’t go in my arm – it went in my bum cheek. Real fun stuff. I got a prescription for my skin, had a blood sample tested, and had a litre of fluids pumped into my body, all for the extremely upsetting cost of $90. It made me miss the NHS a lot. I know I know, someone pays for your treatment in the UK, it’s not ‘free healthcare’ in the true sense of the word, it still costs money. But my point is, it doesn’t directly come out of my bank account, so I definitely prefer it our way!

Apart from that, no news really. Getting ready to go traveling at Christmas, so have 6 weeks left at work before then. Very excited about South America, although sad that I’ll be missing a big family Christmas. I’m sure spending five months in six counties will be a good enough consolation. Plus it’s Thanksgiving next week so I still get a big fat turkey feast, just a month earlier than usual!

America vs. The World

In case you live under a rock, or in a submarine, there is an upcoming election happening in America right now. If you don’t live under a rock, or in a submarine, or high on a mountain, in a village where there is no such thing as the internet, and the villagers still rely on a combination of smoke signals and carrier pigeons for communication with the outside world, then you’ll know what I’m talking about; you can’t escape the Romney vs Obama Presidential race going on right now, it’s everywhere. It’s even all over the BBC so I’m sure the rest of the world is watching in almost as much anticipation as the US is, to see who the next Prez is going to be. Personally, I’m rooting for Obama.

Barack is in the house!

This whole situation made me think about what it means to be American, to an American, and whether people from other countries feel as strongly towards their homeland as people from the US do. (Of course, I don’t have access to people from every country in order to question their feelings towards their country, so I’m going mainly off my own observations and viewpoint. It’s my blog.) American identity, and more importantly, ‘patriotism’ is important. Patriotism is defined as ‘love of and devotion to one's country.’ I totally understand the ‘love of’; I love England. I love that it’s my home, and that I can mostly identify with its culture, whatever that may be. I feel a sense of belonging when I think about it, although I would add that this feeling of pride in my country has definitely increased since living in the States. However, ‘devotion to’? I’m not devoted to my country. I moved to another country, for starters (although I am moving back I suppose). I wouldn’t die for my country. I’d die for certain people, or individuals, if it ever came down to it. But my country? I don’t know if it’s just the wording that bothers me, but how can you be so devoted to a place that you would die for it? I don’t know, maybe I’m not that much of a patriot. That doesn’t mean I don't love my country though, I still care about it, and its citizens, and its welfare. I want to make sure children get a great education; and the poor have access to healthcare and housing; I want to make sure that, when the time comes, I can have a decent job, to be able to support my family. I’ve never been accused of being ‘un-British’ for complaining about my country, or its people. Being ‘un-American’ however, is a whole new ball game. You do not want to ever be accused of being ‘un-American’ if you are from here.

To most Americans, there is no better country to live in, or be from, in the world. This is obviously very different to the UK; you would never hear a Brit assert our nation to be the greatest country on earth, a fairly regular declaration made on this side of the Atlantic. This is partially why, of the 308 million-plus citizens in the United States, only 30% have passports. The number is rising, and according to a recent survey, 78% of Americans have travelled to a foreign country, but an overwhelming majority of these trips were to Canada, or Mexico. Until 2007, you did not need a passport to travel to either of these countries, so to me, that’s like saying you’re from London, but you went to Scotland last summer. Of course, and I’ve said it before, America is the size of Europe (more or less) so if you live in Pennsylvania and you really want a week in the sunshine, why fly to Costa Brava when you can go to Miami? I do understand that. But what I suppose confuses me more, is there seems to be a huge lack of desire to go out and explore the world. It’s an exciting place, and there is so much to see, to uncover, and most importantly, to learn. Different cultures that you would never have dreamed of exist out there, and Wikipedia will only get you so far on learning about them all. I’ve been to 18 countries, which to an American sounds like a lot. To a British kid who did a gap year, 18 is nothing. To me, it’s no way near enough. The Traveler’s Century Club lists a total of 321 countries in the world, so by their terms, I’m at about 5%. I’ve got some work to do!

Coming back to the election, Obama said something during the final debate that made me think: he declared, ‘we will have the best education system in the world’. Why? Why not just aim to have the best education system for the children in your country? The USA currently sits in 17^th place in the world education ranking, judged on 15 year olds’ reading, maths and science levels. Finland is first; Japan 2^nd; the UK is 11^th. America wants to be the best in world at everything, but I don’t know why they can’t just strive to do what’s best for the children first. Try getting them up to grade level before graduating High School first, and then you can think about being the best of the bunch. Competition can be healthy, and can definitely lead people to improve in leaps and bounds in order to be considered ‘winners’. However, a lot of things need refining before competition becomes the reason behind further improvement.

Despite being a world player, sometimes the culture here can be very insular, with very little awareness of what is actually going on in the outside world. To use an example, I would say that nearly all English people have heard of the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, and to hear the term ‘9/11’ would be an instant synonym for the event. In contrast, the terrorist attacks in London in 2005 are not widely known of here. This is not a criticism, or at least I’m not trying to spark a debate from that statement, but it is true. I mentioned ‘7/7’ to someone once, and got a blank look. I corrected myself, thinking that the term ‘7/7’ may not be widely used here, and just said 'the London terror attacks'. Still nothing. An apologetic shrug and a ‘I didn’t know that happened, sorry’. This may seem extreme, but the very fact that during the Olympic Opening Ceremony, the channel covering the ceremony in the US (NBC) chose to air an interview with Michael Phelps instead of showing the tribute to those lost during 7/7 because ‘it did not cater to the US audience’ is evidence in itself. Can you even begin to imagine the uproar if we cut out a 9/11 tribute to show an interview with Mo Farah?? No, because it would never happen. In the defense of many, many Americans, when they learned what NBC had done, they were outraged on behalf of the UK. But for a national news company to make a bold assumption that US citizens are not interested in events that take place outside their country is one that supports the international stereotype that Americans can sometimes consider themselves superior to the rest of the world. (This is also more amusingly portrayed in the baseball tournament, ‘The World Series’; a contest solely competed in by American teams!)

A final point about patriotism, or pride in your country, or whatever you want to call it, is one that always amuses me; so many people here hang American flags outside their houses! The flag is the most symbolic representation of America in all its glory, school children pledge allegiance to it every day, and to deface a flag, or to vandalize or misuse its image is a mortal sin. I know the Union Flag has been a popular icon this year, because of the Jubilee and the Olympics, but really, you don’t often see people hanging a flag outside their house in the UK. There’s really only one thing that excites patriotism in England and that’s sport. If you ever drive down a street and a lot of houses have England flags hanging in the windows, you can bet your ass that the World Cup is coming up! (Please note: the World Cup has more than one nation competing it in.)

Despite what you may think, or interpret from this, I am not condemning patriotism. If you want to be proud of your country, then I support and admire that in you. However, I personally believe that in order to have an esteemed opinion of which is the best country in the world, you firstly need to  have visited more nations than just your own.

Bawwwwston

When I chose my classes for my American Studies degree, I was, like any other student, picky about which periods in history I looked into more closely. I had a broad, if vague, understanding of the full history of the US (that is, from the Jamestown landing in 1607 onwards) but I never really studied the period before the Civil War in 1861 in much detail. Obviously I knew there was a revolution against the British ruling power, and that some guys chucked a lot of tea in Boston harbor, and that a white haired man called George Washington was the first elected President of the United States of America, etc etc. However, before the weekend just passed, I never really cared. That sounds bad I guess. Perhaps it’s a patriotic thing, me not wanting to know in minute detail how we got our asses handed to us by revolutionaries who were essentially descendants of the men they were rebelling against. I've also never really had that much interest in periods of history that are too old, an odd claim as a self-professed history lover maybe. Anyway, last weekend, I travelled up to Boston, and had a three day opportunity to immerse myself in the tales of revolution that had previously left me so uninterested.

One of the first things I liked so much about Boston was its age. The architecture was amazing; you could tell that it was an old city, much more like London or Oxford, where the old churches and restored houses are mish-mashed in amongst the new office blocks and high rises. There is a famous walk you can do in Boston called The Freedom Trail. That’s right, I said the word ‘walk’ and I was talking about a city in America! The Freedom Trail is basically a 2.5 mile long path through the city, which tells the story of Boston’s past through various significant sites and buildings along the way. It starts in Boston Common, which is just a big park in the middle of the city, and ends up at Bunker Hill, an infamous battle site which was considered the turning point of the Revolutionary War (note the turning point was not in our favour). Along the way there are churches, graveyards with notable people buried there, important buildings where the revolutionaries gathered to discuss rebellion, and the USS Constitution, a ship originally launched in 1797 which is still in use now, making it the oldest commissioned navy ship ever. Incidentally, it is most famous for its actions again the Brits in the War of 1812 where it apparently sunk 5 of our warships. Loved being surrounded by Americans when that story was told by the guide!

We did half of the trail on Friday afternoon, after lunch at WAGAMAMA!! There are only three Wagamamas in America, and they are all in Boston, so was very excited to have a katsu curry after so long! We then set off on the trail, feeling very satisfied with our full tummies, and I proceeded to take approximately 1 million photographs of everything in sight. I am not a very inconspicuous tourist. We went to the site of the Boston Massacre, which apparently happened when a mob attacked a British soldier in the 1770s and he and his soldier friends shot into the crowd to try and stop them, and killed five men in the process. Now I personally am not sure that five deaths constitute a massacre, nor am I sure that if this was to happen in present day America, that the soldiers would be the ones found guilty; they actually would most likely get off on self-defense, because that’s what everyone else seems to say when they shoot someone in order to get away with it. HOWEVER, it is not my story to tell, so I suppose if they call it a massacre, it was a massacre.

Anyhoo, we also went to the burial place of John Hancock and Sam Adams, who were both signers of the Declaration of Independence. We saw the oldest non-Puritan church in the US. I learned that Massachusetts was the first state to abolish slavery, which made me like it even more. We saw the meeting house where the rebels planned the Boston Tea Party, which for those that don’t know, was the dumping of millions of crates of tea into the harbor, rather than a small meal with finger sandwiches and scones. We also saw some other old buildings whose historical significance was not always clear to me, but whose photos I took anyway, because that’s the kind of person I am.

That evening we went to an AMAZING Italian restaurant, where I stuffed myself once again (lucky I’d done so much walking around to counter the eating-until-I-couldn’t-move attitude I so lightheartedly indulge in). Then we went back to the hotel, which was a historic site of its own, as it used to be the Boston jail! It’s been done up really nicely, but they've incorporated the building’s past too, which made it really cool inside.

I climbed that

The next day, Ian did some work while I went off touristing again; this was the day I saw the old navy ship and was reminded of its glamorous past as a Brit-killer. I also walked up to Bunker Hill, the battle site, which has an enormous needle monument on top. I was told by a naval officer at the pier where the ship was docked that the monument was nearly 300 steps high, so the equivalent of 15 storeys, and really tiring and hard to climb. Naturally, I decided to climb it, because even though the navy man would never know if I had done it or not, being stationed at a completely different site to the one which I was now heading towards, I still felt I had something to prove. 294 steps later, up a narrow spiral staircase with people passing me coming back down from the top, and I was feeling anything but triumphant. Claustrophobic, nauseous and a bit faint, yes, but definitely not triumphant. The top room was tiny; there were ten of us up there at one time and it was cramped. It doesn’t help that there is a circular metal grate in the middle of the room, probably a meter in diameter, which is there to cover the hollow center of the tower. It is a 220ft drop to the bottom, and you can see right down to the ground below through the thin grid – it’s a loooong way down. So everybody is not only squashed into this little room and fighting for breath from the climb up, we are also all trying not to be the one who has to brave the strength of such a small piece of metal, in case one of us happens to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. It did not do well for my lightheadedness! On the climb down, I refused to let go of the rail, and if I passed people on their way up, to hell with them, they could be the ones to let go, and squeeze past me! (Chivalry is dead, OK?)

After a ten minute sprawl on the grass at the bottom of the monument, where I recovered from my climb and decided that mountaineering was not something to pursue as a hobby in the near future, I headed back to the hotel to change for the event which had been the reason to come up to Boston in the first place: Katie’s wedding! It was a gorgeous ceremony, up in New Hampshire, at a winery/vineyard. Katie obviously looked amazing, and it was a really fun evening.

Katie as a beautiful bride

On our final day up north in Yankee land, we went to Salem. Salem is pretty much only famous because in 1692, a group of little girls were caught by their strict Puritan minister playing and dancing in the woods near their houses. Dancing, or anything that might cause you happiness, was forbidden by the Puritans, so the girls pretended they had been possessed by the devil, and accused local women of being witches, and setting evil spirits upon them. There was a huge trial, and 19 people were hanged in total, with many more imprisoned for being witches. One man was crushed to death with rocks. We went to a museum where they reenacted the trial of one of the local women, then went down to a replica dungeon where the prisoners had been kept. Salem now thrives on its morbid past for tourism, much the same as Roswell, NM thrives on the fact that someone once saw a ‘UFO’ there. If anyone has seen or read Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’, that was based on the Salem witch hunts.

Our final stop before the airport back to Dallas was a trip to the beach! It was about 10 degrees outside so not sunbathing or swimming, but the Atlantic looked gorgeous, and there was a lighthouse so it looked very authentically New England. There was even a cute little man with a metal detector and a spade. Bless.

And thus concludes my trip to Boston. I really liked it there, it’s definitely in my top 5 American cities, although I’m yet to find one to knock Chicago off the top!

Hometime

So here I am, back in Dallas after a rather longer trip back home than anticipated. Home was wonderful. I hadn’t realized quite how much I had missed it until I got there, which is understandable I guess. Surprisingly, the weather was pretty nice on the whole, which certainly made leaving the glorious heat and sunshine in Texas easier!

Josh picked me up from the airport, which was lovely, although slightly anticlimactic as we somehow missed each other completely which resulted in me wandering round Terminal 3 looking for him for 15 minutes, only to find him standing at the arrivals gate after all, leaning on the barrier, waiting for me. I stood next to him and smiled, and he vaguely smiled back then turned to look at the arrivals door again. He didn’t even bloody recognize me! Obviously he did then turn back and it was fine, we laughed, but yeah, not quite the romantic reunion I’d anticipated after 4 months apart!

My first three weeks back consisted almost exclusively of trying to fit in seeing everyone, while making sure I spent a lot of time with Josh, and my family. There were people I didn’t manage to see, and some I only got to see once. It’s hard when everyone has jobs, and can only meet up in the evening; mum was still on summer holidays at first, so I could spend the daytimes with her, but after she went back, I spent a lot of time watching daytime TV!

My darling grandfather was diagnosed with cancer a few days before I went back to London. It kind of seemed fated that I was coming home at that time, to see him, just in case… Well, I could not have been more glad to be home, to see him, spend time with him, and make sure I got to say goodbye. He was taken into hospital about 10 days after I got back, and unfortunately, never left. It was not an easy time, but the whole family came to see him as much as possible, and the nurses were very patient with us when we broke the ‘only two visitors at a time’ rule. I got to see pretty much all of my extended family a lot more than I’d expected too, and despite the circumstances, and the fact that we were spending a lot of time in Watford General’s café ‘The Spice of Life’, it was still really nice to see them.

Sadly, after three weeks in hospital, and only 28 days after diagnosis, Babar passed away peacefully with my grandma and mum (his eldest) at his side. (FYI Babar was what my grandfather was nicknamed ever since my oldest cousin first started talking and couldn’t say Grandpa, so said Babar instead.) I was in Italy when I got the news, cried a LOT on Josh’s shoulder, and that evening we toasted our drinks in his honour. I was obviously devastated, but I knew he was at least out of his pain and misery; it had not been easy for him to remain in the hospital that long. At least he is at peace now.

Italy had been wonderful until that point - gorgeous weather; amazing food and wine and rum and pretty much anything else with an alcohol percentage on the bottle; a lovely little apartment in small town Tuscany, close to the beach. That last point was actually a massive point of contention for us. I don’t know if anyone else who has driven in Italy noticed this, but the Italians like their fun and games when it comes to road signs. They just stop signing a place after a while, y’know, for jokes. There were 3 beaches near us that we’d been recommended and were promised that they were all within a 15-20 minute drive. The first one took us an hour and a half to reach because all the signs for the bloody place just kept stopping, then we’d take a wrong turn, and end up about 15 miles from where we’d planned to be. No joke, you’d reach a roundabout and it would sign the town you wanted as left, then at the next roundabout, 100 metres later, there is NO SIGN FOR THAT TOWN! Absolutely ridiculous.

I obviously got badly sunburnt because, well let’s face it, I’m the whitest person you know. I was wearing factor 20 as well, so to add insult to injury, I burned through suncream, which I had been applying once an hour. (I’m so unbelievably white.) It was the kind of sunburn where I had to take cold showers every quarter of an hour to reduce my body temperature, but it was isolated to my chest, so at least I could still tan my legs while hiding my upper body under a parasol. Josh was mean about it, laughing while applying his factor 4 tanning oil, but then he got a bit burnt too which quite frankly proves that karma exists. We spent our last day in Pisa, which consists of a leaning tower, and not a lot else. Still, it was a really lovely holiday and I did not want to leave, especially to face the reality of a funeral :(

I ended up staying for an extra ten days in England, helping with speech writing and pretending nothing had happened. The funeral itself took place on a sunny day, which was nice in an odd way. I find funerals really weird occasions. I remember at my other grandpa’s funeral when I was about 7, at the wake, everyone was standing round chatting, and drinking, and laughing. I was outraged; did no-one else think it was disrespectful to laugh? We’d just been to a funeral, why were they smiling?! I stormed over to my mum and she tried to explain that everyone was celebrating his life, instead of mourning his death. I told her that everyone was rude, and that I’d just be sad on my own, because obviously no-one else cared about him.

But I get it now. They really are the most juxtaposing events, because you are so sad that someone you loved has gone, yet you’re really happy because you had a chance to know them. You cry, you can’t believe such a thing has happened, you wish it could be different. But you also laugh, and smile, and remember good things, things that you probably hadn’t thought about in a long time. And in general, as far as funerals go, it went well. It was a nice day, he had a great send off, a huge amount of people came which, considering he was 81 and had attended his share of funerals himself, was pretty impressive. He was a lovely man and is still sorely missed. And with a wife, 5 children, 12 grandchildren, 2 step-sons and 5 step-grandchildren left behind, his legacy lives on.

And now I’m back in Dallas, where the temperature is in the mid-20s, and people eat Krispy Kreme cheeseburgers for lunch (yes it’s exactly how it sounds, and no I’m not kidding). I’m missing home of course, but only because I know I’m not going back for a while. Plus, they sell PG Tips here so I’ll be fine :)