Apr 4
I had been in the UK since last Monday. This week begins a crazy period of work travel. If anyone has a potion for preventing illness after extended trips, then please share.
I beleive they call it the ‘Let Down Effect,’ which after extended periods of stress or travel or both, elevated hormone levels drop quickly, resulting in a ‘crash’ of the immune system.
Please click for moreMe and the songstress-other-half knocked off a long time bucket list item last night. We went to see Andrea Bocelli live in Tampa.
He never ceases to tour but for a host of different reasons we have never been able to see, or get tickets to watch him. As it was he chose a night in Tampa as part of his Romanza 30th Anniversary tour, and we long ago snapped up tickets.
Please click for more🔝5️⃣. Next and last up in my annual listing of Top Fives is Restaurants. I tell people that when I am travelling with work I’m either eating in Michelin starred restaurants, or sitting at an airport gate munching my way through a packet of crisps and overdosing on Haribo.
I did have some great meals last year, and occasionally I took the family! Here are my 2025 Top Five Favourite Restaurants 🍕
Please click for more🔝5️⃣ I have said this before, but walking around Sarasota’s downtown you could be forgiven for forgetting that it is in Florida, other than the sandhill cranes flying over Sarasota Bay and the sun high in the sky.
We’ve lived here now for more than two years and there is still so much more to explore, but these were My Top Five Favourite Sarasota Things from last year.🦩
Please click for moreA little chilly here this New Year’s Eve morning in Sarasota. It might be a pyjama day, especially as our daughter has a touch of the flu so any plans, as minimal as they were, will have to be shelved.
I’ve never been a fan of ‘amateur night’ as I used to call it back in the day, so cooking and popping open a nice bottle of red later will be good enough for me.
Please click for moreHow sad it was to hear of Chris Rea’s untimely passing yesterday. His Driving Home For Christmas song is one of my all time favourite’s this time of year, and after years of living away from home it has long captured the Christmas spirit for me.
Rea was a huge Middlesbrough fan, and the Gone Fishing Christmas special with fellow Boro fan Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse has to be worth another watch over the next week.
Please click for moreFor those that have read these pages regularly they will know that my family and I have regularly been impacted by hurricanes, the last one was in October last year when Milton made landfall just up the street from us, and we had to evacuate.
We chose to live in Bermuda and we chose to live 400 metres from the water here on the gulf coast of Florida, so no pity required, but I also spend a lot of time studying their impacts for work.
Please click for moreI’ve just about finished eating. Been a long day of turkey, mash potato, gravy and mimosa’s. This Thanksgiving thing has some legs. Same again tomorrow, with added online shopping for stuff I don’t need.
Today and tomorrow are a very welcoming break as work literally grinds to a halt as American’s eat, drink and watch (American) Football. I don’t know what American’s watched between 1621, when then the Pilgrims had their first harvest and 1920, when urban legend has it that the Chicago Tigers and Decatur Staleys (now the Chicago Bears) challenged each other to a Thanksgiving duel in the league’s inaugural season.
Please click for more50 years ago yesterday, half an actual century ago, my Dad did something unwittingly that would go onto change the course of my life and for that matter my family.
Saturday, 15th November, 1975 was a day I will never forget. It was my first ever Charlton Athletic game that I went to.
Please click for moreEveryone remembers their first live concert. Mine was Soft Cell at the Hammersmith Palais in 1983. I vividly rememeber it to this day. Last night I took my daughter and a friend to see Billie Eilish in Miami. It was her first ever experience of a proper large gig.
I have been to hundreds of live shows, but you never forget your first. It is a right of passage.
Please click for moreWe bookmarked our holiday in Qatar with fleeting visits to a couple of Florida spots that we hadn’t visited in a long while.
Boca Raton I was last in 20 years ago, and Coral Gables was a place we used to visit regularly but our last time there was pre-pandemic.
Please click for moreI was talking to another Dad a few months back and he asked me what year our daughter moves into this next year at high school. Junior (11th grade) I said. ‘Oh just two more summer’s with her then’ he replied.
Wow, I thought. I’d like to think she may want to come on holiday with us when she’s older, and I am aware that will depend on where we go and who pays, but time is running out and on the basis she regularly denies or forget’s she’s been to any of the places she has, then I thought this summer we had to do something different.
Please click for moreI’ve had a bit of a tour of Florida this past week. Orlando with work, Ocala for a swim meet, back home to Sarasota, tomorrow to Boca Raton and then Miami for a long flight on Thursday.
More on the 14 hour flight from Miami later.
Please click for moreWhat did you do yesterday?
Watch Lee Carsley’s brilliant England U21’s retain the Euro Championship? Sing-a-long to the Glastonbury coverage? Watch the empty seats under dark sky’s during the ridiculous weather break of the Chelsea match? Or something completely different..
Please click for moreSummer officially arrived today although summer has been knocking around here for quite some time 🌞. The longest day means a later sunset, which will be around 8.30pm here tonight, an hour earlier than London. Although the latest sunset will follow next week.
Please click for moreThis week coming is the 6th consecutive week I have travelled with work. It has been quite the shift and other than never knowing what day it is or which city I’m waking up in, I could also do with a couple of really good nights sleep.
The good news is that tomorrow I will wake up at Gatwick Airport after an overnight flight from Tampa.
Please click for moreI haven’t written about swimming for a while, but the weekend before last our daughter swam in the Florida Senior Championships in Orlando.
It was big deal, with some extraordinary fast swimmers competing over the three days. There was a lot of pressure on her to swim times and make cuts, and although we try to downplay it, you could tell she was really anxious.
Please click for moreBack to my list of 20 Places as I round out 20 Players and Places that have stuck with me throughout my life. In no order, all equally meaningful in different ways.
All this to commemorate 20 years of penning this Blog, and at no. 19 is the Isle of Wight.
Please click for more🔝5️⃣. My next of my annual Top Five’s is on our doorstep. We have lived in Sarasota on the Gulf Coast of Florida since August 2023, and candidly haven’t done anywhere near the exploring we’d like to, but I’ve done enough to put together a list.
Next of my 2024 look back’s is my Top Five Favourite Sarasota Things 🌞
Please click for moreWe are coming close to the finish line, we are at 18 of my 20 Places to laud my 20 Years of writing this Blog.
I chose them in no particular order, but each one stands on its own as a place I hold dear. At no. 18 is Miami.
Please click for moreI wrote my first New Year’s Eve ‘message’ in 2004, and have done so for each of the 20 years since. It’s makes me immensely proud, and old, that I have kept these pages alive for all of that time.
One of my New Year’s resolutions, normally futile, is to convert at least the first six years into a book. We’ll see.
Please click for moreMy son arrived last night to spend Christmas with us. I don’t think he believed me when I told him the Charlton score!
It’s his first time to our house in Florida and we’re excited to have him here, in fact it’s his first time in America since he visited us in Chicago in 2007.
Please click for moreYou probably would only heard of Ocala if you are a competitive swimmer or a competitive equestrian, or have it in yourself to watch either.
The city of Ocala is nestled between the eastern and western coasts of the northern part of Florida. The area is home to over 400 thoroughbred farms and training centre’s and is considered the ‘horse capital of the world.’ Kentucky, Newmarket, Ireland, Chantilly and Dubai might have something to say about that claim, but it is most definitely horsey.
Please click for moreIn June of this year I reached the milestone of writing this Blog for 20 Years. If I say so myself, that is quite a feat.
To commemorate this I have been selecting, in no marked order, 20 Players and 20 Places that I hold dear in my memories. My next pick for Places, no. 16, is Oman.
Please click for moreMy old boss in Chicago once described Thanksgiving as a 4-day Sunday. You wake up late, and a bacon sarnie and a mimosa starts a whole day of eating and drinking, with sport on TV all day.
All this with no added pressure of buying anyone presents. Then Friday, you can buy what you want at reduced prices. God bless America and all that sailed in The Mayflower.
Please click for moreAnother Place on my list of 20 to commemorate my 20 Years of writing this Blog.
In no particular order, but each one memorable. No. 14 is Iceland.
Please click for moreI arrived in London this morning flying overnight from Tampa. A noisy, rattly and bumpy flight meant I got little sleep but I was able to check into my hotel at 9am, which although I felt like crap, there was something to be said for lying in bed all morning with just the TV for company. I never do stuff like that.
Please click for moreI am picking 20 Places and 20 Charlton Players to celebrate 20 years of this Blog. No pecking order, just those that were memorable.
Number 13 on my list of 20 Places, well it had to feature, is the tiny, often quirky but always idyllic island of Bermuda.
Please click for moreWe had already heard from a neighbour before we set off for the drive home yesterday that the house “looked okay” but the 5+ hour drive was still full of apprehension.
By the time we pulled up outside of the house it was dusk, but there it was standing in front us looking a little shellshocked. All around were fallen trees, large branches and debris.
Please click for moreWe evacuated early this morning leaving our house in the middle of the path of Hurricane Milton, which is anticipated to make landfall a little north of us Wednesday night and into the early hours of Thursday.
We are used to hurricanes and weathered many in our time in Bermuda, but this feels entirely different probably because we don’t know what to expect and mostly because this storm packs life threatening storm surge of which the west coast of Florida has never seen.
Please click for moreMy trip is on its 10th day and the weather has been spectacular thus far, although drizzle is expected today down here near Eastbourne where I currently am.
The weather was spectacular last week in London and similarly in Zurich and Munich. However, back home in Florida a booming large hurricane is sailing up the coast.
Please click for moreWe are in Miami tonight prepping for an early flight to Mexico in the morning. Prepping by being sat in a hotel bar drinking martini’s and picking at a bowl of olives🫒.
Please click for moreI am halfway along my journey to list 20 Players and 20 Places to celebrate me writing this Blog for 20 years.
Next up on my list of 20 Places that are cemented in my psyche is where it all began. Catford.
Please click for more20 Players and 20 Places to celebrate my 20 years of writing this Blog. No order, no ranking, just those that left everlasting memories.
Next up on my 20 Places was one for the bucket list. No. 9 is Rio.
Please click for moreI have a different job these days, with differing pressures but still most of the hard yards come in the first six months of the year and that has remained the case so this weekend represents the ‘end of the season’ for most of us in our business.
Please click for moreAnother Place on my list to extol my 20 Years of writing this Blog.
In no particular order, but each one memorable. No. 6 is Napa Valley in California.
Please click for moreMoving on with my 20 Places to celebrate 20 Years of Blogging. No ranking just memorable.
Next up is the Queen of El Plata, the Argentinian capital of Buenos Aires.
Please click for moreI am picking 20 Places and 20 Charlton Players to celebrate 20 years of this Blog. No pecking order, just those that were memorable.
Number four on my list of 20 Places is Brussels in Belgium.
Please click for moreRarely do you ever see rolling hills in Florida, but running down the spine of the sunshine state is Lake-Wales Ridge, a 100-mile white sand ridge that tops out at 312 feet, the highest natural point in the state called Sugarloaf Mountain…. Not to be confused of course with the other Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro.
About 10 miles south of here on the same sand ridge is a pretty little place called Clermont. We were there this past weekend for a swim meet at the National Training Center staying at an AirBnB a couple of miles from the historical downtown area.
Please click for moreI first started seeing my social media feeds filling up with pictures of dark eye-catching churches and historic theatres with a classical quartet sat amongst flickering candles at the end of last year, but candlelight concerts have been wowing audiences in hundreds of cities since 2020.
Candlelight Concerts has since became a successful brand under its parent company Fever, which is a global entertainment platform, and has struck upon a very winning formula.
Please click for moreI was lucky enough to see Hamilton on Broadway 6 years ago, and today I went again with the family to see the touring production at the Van Wezel Theater in Sarasota, and it did not disappoint.
I was told before my first viewing that it was a show you’d have to see a number of times as with each visit you make new discoveries. In fact I have a mate who has watched it a couple of dozen times, and he might only just be able to tell the complete Alexander Hamilton story.
Please click for moreWe are really pushing the boat out this new year and are spending the night at the north terminal of Gatwick. Sounds of jet engines and people dragging their suitcases down the corridor will replace popping champagne corks.
We travel home to Sarasota tomorrow after a very enjoyable ten days back at home (sic) seeing our family for Christmas.
Please click for moreThe sun peeped from behind the grey clouds yesterday in Eastbourne, known as the Sunshine Coast due to an over 100-year record of the town having the most sunshine hours in a month ever recorded.
It almost required sunglasses for the five minutes the sun made an appearance as we walked around the Meads end of the town.
Please click for moreWe are back in the UK for Christmas scurrying around the country to see family which will be great for my holly-jolly-other-half and my feverish daughter as this is their first trip home since before the pandemic.
We flew overnight Thursday landing yesterday at a grey but not cold Heathrow, and last night and for most of today we are up in Knightsbridge way immersing ourselves in the Christmas season.
Please click for moreAt the top of this blog 🔝 are eight Pages links. I don’t know if you’ve ever read them before but they are chapters of my life and I have just penned the latest one, Sarasota. It’s up top but it is also here:
Please click for moreOur daughter has been swimming for a new club and her school since we arrived in Sarasota. I have talked of adjustments and she has probably had to have made the most since our move from Bermuda. Swimming is no different, with new coaches and methods and not to mention that in the U.S. they swim yards and not meters (sic). They are still stuck on Fahrenheit too!
Please click for moreAs a kid I have no recollection of Halloween, it was all about Guy Fawks, or firework night as we called it in our house, but like a lot of things American ‘culture’ has seeped it’s way into British society whether it be Black Friday, Halloween or peanut butter, which is topping my toast as I sit here and not jam jelly.
It has been a little over two months now since we moved to Sarasota, and it has been quite an adjustment. For the other-half, our daughter and me every day and week is very different to what we were used to.
It was part of the charm to move to the United States, and we had our eyes open to change, but thus far there has been as the Americans say a fair bit of acclimating (sic).
Please click for moreI landed in a steamy London Town this morning. The first time I have taken the BA flight from Tampa to Gatwick, roughly about eight and half hours.
What happened to the weather? Is it because the kids went back to school? I was hoping to wear a couple of pullovers this week.
Please click for moreI first came across Sarasota in my early 20’s when one of my oldest best friend’s spent a couple of summer’s working in Orlando. Me and another mate came and visited him and during those trips we would regularly drive out to the St.Petersburg, Clearwater and Sarasota beaches on Florida’s gulf coast.
Memories of that trip always stuck, mostly because of how much fun three early 20’s London lads had out there, but also at how stunningly beautiful the area was.
Please click for moreIt’s been about two weeks since we moved to Sarasota in Florida. Me and the dog anyway, and it does already feel like home helped for sure that is was already our house and we had known for a while that this move was in our future.
There is much that is different though. I haven’t yet started my new job, but our daughter has started school, which will be remarkably different from what she was used to in Bermuda.
Please click for moreWe made it.
Around about 5.15pm tonight I pulled my gigantic American gas-guzzler onto the drive of our Sarasota home with the pup in the back.
Three days, 1,290 miles and nine states.
Please click for moreIt was an eventful drive today. 470 miles most of it in rain, some of it pretty bad on a predominantly a two-lane interstate which made the South Circular look sexy.
Please click for moreIt was around about 11pm last night when our chocolate Labrador (called Rolo 🍫) was delivered to me in Newark, New Jersey. That was originally where he was meant to fly into, but it was changed last minute to JFK, so he was driven the hour or so to the hotel I was in after he had cleared customs.
He settled and slept well and today in our obscenely-sized SUV rental car we successfully negotiated the 330 miles to Richmond, Virginia where he lays asleep next to me, exhausted no doubt by all of the driving.
Please click for moreIt’s been an emotional last few days in Bermuda. We’ve had the full gambit from hopes and fears to regrets and relish. So much to miss, so much to look forward to.
The moving company have taken every precious personal effect, and more. We have sold stuff, donated stuff and dumped more beside.
Please click for moreInto our last few days now living in Bermuda, and I am trying to take in every sideways glance of the water and the centuries old palmetto and calabash trees that tumble high over the narrow windy roads.
Those thin roads bordered by jagged walls made from quarried coral that hide homes, preserves and lanes behind them.
Please click for moreAs we pack up the house around him, our chocolate Labrador has looked a little bewildered in recent weeks (they do say that dogs take after their owners), yet more disorientation is still to come.
Due to the hot weather at both departure and arrival locations – Bermuda and Florida, which at the moment could be anywhere in the northern hemisphere, the airlines won’t take our dog. He is too big to go under the seat, and frankly we had neither the time nor the cheek to register him as a ‘service animal.’
Please click for moreJust over 15 years ago we moved from Chicago, the city of big shoulders to this beautiful if peculiar tiny island of Bermuda, but the time has now come to leave.
Bermuda has been good to us so we leave with a heavy heart staying far longer than we ever expected to. Bermuda is a wonderful place to live and bring up a young family, even our daughter was born here, but for numerous reasons in no particular order – school, a new work challenge, and as a family we were ready for something different, we have made a long thought and drawn-out decision to move.
Please click for moreA week in hot and toasty Bahamas over. As per, a swim trip means you only really get to see the bits of a country you pass in a mini-bus between the hotel and pool morning and night, which in this case in Nassau was about 5 miles.
This is my third time in The Bahamas, and we stayed at the Baha Mar, the colossal three hotel, casino, 9 swimming pool, 40 restaurant Chinese owned hotel on the clear turquoise waters of Nassau, the capital and most populated of the 3,000 islands that make up the country.
Please click for moreWe all leave today for the Bahamas where my daughter is again representing Bermuda at an international swim meet. The Bermuda team is joined by other Caribbean nations as well as a sprinkling of Americans and Canadians trying to secure Olympic qualifying times, so it should be fun to watch.
Please click for moreBritish Columbia is 350,000 square mile province that has a 16,000 mile coastline. BC has always intrigued me since I first visited Vancouver in 2011, and this trip has furthered my fascination even though we only tiptoed through Vancouver and spent the majority of the week in the mountains.
Please click for moreLeaving for Canada 🇨🇦 tomorrow for 10 days out to British Colombia initially to get in some late season snow, and then back east to Toronto for a few days next week leading into returning home for Easter.
I have been to a few places in Canada, but mostly with work or at least for work reasons. I have spent time in both Vancouver, and Toronto a couple of times, but never to Whistler, a scintillating 75-mile drive north of Vancouver I am reliably told.
Please click for more
TPC Louisiana
