Aug 30
It was my birthday on Wednesday. A rather large one that ended in a 0.
The secretive-other-half had told me to clear my work calendar, and bring my ID as we were heading out for a few hours.
We drove a rather convoluted way around Sarasota and ended up by the airport. Oh surely a week in the Caribbean would need my passport and a small bag I thought.
Please click for moreI’ve only ever made short stops in Madrid, and this was another one. The end of the road for our Spanish expedition.
Sadly due to bad planning on our part, but having to be back for the start of the new school year, we had to take our leave before the solar eclipse, which was in totality up in the Basque country. The Madrileños were getting very excited for it, although it was ‘only’ partial from the city.
Please click for moreThe quintessential white village or pueblo blanco of Mijas Pueblo is surprisingly quite high, sat at an altitude of 436 metres (1,476 feet). It is majestically shoe-horned into a steep verdant cliffside overlooking the rest of the Costa del Sol.
Although most of Spain is at a higher altitude, this beautiful little town with its moorish architecture deserves to lord it over many of its bigger rivals.
Please click for moreDon’t judge me, but we went searching for the rich and famous this afternoon. A Mick Jagger burger on the menu at our hotel isn’t enough. Jagger almost lived in the Mijas hotel we are staying at in the 1980’s.
From Mijas we taxied to Puerto Banús, which I hadn’t been to for 40 odd years. It was old money then, and now it was very much new money.
Please click for moreSeville, the sun-drenched capital of Andalusia. The birthplace of flamenco, home to the largest gothic cathedral in the world and the breathtaking Royal Alcázar palace, which took just the 1,000 years to build.
Tapas dishes can take a matter of minutes to appear in front of you and the need for elasticated trousers is real.
Please click for moreStill full.
We ate ourselves through San Sebastián, deeply routed in Basque culture in this gastronomic capital of well, the world.
This rugged part of northern Spain, a stone’s throw from France, but they are generally ignored other than the array of pastries sat in bakery windows.
Please click for moreI’m sat on a train going to Sheffield at the moment. That was no mean feat. St Pancras resembled a greenhouse packed with sweaty and confused travellers due to long delays. This on the back of being delayed over two hours on my flight last night from Tampa into Gatwick.
Still, mustn’t grumble as I look out of the window at this fine and pleasant land. Just passing Loughborough at the moment.
Please click for moreIt can be a little awkward being a Brit in America on July 4th. This year there is the added extra spoonful of discomfort as it is the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, or as the White House is branding it, “Freedom 250.’
Yet other than a wrestling event, and a National state fair that looks as if it is being less well attended than your regular village parade, there isn’t much else different than other July 4th’s I’ve witnessed over the years.
Please click for moreOur visit to Qatar was last summer, and it has taken me to now to put this Travelogue together of our family trip. I joke that we were in Qatar at about the only time it wasn’t being bombed in the last 12 months. Hopefully the Qataris can now look forward to a more peaceful existence.
We chose Qatar for a family holiday for a couple of reasons. There was a direct flight from Miami, it was half the distance of our first pick, which was Vietnam, and we only had limited time plus importantly we wanted to expose our daughter to a culture far away from what she currently occupies.
Please click for moreA weekend away in Miami awaits with the family. We often drive across alligator alley and enjoy the aura Miami oozes from the more pedestrian pace of where we live on the Gulf Coast. We are booked into our favourite hotel and restaurant and have plans in case it rains, which is in the forecast.
We usually do this trip post school/ busy work period about a month later but hotel prices during the World Cup are extortionate, even although there are suspicions that large blocks of rooms that have been booked out will come back onto the market due to a very slow take up of tickets.
Please click for moreLast weekend we were at the Ft. Lauderdale International Swimming Hall of Fame, and their impressive aquatic complex, which is midpoint of a $220 million redevelopment that is planned to be finished in 2028.
We saw it before but I had to look up why this impressive competitive arena was chosen over anywhere else in the country. According to ChatGPT in the early 1960s, Fort Lauderdale had already established itself as a premier training destination, notably hosting the College Swim Forum and international teams, making it a natural fit for the Hall of Fame.
Please click for moreI 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 more
Atlanta, Georgia
