Long time no speak....

Oh come on, cut me some slack, I have been busy. I think back to when I first started this and I said that I wanted to write every few days. Unreal. I am down to once and month. So, this one will probably come in a couple of posts, they will include, a trip to the UK, a good concert, a trip to France, getting a cold (of course, I went to France!), moving house and a new found obsession with author Iain Banks. Probably more stuff as well but we will make that up as we go along.

This kind of serves as a useful reminder for me as well to ensure that I revisit these topics.

Before I start, an apology to those who read this from work. I let the staff down today, I was convinced it was my day off (and much deserved after five days without one) but I got it wrong. It was only when Matt (boss) rang to ask if I was ok that we even knew I should have been at work! Luckily I got a lie in out of it, a trip to town to pay the bills etc etc. Luckily they were very understanding and seemed suprised it had taken this long to get it wrong (our days off change each week). As I said to them, schoolboy error.

Poker is going pretty well as I am on a decent upward turn. I made a deposit in to PokerChamps about three weeks ago and already at a 350% profit. Nice.

The trip to the UK was ok, I arrived into Heathrow and was fearful as I had heard horror stories of 12" of snow etc. It was about 10pm by the time that I had arrived and it seemed warm enough. I drove up to Nottingham that night, got parked up and went to the hotel. Noisy, noisy aircon, noisy fire alarm. All added up to a free night!

The next day was spent wondering around town before realizing that the concert actually started at 2pm and not 8pm as it was an all day festival. At least I had not traveled half way around the world to watch a concert and missed half of it.... ayya.

Anyway, I got to see the bands that I wanted to, the end of Blue Tears, all of Vaughn, Danger Danger and Harem Scarem. It was good to meet up with Ted as it had been a long time (he is the singer of Danger Danger and lives in the USA. We have been on holiday a few times together, France, Belgium, Holland and also in the USA).

I actually missed the last band as I was so tired and also had not eaten a thing all day.

The following morning I got up fairly early and went to meet Tony (mindin) and watch his son, Louis, play football. He scored a couple of goals and also set three up if memory serves me. Not bad as he came on as a substitute just before half time!

Sunday night it was dropping Justine of at her Mothers and heading over to Birmingham ready for my flight to France. I couldn't find much to complain about so ending up paying for the hotel. That's is actually inaccurate, I got the stay for free using my reward points!

The flight to France was fairly uneventful but it was lovely to see them both again as it had been the best part of six months since they came here. Unfortunately my cold seemed to get worse again so I was not on top of it for most of the week which was shame. The weather was lousy and it rained most of the time but to be honest, that was largely irrelevant, the main objective was to spend time with my parents, not sunbathe! We went to a lovely Restaurant / Cafe where the food was ten euros a head I believe. They gave you more food and wine than you could shake a stick at and it was nice as well. Again, as I was feeling pretty crap, I didn't eat too much.

They have a new dog which looks like a teddy bear!

The week went by pretty quickly until the last day which dragged beyond words, mainly because it was spent sitting at the airport all day because of delay after delay. Just two days before, because I could not stand the thought of two more days in England, I brought my flight home forward by two days, to the Friday night. Now the delays were causing major problems as I had to get from Birmingham to Heathrow in about six hours. That was not a problem until the delays kicked in! To cut a VERY long story short, I ended up running from the plane to get my luggage, renting a car from Birmingham Airport and driving to Heathrow as no trains or buses would have got me there in time. We made with 50 minutes to spare! That was at least until it was delayed there as well!

So, we arrived in Athens at about 3am, luckily the Sofitel is only about a minute form the airport and we stayed for two days there including a few trips to stock up on new times for the new house.

More on that next time as I am tired and it is 1:20am here.

Until then, Keep Safe.