We’re off today. It’s a surprise! I have no idea where we’re going or what he’s booked to do, but I’m up and out early. I’ll let you all know how it goes tomorrow! Very excited.
Enjoy your day whatever you’re doing!
In the meantime, enjoy my new Valentine’s Day article! Click on picture below.
I went to Manchester United’s Football Club yesterday – Old Trafford. It was my first time, and it was A-MAZ-ING. Loved it. Yup. Loved it. L-O-V-E. Got it?
Although, when the fans started shouting over and over again – LOVE UNITED, HATE THE GLAZERS….I shrank a bit. The Glazers are the American owners…I kept my accent at a minimum. I couldn’t help but feel a bit personally embarrassed for my fellow countryman. But, then I got over it and into the game.
Going to the nation’s largest Premier League football stadium, and still feeling like I was an integral part of something meant something. It meant I wasn’t just a seat in a stadium…which is what the protesters wearing the green and yellow scarves were trying to say. They were trying to say to the American Glazer family, who own the football club, that it is the fans and the city that make this football club what it is – it’s not a franchise, as the Glazer’s mistakenly said during a conference about the club, and you can’t expect to get the football club into £700 million debt without a fight from the fans. You can’t raise ticket prices so high that people who have lived in the city for decades and been season ticket holders just as long, can no longer afford to go. This isn’t America, they’re trying to say.
It also shows to me the advantages of living in a smaller country can do. It makes you feel like you are actually a part of a community. This is the nation’s largest Premier League football stadium (thank you Sam for correcting me – Wembley is the largest football stadium at 90,000), and it only holds 76,000 people. My college football stadium at USC held 93,000 seats, and that’s college! I was three rows from the field, and there was Wayne Rooney, the white Pele, literally 30 feet from me. Amazing. Although, as Jock pointed out to me, the Super Bowl stadium in Miami holds the same amount of people – so perhaps it’s the fact that you’re so close to the field. In America, they put the seats far back, so even the best seats in the house are far away.
It makes you feel less lost being in a smaller country. It makes me realize why it’s so easy in America to feel lost, like just a number and searching for your place in the enormous country. It makes me understand why there are so many Americans buying self-help books, going to enlightenment seminars, and healing conferences. It also shows me how the English can scoff so easily at our seemingly pathetic attempts at “finding ourselves.” But it’s no wonder…if you went to a high school with 5,000 other people, you’d probably feel a little lost as well. The English have a built-in community. It’s not hard to feel recognized here…the numbers themselves are on your side. But it’s more than that, they build things out of a need for something. They don’t (or should I say didn’t) build things for purely financial reasons, for capitalism…football teams here came out of a community of people who wanted to get together and kick a ball around. (Click here for Man Utd’s history. Of course, now people would argue that the footballers make so much money that they only play for the money, but I disagree…I think most of them would still play even if they got paid a fraction of what they earn now.) But, the history alone builds soul (although I’m sure the English wouldn’t go so far as to use the word soul, but I will because I’m a cheese dick American.)
I think I may have understood before how, culturally, it’s easy for Americans to be in constant search of their identity (afterall, we have the biggest melange of cultures possibly known to man, without one truly of our own), but I don’t think I had ever really thought of it in terms of events and numbers. Yes, the English have a much stronger sense of identity because their culture goes back hundreds of years, and therefore is more easily embedded in their sense of self, but when you go to a sporting event and you can honestly say that you experienced it rather than just simply being a spectator…that says something else. This may sound like – DUH! to others, but to me, it’s a truly AH HA moment.
I felt very American on more than one occasion last night, but the moment when I felt the most American was when I was leaving the stadium. One of the security guards looked at me, laughed and said “I’d recognize those earrings anywhere, hey!” I laughed out of politeness, not really sure what he was going on about, and continued on my way. Then he said, “Hey, Bette!” as if that would help me comprehend his joke. I just continued laughing and moving away from the strange man in the neon yellow vest. Jock looked at me and said, “You have no clue what he was talking about, did you?” “Not really,” I responded, “I assumed he meant Bette Midler or something?” He replied, “No, he was comparing you and your earrings to Bet Gilroy from Coronation Street.” I had these big hoop earrings in.
I’m still not entirely sure what the connection is, but I’m glad he got a good chuckle out of it. Besides, these are people who have never heard of Full House, Family Matters or Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? (A friend of mine, Katie, informed me of this when she found out her English fiance had never heard of these shows.)
So, what is the moral of the story?
What good is a small country when you can’t watch the hits that started the careers of the Olsen Twins?
And, if you want to watch my American cheese-dick video that I made, see below!
Seeing as it’s Thursday, I’m a bit late to talk about last weekend, but I’ll excuse myself on the fact that we’ve been moving house. See how kind I am to myself? Thanks Meagan. No Problem MAL.
Saturday – Jock’s birthday present came to life! Three words – MEN IN TIGHTS. Despite Jock’s brothers cries to the contrary about TNA Wrestling versus WWE sucking, I found it AWESOME (as the crowd shouted over and over again – “This is Awesome. This is Awesome.” Yes, we’re still in England here. Although, I have to admit, I never watched WWE, so I can’t compare the two. In fact, I’d never watched wrestling before Saturday night.)
The three best parts of watching live wrestling at Wembley Arena? The hilariousness of it all (we literally did not stop laughing the entire night), the strange feeling of nostalgia for home that I felt (the announcers were all American), and the tag-team duo BEER MONEY. Yes, their name was Beer Money, and they got the crowd to continuously shout it throughout the evening whilst they wrestled…drinking beer – even when they weren’t in the ring. That’s impressive. Guess where they were from? Yup, Texas. Even the tag team duo The British Invasion weren’t even British. They got on the microphone and had the biggest New York accents I’ve heard since I’ve been out here. Who knew wrestling would remind me of home?
Oh, and then there was the butt move. Gotta love this one. Halfway through the show, we moved forward to better seats.
So, that was wrestling. Would I go again? Hell to the yeah. Honestly, I think this present for Jock’s birthday may have been more for me than him. Although, he seemed to have enjoyed it.
Sunday. A lovely cheese festival was happening in Bristol, and I met up with Kate from Lahloo Tea and her husband, and Zoe and her husband, Lee. It was a very small festival as far as festivals go, but the best part? The ridiculously good folk band called Fromage en Feu. They had a string bassist which again, reminded me of past days when I played. And they had a name in french, which was just lovely (as many of you know my love for everything French), oh and I spoke in French for a good five minutes! That alone is enough to make an entire weekend for me. The two girls standing in front evoked images of Mary Poppins with their sweet little hats, and whereas the day previous, I was in American wonderland, Sunday was the epitome of a British winter – Apple Cider, a waterfront, wine, a harpsichord, English people everywhere….you get the gist.
(Side Note: I’ve also begun noticing how I’ve been asking myself questions in a lot of previous posts. Did someone else mention this to me? No, it’s merely my own musings.)
3:33PM began festive day of birthday celebrations for Jocko’s 33rd. Cold had set in bones and shivering took good part of hour to drown out. Pint of Foster’s shandy helped soothe muscles and convulsions. Two work buddies and one television accountant joined in the first point of pub crawl once sun began to set over the Avon Gorge. One work buddy finished plate of steaming overly cheesy Nachos that I had left to the side unfinished.
Second pub was true gentleman’s hole in the wall. Fire barely making a dent in the frozen air, and small dog hogging any warmth that may have oozed out. Big sign reads “Don’t Feed Dog.” Conversation over meaning of the term “Catalan” takes quarter of hour to complete. Mate forces Jock to drink Moonshine for his seconds. I stay on beer.
Purple polo shirt enters and takes his seat next to Jock’s. Greetings are manly and jovial. 
Feeling happy, warmer and excited for what will come.
Wife of work mate is about to leave from where she is with baby – the Royal Oak pub down the street. He asks if we want to see the new 8 week old. We leave hole in wall, briskly and effervescently pump through city ten minutes to find next stop. Crawling is not what we’re doing. Pub leap is more like it. Baby is fast asleep in corner of steamed up boozer. Five percent of drinking population in this one equals women. I am becoming less and less of a minority believe it or not.
Carolers enter outside scene in gloves, hats and scarves singing songs I never knew existed and in angelic tones, and I am thrown into English romanticized version of what it is like for Christmas. Mulled wine must be next drink of choice to complete idolized dream. It is warm, fruity, smoky and everything I hoped this drink would be. Will definitely be having more. No one can bring me down from this festive spirit that has taken over. I kiss Jock to make sure this is all real.
Pubs start blending into one. Friends of Jock’s enter and exit throughout night graciously kissing on cheeks and commenting on my new hair. Jock gets more and more cards to put into my small purse. Night ends in kebab take away joint – after all, we hadn’t had a thing since the Nachos at 3:33PM.
To top off the Christmas feeling, after the rest of England has been hit by snowstorm after snowstorm, Bristol has remained dry. That is, until midnight last night. The view from our yard this morning:
Jock’s sister, sister’s hubby, and children were over this weekend. Being the busiest shopping day of the year, his sister opted to go with the rest of the population and shop!
While they joined the masses, we took the girls to the Bristol Zoo. Mostly because Jock and I really wanted to go, and thought the kids could chaperone us around. They are seriously more well behaved than I am.
Jock the gorilla (yes, that’s what he’s actually called) was out in full force, eating a celery stick parked right in front of us. The penguins were feeding. Meerkats poking their heads out. Monkeys pee peeing in plain view. Lions pacing by our face. Seals doing back flips in the water We couldn’t have asked for a better trip.
And, the animals in England are just like the ones in America! Go figure!
Except, Santa went home early. The bastard!
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