Birthdays and So Much More

For Dori and me, this last weekend marks the start of a holiday season that goes all the way through to next spring.

It began with my birthday, which I celebrated by watching Team Europe squeak a victory in the Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor in Wales. As I foretold in my last post, the weather left a lot to be desired for much of the competition, only to end with a gloriously sunny day on Monday as the contest entered an extra day for the first time in its history. To say this year’s event was close would be a massive understatement, with every single match counting towards the final outcome. If just one individual match had gone from a Europe win to being halved, or from being halved to a US win then the American team would have been flying home with the Ryder Cup yesterday.

The tie ebbed and flowed considerably over the course of the 4 days, with Europe starting well only for the US to gain the upper hand, and then Europe fighting back with a stunning third session of games to take a commanding lead into the singles matches. But all was not done and dusted, and the Americans made a tremendous effort to claw their way back into the contest and level the scores with just one match left on the course. The pressure on those two final players must have been immense and it was US Open champion Graeme McDowell who managed to hold his nerve better and secure the win for Team Europe. Yet again the Ryder Cup produced sporting excellence and drama in equal measures and I am already looking forward to the next staging of the event, which will be at Medinah Country Club, Illinois in 2012.

Aside from the golf, we also went out for a meal together with my Mum, who celebrates her birthday on the same day as me. The food was delicious and we all had a very pleasant time. It was a good weekend.

But, as I was saying, this is the start of our holiday season. Being from two different places, as I have mentioned here before, means that we get to celebrate even more holidays than most people. Starting with my birthday, we then have Halloween, Bonfire Night, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, Dori’s birthday, Valentine’s Day, Pancake Day, Mothers Day, St George’s Day, Easter and our wedding anniversary – and no doubt I’ve forgotten one or two in there :-) And by the time we have gone through all of it will be time to start looking ahead to next summer! Time to get buying cards methinks!!

Bye For a Bit

We are off early tomorrow morning to head up to Heathrow ready for our flight over to Georgia. We are both so looking forward to our break away. When we get back we will no doubt both be blogging about our adventures. Until then Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I'll see you all in December.

Summer Memories

It has been a relaxing week here at the Yellow House. I am enjoying my summer break from work for a couple of weeks and I can hardly believe that we are already half-way through that time. We are saving our pennies right now, with the hope that we may be able to get away later in the year, so the week has been spent doing a few of those jobs that always get put to the side to complete “when I have the time”. We also took a trip to the movies to see the remake of “The Taking of Pelham 123” on Wednesday, which was an entertaining way to spend a wet weekday afternoon.

This morning Dori had some school work to complete, so I left her in peace to do that and headed outside to wash the car. It was the first opportunity I have had all week to do that as the weather has been typical of the English summer – i.e. raining! :-) When I have finished this post I will be heading back out to vacuum the inside of the car too. It will be like having a whole new vehicle!

As I said, it is amazing how quickly the time passes when you are away from work and it reminded me of how different it felt as a kid in the summer when you had weeks and weeks in front of you that seemed to last forever. The weather seemed better back then too :-/ And the days seemed longer as well. We would watch some TV in the early morning, then head outside and play for the rest of the day until it was time to eat, before heading back out for a while before it got dark.

One of the shows that we used to watch on summer mornings back in the ‘70s was “The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe”. This was a slightly badly dubbed French black & white version of the old classic, and I know the thought of it will bring back lots of happy memories to anyone of a certain age. Apparently the series was shown here in 13 episodes, but it seemed to go on forever back then. The part of the show that is probably best remembered is the theme tune, and the incidental music. For me, that theme tune is THE tune of summer holidays. Whenever I hear it, it always evokes thoughts of long, lazy summer days when all you had to think about was who was going to be the “cops” and who the “robbers”, or where you had left the Swingball racquets, or how could you convince the ladybirds to race round the Olympic track you had just created on the back of a piece of wood (yes, we really did).

Here is a clip that I found on YouTube that will give you a flavour of the show, and the music.

Aah, memories.