We left the Hotel about 0830 and drove the 30 odd miles to the J F Kennedy Space Center which is where they launch all the rockets and people to the moon and beyond. It is spread over many hundred's of acres and you are required to travel by bus to the main tourist visitor center for security reasons. Upon arrival we were subjected to a thorough bag search and also put through the metal detector looking for any dangerous items. The tour lasts about three hours and is well organized and you get to see all the main parts including the launch pad from about two miles away as well as going past the tallest single story building the world. The building has a US flag on the side and its largest painted US flag ever painted. The Saturn rocket area is so impressive and also are all the supporting presentation areas with quite a number of short ( 8-10 minute) films explaining what happens prior to a rocket launch. A launch is planned in early February and the rocket and the shuttle was already attached and this is moved almost three miles along a path on a special carrier and this rocket et al weighs about 18 million pounds- Wow.. We then visited the IMAX 3D cinema and watched a film about moon walking (not the Michael Jackson one) but a film of previous moon walks and the film was very impressive. If you visit Florida this place is far better than any Disneyland side show. After the most expensive Hot Dog ever, we headed off via Orlando in the direction of our friends who live in Indian shores on the West Coast. The weather at the moment is poor and we encountered rain and low cloud and the tops of buildings in Tampa were obscured by low flying cloud. We arrived with Adrian and Joyce around 6 pm and did a quick change and headed off the Clearwater Yacht Club for dinner with friends, some of who we had previously met on an earlier visit and others who joined the Bruges trip. The band was playing and so Jennifer and I did a little dancing and we headed home just before midnight and really ready for bed. The weather tomorrow is due to be rain and cold, not good for Florida.
We left the Hotel around 09.00 to go over to Airport to collect our Hertz Rent car. This entailed taking the Hotel shuttle in to the Airport Central to connect with the Hertz shuttle back to their place which was already busy when we got there and we had to wait for about 45 minutes before getting served and then did not get the car we had previously ordered. Such is life.
We left the Airport and immediately got lost, Boy how I hate Airports with limited signage but we eventually made it back to the Hotel to collect our luggage and head North in the direction of Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Centre. The journey took us up via lots of small towns on the local road but after a while we realised we would not make our destination unless we hit the I-95 Freeway which we joined about 80 miles North of Miami and shortly afterwords came to a grinding stop as there had been a serious car accident. How is it possible for two cars to hit each other on almost an empty road (by UK standards that is) and one of them had rolled over several times and ambulances and police and fire engines in the hundred's were heading for the scene.After a delay of about 20 minutes we were on our way again and eventually at about 5 pm we arrived at the Doubletree Suites Hotel on Melbourne beach. We had a great sea view which quickly disappeared as it got darker and also colder. We decided that we would eat in the Hotel rather than troll up and down the strip.
The Hotel restaurant was extremely quiet and only three other people eating, I think there was more restaurant staff than guests but the food was really quite acceptable indeed and Jennifer had the mixed seafood grill and Noel the scampi and pasta all washed down with a glass or two of Chardonnay.
We both slept extremely well and this was good as Jennifer was beginning to suffer from a cold it seems but when we looked at the Internet and discovered what it was like in the UK, boy is it bad there
The sun was shining over Miami as Helmar picked us up from the Hotel. A full 'American Breakfast' was very good indeed and helped kick start the day as during the night, I guess around 3 am the fire alarm went off with lots of bells and whistles and voices instructing you not to use the lifts. Two minutes later we discovered it was a false alarm but it disturbed us at a time when naturally we would be waking at home.
We sat in the car for a while kicking over old times and people we had met etc and it was really very nice. Helmer had decided, and we fully agreed, on a long tour of the best and occasional 'worst' of Miami. Over the next few hours places we visited were Coral Gables, famous for the amazing 'Biltmore Hotel, Little Havana where we had lunch in a Cuban restaurant. Noel had a pork roll and Jennifer and Helmar had the 'Cuban Sandwich' which turned out to be ham and cheese.
We also visited the Cuban memorial and also an amazing church right on the waterfront. Miami is full of non English speaking people and everywhere there were Spanish signs and restaurants. We also visited Doral, Key Biscayne and we then drove up Collins Avenue where the famous Art deco buildings are. They have been beautifully restored into Hotels and bars and restaurants and then also to Coconut Grove. We may not have done the tour in this order but these are places we visited and on Key Biscayne we had the opportunity to drive past some of the most expensive houses in the area with their own helicopter pads and boat docking facilities, Oh how the other half lives. Makes my little rowing boat seem quite unimportant.
We walked around a marina with many bars and restaurants but quite frankly you are spoilt for choice as there are these facilities everywhere as far as the eye can see. There are many expensive condominiums overlooking the sea however the age group tends to be of people in later years except in the bar area.
We had visited earlier in the day a restaurant called the 'Rusty Pelican' with great views over the high buildings in downtown Miami beach and so we headed back there for a great dinner and enjoyed the excellent seafood and a couple of glasses wine, we all had a great evening. Helmar took us back to the Hotel around 1030 pm and so we checked email for a few minutes and then headed up to bed as we were quite ready for it. It had been a long, but very enjoyable day in excellent company, and so we went to bed quite tired hoping that the alarm would not go off again.
I would mention that the current temperatures in Miami are extremely low at this time and there are great fears about the orange crop which could easily be affected by the cold temperatures of around 10 degrees Centigrade and sometimes lower, down to freezing some nights. Let's hope that it doesn't last for long.
An early start to the day compared to what we have been accustomed to recently as the Taxi was arriving at 0845 to take us to the Airport. Security was very tight and they checked everything very well and then at the gate the checked it all over again. We left about 40 minutes late but according the Captain, and I guess he should know, the flight time was about one hour shorter than planned and we would expect to arrive on time.
The Virgin beds made the journey very comfortable and for lunch we even enjoyed Bangers and Mash after a couple of drinks at the bar. We arrived 15 minutes early and the process of getting through immigration and collecting baggage, the worst part of any journey, only took about 45 minutes and we were on our way to the Sofitel at Miami Airport. The hotel had been recommended by a good friend and business colleague and the staff were very friendly and also helpful in every way, quite unusual sometimes in the big country.
We had a couple of drinks in the bar and the hotel lobby and bar was a little cool but to be expected as the weather in Miami and Florida in general is the coolest the have experienced I think for about 100 years they reported on the TV. There is nothing quite like a good homemade hamburger and fries and a couple of glasses of plonk to set you up for a night's sleep.
Should we visit Miami again this Hotel is well worth remembering? The only complaint was that the speed of the internet on the free access was very slow to what we are used to, but never mind it enable us to check our emails and news and then to discover how the weather had radically changed since we left about 15 hours earlier. Airports were closed and thick ice and snow, boy we were lucky to get away by the sound of it.
Tomorrow we are meeting up with Noel's ex business colleague Helmar and we hope to look around the town with him. And so to a well earned bed
New Years Eve was celebrated with our neighbors in a very classy style. The order of the evening was Black Ties for the men and a Tiara's for the ladies and the party group looked really posh.The evening started out by testing the Saint Veran 2006 , a nice little wine with and excellent dry taste whilst Mike supped a little glass of Glenmorangie. Toni provided beautiful goats cheese souffle starter which went down very well with the 2007 Chablis and after a short break we moved on to Jennifer's excellent chicken with aubergine and cheese which was well supported by the Spanish Baron De Ley Riojaand then followed a large choice of cheeses from Pauline and two delightful deserts from Heather.As New Years Eve approached we all started to pace up and down as we watched the total UK budget being spent on about 12 minutes of fireworks by the British Airways London Eye, it was a great sight to see. It's a great pity that the fireworks did not reach the Houses of Parliament and create a little Guy Fawkes night as this would have made our evening complete.At midnight there was lots of dancing to 'Auld Lang Syne' some festive kissing and some nice chilled Champagne and followed by some traditional Hogmaenay dancing with Mike performing his well rehearsed Irish dance routine.A few hours later it was beginning to get a little late and so our guests departed having demolished a considerable amount of French and Spanish wine and these counties grape growers will now need to go in to overdrive to re build inventory stocks that are now sorely diminshed.Thanks everybody for making this a wonderful night A happy new year to all our readers
We are extremely pleased to announce that our son Michael has proposed to his girlfriend Rebecca (Becky she prefers) on 25th December and she has accepted. We are very happy for both of them. Becky is the eldest of four children with two younger sister and one brother. The photo was taken 24 hours before we learn't the good news.
This year, after considerable thought by Jennifer and me we have decided to send only e-cards to our friends overseas for the following reasons. The cost of postage and even the cost of cards seems to be increasing as well but for many years we have been buying charity cards which we hope wil make us and others feel better about spending the money. Charity cards can cost from about 30 pence upward, depending on card and charity, of which less than one third actually goes to the charity. Sending a card to Hong Kong costs about 50 pence by post and so plus the cost of the card you are somewhere near 80 pence, or more per card. I am sure that the Charity appreciate the ten pence per card but frankly with our change of practice they will now receive about 80 pence per card or 800% more and so that is what we have done this year. The only trouble about sending e-cards and also receiving them is that the only person who know about the card is the person who has sent it and the person who receives it and often the rest of the family do not know of its existence. My new wheeze in future will be when receiving an e-card is to write their name on a new card and place it along with the others. This has two advantages in that you can re-use it year and if you cheat a bit you show off the hundreds of cards you have received from around the world. Well perhaps not... Anyway, for us e-cards with a donation to a charity of your choice is fully acceptable to us as the charities desperately need the cash
So in the meantime have a great Christmas and a Happy new Year.
Whatever happened to good old honest 'Rule of Law'???
The politicians, who pay NO UK Tax also cheat on their expense claims in such a manner as to make you feel embarrassed to be British.
Chequer's The Prime Minister's Weekend Residence
I can well understand why the Scottish and Welsh want home rule and they can have proving the rest of the country doesn't have to bail them out each week. Perhaps the Scottish Parliament would like to take in all the Scottish based MP's and Lords and that could save us some money. Dar Gordon and his family have free accommodation at Number 10 Downing Street, actually they live in Number 11 as its bigger, and they also have full access to Chequers, A London Apartment which is fully Let and a home somewhere in the hills in Scotland. Not a bad property selection really but after all of this he has seemed fit to claim for the painting of his Garden Shed to the cost of £500 of Taxpayers (MY)money.
Crime has escalated in the last few year mainly due to the Police spending more time on form filling than actually guarding the streets from killers and rapist and the like. Billions of pounds have spent on schooling but we have thousands of teenager leaving school who cannot read and write and the only income they can get is 'dole money' and by joining the criminal elite. And if you are unemployed you can spend a little time in bed creating the next generation of unemployed. A youngish unmarried couple have just had twins on top of their two other children and apart from free housing they collect £25000 per annum form Government benefits. Its so tough for them that they pay £ 50 per month for cable TV and have just changed their BMW for an Alfa-Romeo??? How is this possible??
The troops in Afghanistan are probably wasting their time and must beginning to hate the locals who keep blowing up their mates. We are not going to win this war. The Russians failed and so did the Brits before. The current Iraq hearing, although somewhat censored, is beginning show that Sadam Blair lied through his teeth to his fellow MP's whilst Whitehall MOD were telling the General's how to run the war. If the MP's cannot complete their expenses form correctly how can they expect to control a war a few thousand mile away.
The good news is its snowing and expected to snow for the next few days which will ensure that absenteeism increases in the government sector whilst the rest of the population soldier on. On the other hand we don't have hardly any stock of 'Road Salt' to put on the icy roads and so that puts up the accident rate. Well that's enough moaning for today.
Whoops, almost forget to mention the MP's Christmas Holiday is an unprecedented three week- say no more....
What a lot of old twaddle is this conference in Copenhagen which is hoping to solve the worlds pollution problems and also the changing weather climates in various parts of the world.I agree that it should happen but the process of paying other countries for the past errors and hope that the money is spent on assisting the population to overcome those challenges wil not make the slightest bit of difference. In the past the richer economies have helped the poor countries particularly when starvation is affecting large amounts of people, remember Ethiopia and Bob Geldorf. We all pumped large amounts of cash in to this country and they still have the same problems. I have had close family and friends working here and they agreed that no matter how much you pump in to the country it always ends up in the wrong hands. I wont mention the Billions of Dollars 'sort of mislaid or uncounted for in Iraq and Afghanistan. Scientist's have been predicting the end of the world as we know it today and are recommending that we spending vast fortunes on a mixture of solutions. eg Carbon Capture (not proven to work), millions of acres of solar panels, wave and sea power to help supply the required amount of electricity and also Nuclear Fusion. I haven't mentioned the acres of windmills and the work that the petrol companies are doing to introduce new forms of engines to power car using either bio-diesel or the new idea of green algae to create Hydrogen gas to drive vehicles. Over 150 private aircraft have landed at Copenhagen in the last few days and even George (simpleton) Brown flew in a private plane only a couple of hours after the Price of Wales also used a private jet. Over 800 vehicles are being used (non of them apart from two are non-pollution types) are being used to ferry the delegates around whilst they do their Christmas Shopping and visit the little mermaid and the Tivoli Gardens.I remember the UK in the 1960's when there were few cars on the road etc etc. Look at New Zealand today where there is no locally produced pollution as the headcount is low. Can you imagine only 4.5 million people in England, what bliss!!Prior to the arrival of the attendees the Danish Government placed leaflets in all of the Hotel rooms advising all participants not to contact the local prostitutes. This really upset the Copenhagen based 'Ladies of the night' and so they offered 'free sex' if you arrive with said leaflet. What is so stupid about all of this is that the problems we are causing this world are of our own making and are solely due to 'sex'. The answer to all the problems is as per the following photo and given time then the population will decrease and the pollution problems will dissipate.
Well I suppose it was going to happen but in a surprising way.
On last Friday afternoon in mid afternoon there was a knock on the door and a courier in a motorcycle helmet hands over a small parcel with 'ere mate this is for you' .He then turned round and left and not even asking for a signature.
So as the largish purple plastic packed parcel was addressed to me I opened it and to my surprise found two Hi-Tech items, one an Apple Ipod-Touch and a TomTom Sat/Nav. Wow I thought perhaps Jennifer ordered them for me as a surprise Christmas present but NO!! We are saving money she said so it wasn't me. So I checked with Michael and Joanne and neither knew anything about it.
Upon phoning the supplier a mail order house called 'VERY' I asked what credit card had been used for this purchase anticipating it was connected to last week's entry but no again. It would appear to be a case Identity theft as when checking with supplier they had my full address detail's, telephone number and surprisingly my date of birth, Whoa where did they get that from??
It came as a complete surprise to me that you could just phone up and open a credit account without providing any payment method and just order six hundred pounds of the latest gizmo's and they would send it out. It would appear they had run a credit check on me and therefore the item was despatched to our home address. Wow I thought, when I was working some years ago my company would never have given that amount of credit to a customer without the accounts department getting three forms completed, multiple signatures and running bank check etc. How stupid are Very in their process.
When speaking to the Fraud Department at Very they were a little surprised at what had happened as it would appear that fraudsters use one of two of the following methods. The first order placed must be despatched to the registered home address and therefore a small item is ordered, of little value, but 24 hours later they order items worth a lot more and they are allowed to send it to a different address. So it looks like the fraudsters on my case screwed up.
I was advised also to be careful who you meet at your front door as fraudsters have been known to wait for the parcel to arrive by the official courier and then call at the house and apologise for the mistake and take the item away. They can get violent if you deny that you have received this parcel.
I have an ID Aware programme in place and so consulted them on what action to take whilst VERY would report this episode to CIFAS which is an anti-ID fraud organisation and this will know appear on my credit report but not upsetting my financial status.
Boy, did I not need this hassle when we had friends arriving for dinner in about one hour.
Did anybody read in the paper about the guys who broke in to a clothing warehouse in Wales and then left the scene after the robbery and drove their quad bikes at four o'clock in the morning down the main rail track expecting no trains but one did come along and killed two of the lads. Rough justice perhaps!!
Anyway, Christmas and New Year is approaching fast and we are expecting a full house on the 31 December to see in the new year with friends from our neighbourhood and we are both looking forward to this very much
A few days after this we shall be departing for Miami, Florida where we will travel around the State and then head off to Austin in Texas via New Orleans for a couple of weeks and sampling some Cajun food enroute
Yesterday evening I received an automated call from Barclaycard telling me there was a chance of fraud on my MasterCard. But first I had to answer correctly multiple questions about who I was, date of birth etc until they came to the bit about, do I confirm if I made the following transactions. There was a long list of transaction for £ 385.00 for ladies shoes and also £375.00 for some books and so on, about £ 1000.00 worth of stuff it sounded like. So finally after about nine minutes of answering YES or NO by pressing the mobile phone keys I got to receive the opportunity to speak to YES ' a person' yes a real human being, this time from deepest BOMBAY. Now here I got even more suspicious as perhaps it was this chap just checking to see if I mind him using my card but NO it was the genuine article and so our cards are now cut up waiting for new ones. Here begs the question of how that 'someone' obtained our card details. Interestingly the date of use was Tuesday and Wednesday this week when neither Jennifer or I went near a shop or even used a credit card. Oh the wonders of modern technology with the chip and pin which would solve the chance of fraud. In the mean time if you had to deal with an internet problem this is most appropriate
This article by Jeremy Clarkson was in this week's Sunday Times but has since been 'pulled' - probably by the subject of the article, Peter Mandelson. So much for free speech. But poor old manglebum fails to appreciate how the blogsphere works and in no time the article finds itself going viral round the world. Wonderful. Enjoy it - and feel free to pass it on if you enjoyed it.....
Jeremy Clarkson
Sunday Times 8/11/09
I have given the matter a great deal of thought all week, and I am afraid I’ve decided that it’s no good putting Peter Mandelson in a prison. I’m afraid he will have to be tied to the front of a van and driven round the country until he isn’t alive any more. He announced last week that middle-class children will simply not be allowed into the country’s top universities even if they have 4,000 A-levels, because all the places will be taken by Albanians and guillemots and whatever other stupid bandwagon the conniving idiot has leapt
I hate Peter Mandelson. I hate his fondness for extremely pale blue jeans and I hate that preposterous moustache he used to sport in the days when he didn’t bother trying to cover up his left-wing fanaticism. I hate the way he quite literally lords it over us even though he’s resigned in disgrace twice, and now holds an important decision-making job for which he was not elected. Mostly, though, I hate him because his one-man war on the bright and the witty and the successful means that half my friends now seem to be taking leave of their senses.
There’s talk of emigration in the air. It’s everywhere I go. Parties. Work. In the supermarket. My daughter is working herself half to death to get good grades at GSCE and can’t see the point because she won’t be going to university, because she doesn’t have a beak or flippers or a qualification in washing windscreens at the lights. She wonders, often, why we don’t live in America.
Then you have the chaps and chapesses who can’t stand the constant raids on their wallets and their privacy. They can’t understand why they are taxed at 50% on their income and then taxed again for driving into the nation’s capital. They can’t understand what happened to the hunt for the weapons of mass destruction. They can’t understand anything. They see the Highway Wombles in those brand new 4x4s that they paid for, and they see the M4 bus lane and they see the speed cameras and the community support officers and they see the Albanians stealing their wheelbarrows and nothing can be done because it’s racist.
And they see Alistair Darling handing over all of their money to not sort out the banking crisis that he doesn’t understand because he’s a small-town solicitor, and they see the stupid war on drugs and the war on drink and the war on smoking and the war on hunting and the war on fun and the war on scientists and the obsession with the climate and the price of train fares soaring past £1,000 and the Guardian power-brokers getting uppity about one shot baboon and not uppity at all about all the dead soldiers in Afghanistan, and how they got rid of Blair only to find the lying twerp is now going to come back even more powerful than ever, and they think, I’ve had enough of this. I’m off.
It’s a lovely idea, to get out of this stupid, Fairtrade, Brown-stained, Mandelson-skewed, equal-opportunities, multicultural, carbon-neutral, trendily left, regionally assembled, big-government, trilingual, mosque-drenched, all-the-pigs-are-equal, property-is-theft hellhole and set up shop somewhere else. But where?
You can’t go to France because you need to complete 17 forms in triplicate every time you want to build a greenhouse, and you can’t go to Switzerland because you will be reported to your neighbours by the police and subsequently shot in the head if you don’t sweep your lawn properly, and you can’t go to Italy because you’ll soon tire of waking up in the morning to find a horse’s head in your bed because you forgot to give a man called Don a bundle of used notes for organising a plumber.
You can’t go to Australia because it’s full of things that will eat you, you can’t go to New Zealand because they don’t accept anyone who is more than 40 and you can’t go to Monte Carlo because they don’t accept anyone who has less than 40 mill. And you can’t go to Spain because you’re not called Del and you weren’t involved in the Walthamstow blag. And you can’t go to Germany ... because you just can’t.
The Caribbean sounds tempting, but there is no work, which means that one day, whether you like it or not, you’ll end up like all the other expats, with a nose like a burst beetroot, wondering if it’s okay to have a small sharpener at 10 in the morning. And, as I keep explaining to my daughter, we can’t go to America because if you catch a cold over there, the health system is designed in such a way that you end up without a house. Or dead.
Canada’s full of people pretending to be French, South Africa’s too risky, Russia’s worse and everywhere else is too full of snow, too full of flies or too full of people who want to cut your head off on the internet. So you can dream all you like about upping sticks and moving to a country that doesn’t help itself to half of everything you earn and then spend the money it gets on bus lanes and advertisements about the dangers of salt. But wherever you go you’ll wind up an alcoholic or dead or bored or in a cellar, in an orange jumpsuit, gently wetting yourself on the web. All of these things are worse than being persecuted for eating a sandwich at the wheel.
I see no reason to be miserable. Yes, Britain now is worse than it’s been for decades, but the lunatics who’ve made it so ghastly are on their way out. Soon, they will be back in Hackney with their South African nuclear-free peace polenta. And instead the show will be run by a bloke whose dad has a wallpaper shop and possibly, terrifyingly, a twerp in Belgium whose fruitless game of hunt-the-WMD has netted him £15m on the lecture circuit.
So actually I do see a reason to be miserable. Which is why I think it’s a good idea to tie Peter Mandelson to a van. Such an act would be cruel and barbaric and inhuman. But it would at least cheer everyone up a bit. in the meantime.
"In retrospect it becomes clear that hindsight is definitely overrated!" Alfred E. Newman
We left the Hotel about 0830 and drove the 30 odd miles to the J F Kennedy Space Center which is where they launch all the rockets and people to the moon and beyond.
e then visited the IMAX 3D cinema and watched a film about moon walking (not the Michael Jackson one) but a film of previous moon walks and the film was very impressive. If you visit Florida this place is far better than any Disneyland side show.
