Back from an English Christmas

So here we are back in sunny Woodstock again - our annual trip home to the motherland to see family, friends and assorted well-wishers completed without divorce or murder - so it’s got to be judged a success.

We timed our trip a lot better this year to avoid the jet-lag and last-minute rushing we had last time when we arrived on the 23rd and suffered a cabin-fever Christmas so bad that we promised never to speak of it again. This time had the whole week to acclimatise and get over jet-lag. At least that was the plan.

We got to Atlanta airport in good time and got onto the plane OK, so far so good - a KLM flight to Amsterdam, followed by a one hour hop to Teesside* where my parents live. 200 miles north of London but such is the transport infrastructure in England, it was cheaper and easier to fly to another country in order to get to their house rather than go through London.

We had a row of four seats with Stacey by the aisle, Vince, me and what looked like an escapee from ‘World of Warcraft’ to my left.  I’ve always been a live and let live kind of guy but after spending the best part of nine hours next to El Slobbo, I am all turned around on the topic. Never mind charging the morbidly obese extra for their seats, they should really have their own aircraft, sponsored by Burger King, to take them wherever they want to go - as long as it has a buffet.  

This might sound a tad harsh but his girth spilled into my own personal space and seat early, and as well as the pungent odor of a professional eater, he also brought his own Whopper onto the plane because he didn’t want to be dangerously malnourished during the flight.  I turned away to my right and tried to get what little sleep I could, balancing the pillow on the raised armrest, jamming it into my eye socket to get some purchase whilst maintaining an unnatural posture because if my backside moved one millimeter towards the remote control housed in the left armrest then the seatrest TV would come on, or even worse, the reading light above my head. It was like taking a flight on Saw Airways.

We landed and were met by our family which is always a delight.

Our itinerary would rival a dignitaries for complexity and demands on our time. Like minor royals, everybody was determined to come and see us, or us them. We averaged a visit a day so apologies if we didn’t get to see you this time around - please submit a request for the 2012 tour and our people will see what they can do.  

The Prices are at least 20 percent higher than we pay in the U.S. Not just because of a Value Added Tax (currently 20 percent in the UK) but also general rises in the three years since we’ve been. Gas is still just over $9 a gallon, so think on that before you start complaining that $3.20 is far too much!

Christmas Day itself was a blur, especially for Vincent who was delighted to get a couple of tractors and a new Cars 2 racing car in his first two presents. He would have played with them before my dad pointed out the mountain of presents piled up on the couch behind him!  It’s worth a years wait to hear his surprise and delighted squeal. We gave and received some nice presents ourselves and spent the rest of the day eating and trying to solve the centuries-old riddles that masquerade as toy instructions.

The day after Christmas, Boxing Day, in the UK is a national holiday, as it should be here and  was a more authentic experience for yours truly as my cousins and their families arrived and the men were able to take themselves off to the soccer match. Football (soccer if you must) is what College Football is to the South East in England - all encompassing and a vessel for men to communicate with one another. My team, Middlesbrough play in the league below the EPL and have been performing over and above themselves this year which puts me in the dangerous position of starting to believe that they might get promoted. When you don’t quite believe then every win is a delight and every defeat is a minor setback, as opposed to the end of the world. Now the situations are reversed.  

We go to the Lord Byron, the oldest documented pub in the town, and home to a fantastic piece of street art opposite to instill pride in the home partisans and a sliver of doubt into visitors that they are somewhere outside of their comfort zone, somewhere they might not quite understand and will do well to respect the customs and mores of the inhabitants during their brief stay. The jazz singer George Mellie referred to Middlesbrough as a ‘city of intrigue and sudden death’, which suggest he had a drink in The Bridge pub next door to the Lord Byron at some stage.

The match was a tight knit affair with near rivals in distance and league position, Hull City. Settled with a dream match-winning 30 yarder from Barry Robson two minutes from time to send every Teessider home happy.  The evening saw us in Stockton for a reunion of The Waterfront, the iconoclastic club which is now occupied by a below-par Italian restaurant which gives its premises over once a year to the returning, older, if not wiser, locals who used to pile downstairs every Friday and Saturday night to sway around to the Stone Roses and The Smiths.

It was with a heavy heart we flew out of Teesside on the day before New Years eve bound for Amsterdam and beyond it, Atlanta and home. It is always nice to see the sun again, we saw it three time in the 12 days we were away, but your thoughts inevitably turn to the ones you leave behind. 2011 was a good year, our best year in the States and 2012 promises to be even better yet.

Happy New Year, Woodstock!