Monday 19th October to Friday 20th November, 2009. As the warmth of Summer, in the main part due to an Autumn that never existed steamrollered headlong into Winter bringing with it the first rains and sub seventy degree temperatures since February memories of my September visitors had faded to the point where it almost felt as though they’d never even been here. Having splashed out a small fortune on a Ski Pass and committed a further two hundred bucks a month to stake a claim to five square feet of floor space in a dingy Motel Room it seemed a safe [View Full Entry]

---

---

Saturday 12th September to Sunday 18th October, 2009 I am often referred to over here not by my given birth name of Matthew, the abbreviated Matt or even my universally known nickname of Piggy but simply by the word ‘Scouser’ (invariably pronounced Scouzer). Come to think of it so is Phil, together we are The Scousers. Of course it’s not true, the term a reference to our heritage that having been raised across the water in Ellesmere Port would no doubt make any self respecting Liverpudlian turn in his grave. American’s appear fascinated with [View Full Entry]

---

---

Sunday 30th August to, Friday 11th September, 2009 Sunday evening was to mark the arrival for the second time in just over six months of my dear mother Margaret, chaperoned for her fortnight stay by her eldest grand daughter Katharine in much the same way that Joan Fontaine’s unnamed character had accompanied Edythe Van Hopper in the 1940 silver screen adaptation of the Daphne Du Maurier classic ‘Rebecca’. In the manner to which Edythe would no doubt have been accustomed it would have been nice to have collected them at LAX in an open topped chauffeur driven Bentley [View Full Entry]

---

---

Friday 3rd July to Saturday 29th August, 2009 There was precious little time for recovering from the stresses and strains of trans atlantic travel following my touchdown at LAX, it was after all just over twenty four hours to the start of the nation’s biggest shindig, an over the top remembrance of the day over three hundred years earlier when a rebellious bunch of traitorist colonial swines rejected any previous allegiance to the Crown declaring themselves a brand new nation in the process and, with the decisive assistance of Dutch, Spanish and of course French armies defeate [View Full Entry]

---

---

Wednesday 17th June to Friday July 3rd, 2009 I was excited, very excited. In fact the excitement that had steadily been increasing over the previous weeks had now got to the stage where I was fit to burst, not only because I was shortly going to see friends and family for the first time in over a year nor that I was about to spend a week of leisure in the golfing metropolis of southern Portugal but also for the fact that I was about to take a well earned break from the corporate world of eggs, fruit and veg and [View Full Entry]

---

---

Saturday 23rd May to Tuesday 16th June, 2009 I’ve used these blogs on more than one occasion to diffuse the numerous frustrations created by the 'police state' law enforcement regime in place here in California, writing things down proving to be as effective a therapy and means of getting things off the chest as any other. But the weekend of May 24th and the fortnight that followed involuntarily afforded me the opportunity to get a much closer understanding of exactly how Uncle Sam's judicial system works, an opportunity that I neither requested, desired nor ever wanted to see [View Full Entry]

---

---

Monday 11th May to Friday 22nd May, 2009 Relaxation for me has become as elusive as the holy grail, that feeling having developed over the last twelve months or so to the extent that I appear to have somehow unwittingly acquired a profound inability to sit down and chill. Heck, even committing time to something as simple and enjoyable as watching a movie has become a quandry. I can vividly recall from childhood how my father, still in his working uniform which over the course of time would seep a musty, oily fragrance into the living room would settle down post [View Full Entry]

---

---

Tuesday 5th May to Sunday 10th May, 2009 Forty six years ago to the week my dear mother for the final time pushed in a way she would never push again and, accompanied by a noise resembling a cork being sucked from a bottleneck popped me out into the world. I’m told I was a bonnie baby. I must have been because with my arse still crimson and smarting from the doctor’s welcoming slap I was unwittingly handed my very first derogatory nickname, May Yao, my mother’s Chinese pigeon English speaking midwife and soon to become my Godmother presenting her with [View Full Entry]

---

---

Wednesday 8th April to Monday 4th May, 2009 Relocating anywhere on this planet will inevitably necessitate familiarization and adoption of unfamiliar local laws and cultures and you’d be more than justified in thinking that for an Englishman, moving to America with it’s multi ethnicity and use of (a form of) the mother tongue as its premier language would be as easy a transition as it gets. Of course nothing is ever as straightforward as it seems. Take food as a case in point. America is a Nation obsessed with food and it’s this culinary infatuation allied to SoC [View Full Entry]

---

---

Friday 27th February to Tuesday 7th April, 2009 Within days of Marg’s return home life had inevitably and swiftly drifted back into a routine, the unavoidable routine of ‘normal’ day to day life, 405 Freeway to the Corporate World and back again. I wasn’t about to complain however. How could I ? Summer was on it’s way and I for one couldn’t wait. As I’ve mentioned before, aside from year round sunshine the main attraction of living in a place such as Southern California, especially for a hyper active sporty type such as myself is that ther [View Full Entry]

---

---