Didn’t we have a lovely time, the day we went to Blackpool?!

 Experiencing Culture from the boards to the boardwalk . . .

Culture grows on you . . . wherever you are, you cannot help but feel immersed in it, whether it is highbrow or popular, culture is everywhere. In Congleton, the focal point of culture can be found at the Daneside Theatre.

The theatre, in existence since 1984, was once home to the theatrical aspirations of one John Edward Kennedy. Eddie was a member of the local Amateur dramatic society, The Congleton Players (known to the natives as “The Players”, for eleven years during the years 1993-2004. Recently we took in a play, the opening one of the season. It was produced and directed by a friend of ours, Pam Mien. The title of the play will be familiar to many of you. “Keeping up Appearances”, part of PBS’s (Public Service Broadcasting – the equivalent over there to the BBC) Sunday night line-up and now a BBC classic was perfectly cast. The cast on the stage that night did the TV show proud.  Onslow was a dead ringer for Onslow! “Rose” was as over the top as always, Hyacinth was her usual effervescent self and the rest of the cast was as good as you would have expected.

For those of you in the know and might remember, a trip to Blackpool was arranged by Eddie’s Mum before we left the States. The residents of the retirement home where she now lives, “Heath View” were excited to go. We whippersnappers were equally as excited!

Blackpool, that famous seaside resort that is “famous for fresh air and fun” really is homage to all things British. The coach trip was about two hours long, heading north up the coastline past the Liverpool area. Our schedule for the afternoon included entertainment from a gentleman who was an overweight 1970’s “Larry” from “The Three Stooges” look alike and played the keyboard with all the gadgets. His music managed to get the old folks dancing (a nice foxtrot always works – we would have marked them “7” (say that in a Len Goodman style for the best comic effect!) and when things really got going, the line-dancers hit the floor!)

After the dancing, the excitement refused to die down . . . it was bingo time! Unfortunately, there was no “Kamikaze Bingo” to witness, a shame as “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is so true to life! After we’d “eyes down” and “looky looky’d” (Fat 1970’s Three Stooges Larry’s words, not ours!) it was time for the meal. The formal dining room at The Park House Hotel was quite ornate and lovely. Our meal was soup to nuts, as Americans are prone to say! We both enjoyed what we had ordered; our plates were clean!

No trip to Blackpool would be complete without a stroll along the promenade. Eddie and his Mum hadn’t been there for thirty years and it was Linda’s first time. Seeing the legendary tower and all the arcades, it was like time had stood still. It reminded Eddie and his Mum of their trips to Rhyl, an equally famous British holiday resort in North Wales. Nonetheless, it was fun to take in the sights and get a lung full of sea air.

Blackpool is definitely not short of hotels. They are literally one after another, as far as the eye can see.  The names of these hotels were very exotic, as you’ll see from the pictures below.

The highlight of the trip was our drive along the sea front to see the famous Blackpool Illuminations. Before we set off, a gentleman got on our bus attempting to sell his wares – all of which lit up.  How successful was he? See for yourself!

The trip back was quiet, everybody being tired after a long day out. We finally got back to Congleton at about 9.30pm. Everybody had had a good time and we were very pleased to have gone with Eddie’s Mum and we showed our appreciation by taking her out to Sunday lunch at a place that is quickly becoming a favourite of ours, a pub called “The Fool’s Nook”.

Uncle Ellis, Eddie’s Mum’s brother, invited us to join him and his lady friend Jane to a local club last Saturday night. It’s known as “The Band Club” and that night truly was a night to remember. We arrived early, the band “Nostalgia” was tuning up and people were slowly arriving for their Saturday night entertainment. For more details on this wonderful night out, check out www.thelateenglishbreakfast.blogspot.com . All we can say is that it was a wonderful night’s entertainment and it was gone midnight when we got home!

Today (Wednesday) we shopped at Asda. Asda is owned by Wal-Mart. It was a great shopping experience. There were bargains galore. For instance, we bought two portions of Salmon for our evening meal that cost us the equivalent of $5! Beat that Stop and Shop if you can!

Tomorrow, we plan a trip to Altrincham, a place not a million miles away from Manchester Airport, to watch Manchester United’s reserve team ( in the US, they would be known as the “farm team”). We are both excited to finally get to go to see members of our team play. Eddie’s talking about some of these players in his football blog www.motdusaway.blogspot.com  Eddie took Linda to a couple of these games on previous visits.

In the midst of all these cultural experiences, Eddie has been offered a job as a Customer Service Advisor with the Automobile Association, based in a place called Cheadle here in Cheshire. We’re hoping that the job will start in mid-November.

We have begun looking for our new abode, and what we have seen so far has run the gambit from wonderful to what the . . . ???!!!! We’ve high hopes of looking at another property soon. Of all the places we’ve looked at so far, sadly only one allows pets.

The weather is turning decidedly autumnal. Winter is not far away. We know winter is looming ominously because the desire for carpet slippers is so great we bought some today at Asda! Very comfortable they are too!

Until next time,

That’s right Toto, we’re not in Massachusetts anymore!

It does seem like the US is worlds away now.  And at the same time it’s hard to believe we have been here for almost 6 weeks.  That is long enough to know you are no longer on vacation!

Eddie has had a chance to reacquaint himself with his former barber and they did a great job on his hair and those skinny sideburns are just the thing!  They do beard trimming too so his goatee is ‘looking good’.  While Linda was very nervous picking a new hair salon, seeing we couldn’t bring Marianne over here once every 5 weeks, Francesco’s was a great choice. Linda had two young ladies taking care of me…the 2 Katie’s (well one Katie and one Katy), one did the color and one did the cutting! They did a great job, Linda’s a happy camper and Eddie likes it as well!

 It was a couple of weeks ago when we had a really nice night out with a couple of our friends Chris Davies and Dave Burt. Dave’s a big fan of the American Civil War.  It was fun getting caught up, talking football and politics from both sides of the Atlantic, etc.  One of the places we went is called DV8, a really nice evening spot with a great outside patio with huge patio umbrellas with heaters in them so no one was cold sitting outside, especially the young ladies about with very short skirts!

Maybe we weren’t paying attention back home, but we have to say we’re absolutely dumb struck by the number of babies being strolled around, or pushed in their “push chairs” as the natives are fond of saying! Maybe there has been a baby boom over here, they are everywhere!!!! The TV mustn’t have been good in the last couple of years or maybe they can’t afford a pint down the local (where’ve we heard that phrase?!)  We know what you are thinking with the “baby boom”… even if it was catchy…Linda’s immune to that virus!

We have been experiencing Indian summer weather for the last week or so, beautiful summer like sunshine and warm breezes coming at us from Spain and Portugal.  Not to worry though as the forecast is set to change in the next couple of days and we will be back to crisp autumnal air with the breezes to match. 

The beautiul flower gardens at Congleton Park

You may remember from our last epistle, we have become rather fond of the pub. This has not become just a passing fancy. Let us assure you of that! So far, we’ve been to The Robin Hood, The Railway Inn, The Moss Inn, The Castle Inn (which wins an Eddie for the best Steak and Ale Pie!), Fools’ Nook, The Bulls’ Head, Maskery’s, The Church House (where we had a lovely evening with Eddie’s Uncle Ellis), The Egerton Arms (which is situated across the road from St. Mary’s Church Astbury) and most recently Stock Restaurant, which can be found in the delightful surroundings of Congleton Park.  

Salad was worth the wait don't you think?

We also visited a lovely country pub called The Brownlow. The Brownlow served Linda the best summer salad – in order to gauge how beautiful it was presented, take a look at the picture and see for yourself!

Linda sipping a shandy and waiting for her salad.

Looking down on Buxton.

Road signage is different here!

 We took a drive the other day out to a town called Buxton in the county of Derbyshire.  Now that means we drove through the Peak District.  It’s farm country with lots of sheep and cows about and hills as far as you can see…it’s up, then down, then hairpin turns, really tight corners, then back up again before going straight down again.  With all that the speed limit was 50, OMG, no way!  You’d have to be out of your freakin’ mind to go that fast on those roads (no breakdown lanes over here!).  It was a truly beautiful drive through God’s country; Linda’s never seen anything like it before, the landscape was so dramatic. We plan to take another trip out that way and get to Johnny Allen’s home town of Tideswell.

There are some really great shopping areas in the towns surrounding Congleton.  There’s Handforth Dean with a really big Marks and Spencers (more Steiger’s than Macy’s) with an incredible food section!  Then there’s Freeport at Talke Pits with designer outlet stores!!! Now that was fun!  En route to Freeport, you go through this little town, which is just over the border of Cheshire into Staffordshire . . . this is no joke, it really is called this! Bloody hilarious!

Only in England!

Seems like where ever we go there are great charity shops sponsored by the likes of the Heart Foundation, Cancer support groups, or Oxfam.  Now if you go into the ones in the very well to do towns like Wilmslow or Alderley Edge you know you will find some fabulous buys! We’ve decided we’re not proud and will gladly wear expensive hand me downs! I wonder if Mrs. Beckham ever left any goodies behind for them to sell!!!

Linda is still getting used to VAT (Value Added Tax), otherwise known as sales tax, which is included in the price of items you buy – not added on at check-out time.  Oh and you don’t tip in restaurants unless you have a very large group.

There is a great cinema complex in Stoke that is part of an area called Festival Park.  We’ve been there on previous trips – so we stopped in again and saw a film…”Crazy Stupid Love”  which just came out over here. If you get a chance to, go and see it or rent it as it really is a good story about family relationships in crisis, the humor of it all!  Back in 2004 we saw the remake of “Alfie” at The Odeon in Festival Park, so it was nice to have a trip down memory lane.  We’ve taken in another Congleton Town football game – they won and you can find out all about it on Eddie's Blog www.motdusaway.blogspot.com

We are usually up and going when the local children are ready to set off to school.  It’s really lovely to see them, all age groups, going off in their uniforms (ties, blazers, trousers, little dresses).  The little ones are all walked to school by their mums and dads with younger siblings in tow or in strollers/push chairs, and the family dog as well.  They start school at a later time and of course end much later than in the states.

Radio here in England is so very different from anything in the US.  Yes, there are lots of FM stations with routine presenters etc.  But, there are so many special broadcasts such as old comedy shows, Dessert Island Discs (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs), music dedicated to a particular year and all the current events of that year.  Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones has a music show once a week and often has a guest artist.  And of course lots of talk radio, but a lot of it is other than political. Now having said that, a lot of it is available only via DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) so we bought a radio that can receive those shows…no package to purchase, just tune them in!  And talking of radio, we can hear American Football on Sunday evening…say yes to the NFL!!! Unfortunately it’s not always the Patriots that they broadcast. Eddie talks about this more in his music blog www.thelateenglishbreakfast.blogspot.com   

We’ve not watched much TV since we’ve been here, a look at the news in the morning and maybe a football game if it’s on the BBC or commercial TV known as ITV.  But, Auntie Dorothy likes travel shows and, get this, Billy Connolly, the comedian has done a new one on RT 66 in the USA.  So we are cordially invited (!) to join her to watch it once a week.  It’s been very good!

Would you hire this man?!

Amid all the fun and frivolity, Eddie’s job search is moving along wonderfully.  He has been doing phone interviews that have led to face-to-face interviews.  He is actually at one as this is being written.   So far he has been offered two positions but unfortunately neither overall package has met our needs.  The two he is doing this week are much better and we are hopeful that one of those might work out.  One is in a town called Cheadle (a bit south of Manchester) working for the Automobile Association and the other is actually just down the road from Manchester Airport with Virgin Media.  He is also waiting to hear about the next step in his application with Esure Insurance which is in Manchester.  So it looks like we may be looking to live north of here – closer to Manchester so Eddie’s commute is a short one.  Things are moving along and we are, as Eddie would say “guardedly optimistic”.

We have both experienced moments of homesickness for the USA. We miss our lovely home in Hatfield, our wonderful friends who we love dearly and of course the legendary “Hatfield Three” – Jerry, Daisy and Rooney.  We are looking forward to our friends back home in the States keeping in touch with us via Facebook and email.  We look at the Daily Hampshire Gazette online every day at Costa Coffee so we get a little taste of what is going on in the Valley.

You may not be aware of this, but we often read to each other before we say “night night”! No books for dummies here let us tell you that! We’re close to completing Keith Richards’ acclaimed autobiography and will soon be moving onto another living legend, Betty White. Should be fun!!

Next week we are joining Eddie’s Mum visiting the famous seaside resort of Blackpool, noted for fresh air and fun, to see the equally famous Blackpool Illuminations, which decorate the sea front. Stay tuned for pictures and a blow by blow account (!) on our next not to be missed chapter of our blog!

So, until next time…Serenity Now!

Eddie and Linda