2007 Christmas Golf Cart Parade

It hardly seems like a year ago since the last one, but last night we had the Buttonwood Bay Christmas Golf Cart Parade once again. Doesn't time fly ???

This year the numbers seemed down a bit and some of the carts had the same decorations but hey, people made the effort.

As I'd learned a bit from last time and knew where the parade started from, I hightailed it in our own decoration-free cart (bah humbug) and took several pics while they were still getting ready to set off. This helped a lot as I'm not very good at taking decent photos of moving objects at night. Sometimes a point and shoot camera can be very useful and even my camera on full auto can't always focus on these well lit carts as they drive by......and there are no second chances as running after them is not an option. Oh no.

I'm too old and decrepit for that malarkey.

So the first half dozen photos below were taken minutes before the parade set off while their owners were happy to pose beside or inside their 'creations'. Like I said, you may notice a few from last year but the cart pulling the boat was new to me and the one with the huge Christmas tree on the back had been updated........to include another tree on the front !!

I feel they're given themselves quite a challenge for next year.

We didn't go to the 'do' after the parade so I've no photos of that. I took enough last time to give you an idea anyway. Last night was the start of a cold snap which hit the area but thankfully it was dry and relatively warm for the parade.

But enough waffle - here are the photos.





































































































































































































A big thank you should go out to everyone who took the time and made the effort to decorate their carts and create this parade.

Everyone here may be retired but when you look at the detail on these carts, you'll understand how much time had to have been spent by people who have put in a lifetime of work already and deserve to be taking it easy.

You're never too old to enjoy life and not for the first time, the residents of this park are the proof of that philosophy.

Well done everyone and Happy Holidays.......oh sod it......Happy Christmas.

Christmas Music - Again

We Brits are an odd bunch. We really are. We seem to love buying the same Christmas records year after year and looking at the latest charts, one week before Christmas, I see the old favourites are back in there again.

In descending order in the Top 40 we have :

Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You
The Pogues - Fairytale Of New York
Wham - Last Christmas
Wizzard - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday
Andy Williams - It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year
Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody
Shakin' Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone
Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas
Chris Rea - Driving home For Christmas
John Lennon & Yoko Ono - Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

So a quarter of the songs in the charts are ones we've bought before...and before....and before.
All we need is Cliff Richard and Mud and we'd have the set.

But where is THE Christmas song - White Christmas by Bing Crosby ?

Maybe we've finally grown tired of it and so in decades to come, we may grow tired of all the ones I've mentioned above.

Are we alone in this strange annual ritual of buying Christmas records we surely must have bought in the past ? Well I've looked at the charts from various nations and it would seem......yes we are. Ok many other countries have one or two of these regular oldies in their charts this week but nothing like as many as we have.

Wham's foot-tapping little effort seems to be popular in a lot of European countries. Those snow loving Finns and Danes have it in their charts (maybe they like the video that goes with it) but it's a little harder to understand why Germans and Austrians are buying it in droves too. Well I guess we know why the Austrians are yet again doing whatever their bigger neighbour is doing but lets not get all political here.

Actually several European countries MAY have their own versions of re-released Christmas songs in their charts right now - I wouldn't have a clue. I mean the No.1 in Belgium this week is "Kom Dans Met Mij" by Laura Lynn & Frans Bauer and for all I know, this translates to "Lets Have An Expensive But Delicious Specialist White Chocolate Christmas" and this little Belgian treat could be a regular visitor to the charts at this time of year.

I mean I'm not insular enough to think that the efforts by Wham, Wizzard and Slade will be loved by Christmas music fans all over the world.

And sure enough one country stands out as not having a single Christmas song in their charts this week - the US of A. No original song. No re-released song. Nada. They do have a Christmas ALBUM at No.1 one however and herein may lie the clue to why there are no singles.
The No.1 album by Josh Groban has been out for 9 weeks now. Singles and albums take so long to climb the charts over here that it's almost impossible to release them so that they may get to the top spot by a particular date.

In the UK it's time for everyone to ask "who will be no.1 in Christmas week" ? It used to be quite exciting in the days when we all found out together by listening to the chart countdown on a Sunday afternoon on BBC Radio 1. Sadly that tradition has gone and thanks to computerised listings and the internet etc, we seem to know the outcome over a week in advance.

Another tradition gone forever.

But artists and their record companies only had to release their songs about 2 weeks before Christmas and given how few actual sales were needed to get into the Top 10, a popular act could pretty much relax in the knowledge that they'd be on top of the pile by 25th.

To do that here in America, I suspect they'd need to have their record in the stores by Independence Day !!

We all like our tried and tested Christmas songs at this time of year. I have about 400 of them on my laptop and MP3 player ranging from good old Bing to Bon Jovi and from Burl Ives to Sinead O'Connor. I love them all. Yes I've even got Wizzard and Wham and Slade and all of the 10 in the current UK charts.

What can I say. I'm British.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

My lack of hair and my advanced age have combined to allow me to easily cut my own hair these days. Even though I save money by doing it, it's still all quite depressing.

I've had more head than hair for some time now and I vividly remember when it all started. I was in my upstairs flat in the Harehills district of Leeds - which probably put me in my mid 20's. For some reason I used a hand mirror to look at the back of my head, probably based on some witty comment from a friend. I was horrified to see head where hair should have been and the rest, as they say, is history. Like my hair in fact.

It's never bothered me much. Well not really. I've never tried to hide it and certainly would never try a comb over. Probably because it would take me too long to grow enough strands of hair to actually throw over to the other side.

So a few years ago, after recovering from a heart attack, I decided I didn't need the physical effort of dealing with the hair that was left and so I gave myself a No.2 and although it was a bit of a visual shock to almost be a skinhead in my 50's, I loved not having to comb, brush or even wash my hair every day. A quick splash when showering is all it needs.

As I'm a sort of mid Atlantic citizen now anyway, I wear a baseball cap most times when I go out and about and so even if I mess up my haircut, no one knows. Apart from maybe missing a little tuft, it's hard to mess it up. Just go over the whole head and try and keep the clippers flush to the skull with the correct cutting guide in place.

Ahhhh the guide. I should throw the others away or put them out of reach or something. If I'd done that, then I'd never have messed up once and given myself a No.1. Opps. The glance in the mirror was beyond shocking.

You see I take my glasses off when cutting my hair and after just a couple of passes over the back of my head where most of my remaining hairs reside, I sensed something was amiss. When I looked at the guide number, my worst fears were realised. But once started, I had to continue and the end result was not a pretty sight.

For weeks I wore my baseball cap INSIDE.

Having my hair cut when I was growing up in Ballymoney (N. Ireland) seems all the more distant now. I was never a trend setter, hair wise. Not really a trend follower either. We were simple folk and a trip to 'the barber' resulted in a short back and sides that would've made a US Marine proud. The place even had a classic striped pole outside for goodness sake. Until I was old enough and tall enough to sit properly in the chair, a wooden board was placed across it and I'd be lifted up onto it.

That indignity was bad enough but my pleas to have my hair cut as I wanted it fell on deaf ears too - as the barber would only take instructions from my mum or dad.

Barber : "The usual, young man" ?

Me : "Well no actually, I'm torn between shaved sides with a thick flat top or a look like that young Elvis fella, and heavy on the Brillcream."

Mum : "The usual"

It was all a bit much for a 24 year old !! And I was NEVER asked if I wanted 'something for the weekend' either. I suspect even the barber reasoned that with that haircut, I'd be spending my weekends alone.

But that was the best part of 40 years ago. Where does the time (and hair) go ?? Both slip away much too quickly for my liking. In the UK we tend to live in one place and work in one place much longer than people over here in America. I'm not sure if that seems to make time pass slower or faster.

My mum and dad got married, moved into a council house and that was it for over 50 years. 50 years in the same house. Well actually dad left first when he died in 1986 but mum lived on, alone, in that house until she too left it forever after 53 years in 2003. I think I've got the same 'homing gene' as I've clocked up 25 years in my one and only house. Dad worked for the same company all his life and although I had a short spell with two companies at either end of my career, I spent 25 of my 29 working years with ASDA, the supermarket company based in Leeds - now part of the WalMart family, as the sign outside the headquarters informs us.

So I'm not really into change and over here everyone IS into change. I buy things expecting them to last me for decades. Over here in the throwaway society, you buy things expecting them to last till the weekend. You buy a 1gb flashcard and when they bring out a 2gb card, you move up. 4gb, sir ? Yes please. Can't fill the 1gb card but what the hell.

But I fear I too am being seduced by all this crass consumerism. There was an advert on telle the other night for the latest addition to the Rogaine range - the product that claims to regrow your hair. Rogaine Foam. Now that sounds like fun.

But I think it might be too late for me as it wouldn't have a lot to work with. I'd just be a 'foam head' with no more hair than I have now.

If only it had been available back when I first looked in the mirror and noticed a small island of head appearing in an otherwise luxuriant sea of hair.

Now, sadly, it's the sea of hair that has become the island. Well more of an shrinking atoll really.

But as I said earlier, it has it's good points. I get up in the morning knowing that, hair wise, I'm looking as good as when I went to bed.

Well I don't care what you say, I'M taking that as a good point.

Pixie Update

Yesterday Deb and Den took Pixie for another progress checkup at the vet hospital.

It might be the last one.

It's a 3 hour round trip and they had to wait 30 minutes to see Dr. Max and the checkup lasted about 5 minutes including the questions they asked him. It's hard to see a reason for going any more.

For the past couple of weeks, Pixie has been walking reasonably well but still falling over sideways from time to time when her back legs give way - usually when she needs to turn. But she gets right back up again. When she is walking up on all fours, her back legs have a comical high stepping action as if she's walking over hot coals or some nasty wet grass. There isn't much rotation or bending of the back legs going on.

The vet did the pinching test again (I hate it and I'm not the one being pinched) and there were still places where there was no pain, and therefore no nerve signals, getting through. He said this explained the high stepping action as basically Pixie wasn't able to sense the ground and so was using her spine alone to move her legs and just doing a simple 'leg up, leg down' straight leg motion - planting her back legs in the hope that they'd touch the ground as opposed to knowing they'd reached the ground via nerve signals going to and from her brain.

But WE know she can bend her back legs properly as she loves to roll over onto her back and be petted and often if you tickle her tummy, she'll move her back legs in a bicycle motion as she's so happy. I don't care how this motion can be explained away but the fact that it DOES take place, seems to me to show there have to be signals going right to the tips of her paws......as the pads move too.

Anyway the vet just said to continue with the twice daily therapy, don't over walk her and come back in 2 weeks.

We don't think so ! For a start it'll be Christmas but we can always alter the appointment. We just think it's a journey too far, time and fuel wise. We don't think anything more can be done for her at the hospital anyway and we just hope she'll slowly get a little better week by week with us. The last two visits have added up to 6 hours of driving and $60 in gas for a total of 15 minutes with the vet - to be told nothing new.

And even if this is as good as she'll ever be, that's fine too. Personality wise she's 100% Pixie again. She can get around the house well enough - although once she goes onto the kitchen lino she does still tend to do the splits a lot - and when on our laps, she still looks so damn cute that you want to hug her to death. She still has silly periods when she rolls over on the carpet and plays with imaginary objects; she's still a great alarm dog (could never be described as a GUARD dog) and barks when anyone comes to the door; she still causes people she meets to go awwwwwww; she still does things that make us laugh and generally talk about her (and to her); she's still Pixie.

But most of all, she's happy, not in any pain and as much as we love her, she loves us right back.

What more can any of us wish for ?

Fun In A Barn

On Monday we left the park and went into unknown territory..........central Florida. Yes we braved gator infested waters and roadside fruit sellers and made our way to a casino for a spot of gambling. Best thing to do in a casino I suppose.

Deb and I went with 2 park friends and it was the first time for all of us. So we got a little bit lost. Just a little. "How can you miss a casino ?", I hear you cry ?

Well to get around the Florida gaming regulations, this wasn't really a casino. It was called an arcade - and was set up in a building best described as....barn shaped. We had been told to look out for a gold coloured building but not that it was a barn. Luckily we'd learned a few things from watching several series of "The Amazing Race" and with some teamwork (and stopping to ask at a local grocery store), we got there at 11:30.

Only to find a note on the door that said it opened at noon !! This was definitely a different kind of casino, sorry, arcade.

We drove around the area to waste time and returned at 12:15 - didn't want to appear too eager you know. They'd just opened up and so we all went in together. Ok now you need to remember I've only been to large modern casinos/hotels in Vegas and almost as impressive ones in Michigan and so this place was a real shock. About 50 machines, one little single person restroom (I don't mean for midgets but just that only one person could 'go' at a time), one ATM and, uniquely in my experience, no cameras.

They didn't need any. On top of every machine was a card that a player could place on top of the buttons if they wanted to go for a break or go to the restroom. Basically we were on the honour system and as there were only 2 or 3 other people in the barn, that was fair enough.

The main reasons that this place could open at all was because no money can be won and no gambling took place. Confused ?

Well the machines used a points system and the total went onto a credit card sized card that you inserted everytime you moved to a new machine and it simply kept a tab on your 'winnings'. Even then the money on the card could only be redeemed at stores like WalMart and only if you got more than $25. Anything less and you just had to keep playing or the money on the card was useless. Very clever. Of course if your card had, say, $17 on it and you didn't really want to play more or even return to the arcade ever again, you could just put $8 in cash onto the card to make it up to $25 and so get to spend it in a store.

But why wasn't it classed as gambling ? Well again it's all in the detail. With most slot machines you press a start button or pull a lever and the bands revolve for a while and settle down to present winning or losing lines. You have no control over how they end up so......that's gambling.
The machines in this arcade all had a start button but there were other buttons which allowed you to stop the bands all at once or one at a time. You had 'control' and so it wasn't classed as gambling.

Of course in reality you had no more control that you'd have using the slots in Vegas. The bands whizzed round so fast that they were a blur and even if you did your Rain Man thing and worked out the sequence of the symbols, once you'd hit the stop button, the bands would rotate for a while before actually stopping so you have no chance of stopping them on the symbol you needed. Seemed pretty much like a gamble to me.

But the fun part was that we were given $15 (1500 credits) on our cards from the get go and if you played at the minimum of 8 credits at a time, that $15 could last you for several hours. And it did. The four of us were there for 3 hours and only one of us had to dip into our 'own' money. One amased $72 at one time which ended up being $50, another got $27, one broke even by losing the $15 and one used $1 of their own money.

Yes that last one was me !!

Well I'd not worked it out properly and had left 50 credits (or 50 cents) on my card but the minimum you could transfer to the machine was $1. Very clever again. So as I was the first one to finish, I walked around for a while watching the other 3 playing - this quickly became boring so I decided to put $1 of my own money on my card to make it $1.50 and so be able to play again. And before you ask, you couldn't just put 50 cents on as the cash to card transfer machine only took notes. Anyway I won now and then and that $1.50 lasted me about 25 minutes.......before it too was gone !

I was the only loser on the day. Typical.

But it was fun AND we got free sannies, goulash (I think) and all the pop, water, candies and other nibbles that we could eat. I had 3 sannies, a plate of the goulash, 2 cans of coke and numerous candies and so didn't feel too bad giving them that $1 back out of my own pocket.

It may not have been as glamorous as The Venetian or The Bellagio in Vegas but I defy anyone to spend 3 hours in any of those places with a $15 stake.

Or in my case, $16.

Surfin' USA

Yesterday Deb and my good self left the confines of Buttonwood Bay and headed out on a shopping trip to an outlet Mall near Vero Beach on Florida's east coast

The Vero Beach Prime Outlets Mall, for that was it's name, turned out to be a lot further from Sebring than Debby thought it was. She'd said it was 59 miles.

Hmmmmmm.

After 59 miles we were only half way there - but we we didn't care.

The sun was shining. The road was long (and possibly winding) and the car top was down. The Beach Boys were singing about some boat called John B and diners with rollerskating waitresses were everywhere. We were young, free and had drugs and money in our pockets. Ahhhh the 60's.

Sorry. Had a senior moment there. Sadly yesterday was still in 2007 and apart from the sunshine, nothing much remained from the 60's. The road WAS long though. And boring. US60 East from Lake Wales to Vero Beach was almost as boring as the road from Sebring to Miami. God's that's a boring road. If all the boring bits of roads from all over America were laid end to end........well I guess they have been. It's called US27 South from Sebring to Miami.

So we were ridiculously happy when we came upon the Mall with still 7 miles to go to the town of Vero Beach. I may have cheered. We both may have cheered.

The Mall was pink. Very pink. All of it. I think Outlet Malls have to be pink by law. I didn't care. We were able to get off US60 and after 80 miles of mind numbingly boring (non) scenery, a huge pink coloured Mall looked wonderful to my eyes.

We strolled along the wide and inviting pathways and looked at every store - and even went inside a few. We both bought 'stuff' and had a jolly good time doing so.

Batteries recharged, it was time to face US60 again but thankfully only for the 7 miles from the Mall to Vero Beach. It was great to see signs for places so familiar to me from previous visits to this part of Florida. Daytona Beach, Indian River Shores, Melbourne. I was a little giddy at being so close to Cape Canaveral with the latest shuttle due to be launched today. As it turned out, it's been delayed until tomorrow anyway.

We turned right down US1 for a block and then left and across one of the numerous impressive bridges that connect the mainland to the thin strip of land that runs for hundreds of miles down the east coast of Florida. We came upon a lovely FREE car park and seconds later we were on the beach with the sounds of Atlantic waves crashing on the shoreline.

We were at the seaside !!!

No sandcastles. No 'kiss me quick' hats. No garish amusement arcades and not a donkey in sight.

In fact there was nothing in sight but sand in both directions as far as the eye could see.

It was a few minutes after 6pm and the last rays of the setting sun were struggling to peek over the tree line and fall upon the beach.

I love the light at this time of day and for a few brief moments, it brought out the blue of the sea, the white of the breaking waves and cast an eerie layer of almost unnatural light between the horizon and the sky. Enlarge and have a good look.

The temperature had already dropped to a very pleasant 64F (18C) but as ever, Debby was glad of her jacket. Give her credit though, she did remove her shoes and socks and ventured out to meet the water.

As you can see from this photo, it was not a totally agreeable meeting.

But it wasn't the water temperature that was causing her to scuttle back to dry land. It was the fact that she had miscalculated the height of the previous wave and had managed to get wet above the knee line.

By now the sun had set and being in the east, we lost most of the beautiful light that can come at this time of day.

We still had this part of the beach all to ourselves and for some reason it reminded me of the scene from Deep Impact where Tea Leoni and her on screen father, played by Maximilian Schell, were standing on a similar beach waiting for the gigantic tidal wave to hit them.

If you have 3 minutes to spare, here it is, thanks to YouTube.

Anyway I decided to pass the camera over and have my soul captured for all eternity........or at least until digital images disintegrate and return to being a handful of 0's and 1's. Probably by March next year.

You can see why I prefer to be on the other side of the lens.

I share a trait with Billy Connelly as he once remarked that he'd still look like a tramp even if he was wearing a tuxedo.

Or words to that effect.

Clothes hang off me like dead skin on a leper. Smooth, smart, suave and sophisticated. All words that will never be used to describe me.

I think that's why I love being in America so much. This country was made for me. I fit right in.

But back on OUR beach, something quite startling happened. We had uninvited guests. A man and his 3 kids appeared from nowhere and had obviously been looking at my typing as, while his son stood poised on the shoreline with his little surfboard, he and his 2 daughters started to build a sandcastle.

Well I never. It spoilt the whole effect. Suddenly I could've been back home standing on the golden sands of Scarborough or Bridlington beaches. Having said that, it was obviously an unplanned visit as the traditional British bucket and spade technique had been cast aside in favour of a much more effective technique based on kneeling on the sand and digging away like crazy.

The son, on the other hand, was doing something much more photographically interesting. He was.........well there has to be a name for it but I don't know what it is. Bodyboarding or boogie surfing or some such thing.

He'd wait for the right moment, which seemed to be when he had regained his breath from the previous attempt, and start running towards the ocean.

At the water's edge, he'd hurl his board along the wet sand making use of it's obvious aquaplaning capabilities and once it was actually ON the water, he'd hop aboard and surf off into the sunset.

Except that the sun had set some time earlier, he was going AGAINST the tide and anyway, he kept falling off after a few feet.

As the closest adult around, I soon realised that this activity was destined for failure most of the time and even on the rare occasions when body and board managed to stay together, they didn't stay that way long enough to justify the efforts in getting there.

Of course I may be missing the point here and I'd just have been happy to have been able to run that fast down the beach, period. Making any sort of contact with a rapidly disappearing small speeding board would have been an incredible bonus.......and a physical impossibility I'd have to think.

As Clint Eastwood was always keen on pointing out in most of his Dirty Harry movies "a man's gotta know his limitations".

But here are a few photos of the times when he DID get it right and managed to crest a wave before parting company with both his board and most of the air in his lungs. Oh and by the way, I did ask dad's permission before taking these photos. Just in case he was on holiday from Roundhay Park. You never know.





























































Then, realising that he could also become famous by appearing on my blog, dad decided to get into the action. I've no idea where his board came from - maybe that's what they were digging for earlier.

Now HE was a proper surfer dude. He was wearing his authentic one piece black condom to keep out the water and had his head full of Jan & Dean's greatest hits.

Sadly we had to leave the beach as time and tide wait for no man, or woman, or surfer for that matter.

I only had one chance to take photos of dad and thankfully for us both, he found his wave and had a little surf on it.....bless.















We left the beach, returned to the truck and headed back on US60 to the Outlet Mall to do a last bit of shopping. After that we went to a nearby Steak 'N Shake for something to eat.

I'd only been once before and should've remembered that it doesn't 'do' great food. But this time it wasn't the food that got us annoyed but the temperature inside the place. We were frozen and Debby actually put up the hood on her jacket and sat across from me looking like a pink inuit.

A very disgruntled pink inuit.

The manager made the mistake of manning the cash register when we went up to pay and he just HAD to ask if everything was ok ? Oh dear. The end result was that he waived the cost of our (shared) meal and that sent us off onto US60 in a much happier frame of mind - still cold mind you.

That trip back to Lake Wales was made much more agreeable as it was pitch black and so, although we knew that the boredom was still out there (like The Nothing in The Neverending Story), we couldn't see it !

Then it was onto US27 south to Sebring and 'home'.

It had been a grand day out but the next time a woman driver tells you your destination is 59 miles away, take a book with you as you just might be in for a slightly longer trip.

Gardening Florida Style

Being from the UK, when I think of gardening I think of cutting the lawn or trimming the hedge or even sorting out the flower beds.

I think of them.....and that's often as far as it goes.

I hate gardening but I love the results. I guess I'd like to be rich enough to have someone do it for me. I had my back garden turned into a patio just so I wouldn't have to cut the grass. I drew the line at having the same done at the front as I do like greenery there. I've noticed over the years that more and more front lawns in my estate ARE being covered over - sometimes to accommodate a 2nd car or even just a larger single vehicle.

Often the owners are older people who are no longer able to cope with a garden and so pave or concrete the lawn. I don't like such gardens. When I'm out walking and see a lovely tidy trimmed lawn and a border of colourful flowers and shrubs, it gladdens my heart. I think of those unfortunates in high rise flats who would love to be able to have a garden.

But like I've said, I'm too lazy to deal with it all. I cut my lawn every week in high summer and that's about it. I have a couple of incredibly hardy rose bushes that despite my care, manage to bloom every year. In my ignorance I've often cut them down to bare stumps but lo and behold, up they come again, spawning beautiful roses as if to poke fun at my accidental attempts to kill them off.

Why does grass have to grow so fast anyway ? That's bad design. I think one should be able to cut it at the start of summer and be done with it till the following year. Come on scientists, sort it out. Genetically modify grass please.

But don't get me started on hedges. A couple of years ago I fell for the old traveller/gypsy con trick and paid £160 to have some Irish speaking family spend 15 minutes giving my hedge a punk rock style makeover that you'd never see in Homes & Gardens. I knew I was being made a fool of while it was going on. I think the 12 year old 'son' who was actually up the step ladder attempting to cut the hedge was one giveaway. He couldn't reach the top for a start. But the clincher was when 'dad' put his arm around my shoulder and said "what on earth have you given us money for to do this to your hedge" ?

He quickly said he was only joking but when they suddenly packed up their few bits of equipment (the stepladder and an old pair of rusty clippers) and high tailed it in their white unmarked van, I stood alone surveying the remains of my hedge and didn't see the joke at all.
I'd only taken up their offer as I was 4 days home from the hospital after my heart attack and I think I was in the middle of a delayed MRSA attack. Every year on the anniversary of the great hedge fiasco, I swear I hear laughter and the squeal of tyres as a white van speeds down the street. It may just be my neighbour of course.

Anyway here in sunny Buttonwood Bay things are slightly different. Yesterday a truck pulled up outside the house next door and I realised I was going to witness something rarely seen in the UK - well outside of Devon/Cornwall at least. My neighbour's palm tree was going to be given a tidy up.

I tried to find an old photo of the tree without the truck blocking the view but any I took of our place, didn't include the tree next door.

So this photo at least shows how overgrown it was as of yesterday. Actually it looked fine to me but what do I know about palm trees ?

Nothing.

So they set up their crane thingy and one of them went up to do the cutting. By the time I thought to capture the event for posterity (and this blog), a few fronds had already disappeared.

Once a frond had been cut away, it was tossed down into the open truck bed and the guy was onto the next one before the discarded one had settled.

No gypsy blood in this guy !!

I have to assume the pair took it in turns to go up and do the trimming as there wasn't much for the guy on the ground to do.

If they'd been in the UK, he'd have been the one catching up on the political news and world events in The Sun and multitasking by wolf whistling at any female going past......despite none here being under 80.

It's actually embarrassing to wolf whistle an octogenarian in more ways than one. For one thing it takes so long for them to go past that you either have to give numerous whistles or else hold the final 'note' for so long that you risk serious injury to your lungs.

Believe me it doesn't happen here a lot......especially as the men are mostly of a similar age and are simply happy to be able to breath at all and don't have surplus air in their lungs or their portable tanks to waste any on whistling.

If you look at Mr Frond Guy closely, you may notice he's wearing thick gloves. There is a very good reason for this - now that I know a little bit more about palm trees.

I've blown up a portion of another photo and if you click to enlarge it, you'll see why he's wearing the gloves.

Palm tree frond stems are deceptively dangerous to the skin. In fact the whole tree is pretty much a non hands zone. The trunk can shred skin when the 2 come together and I shudder to think about the people who scoot up them for whatever reason.

Maybe I'm thinking of coconut trees which have smooth trunks !

I told you I'm clueless about gardening, exotic or otherwise but at least I do know that there is a country called Hungary, Europe isn't a country and that Budapest isn't the capital of France.

There is some hope for me and thanks to Daphne for emailing me that link. But I've digressed.................

I think I'm right in saying that the park is responsible for tree trimming on this side and so there should be no charge involved for the owner of the home. We have a huge tree to the right of our place so if it needs work doing to it, I guess we'll find out then.

Back to this palm tree and by now it was looking like a Mohawk on a bad day. Only a few minutes had gone by and already the difference was striking.

Once he'd cut away the upper fronds, he lowered his cage and started working on the other bits and pieces.

By now I'd connected up my webcam and, thanks to Skype, my friend Daphne was able to sit in her Leeds living room and watch as a palm tree in central Florida was being trimmed.

Who needs television ???

After about 20 minutes the deed was done and the truck moved away.

This is a photo of the trimmed tree and I have to say, I liked the old tree better. It somehow LOOKED more like a palm tree should look. This denuded thing seems like a cross between a feather duster and one of those pencils kids use with a troll stuck on the end of it.

It's just not aesthetically pleasing.

At least I'll be able to see how fast it all grows back but I'm sure it won't need to be trimmed again for a long long time.

Maybe that's why there are no gypsies in Florida.

Home Alone

I was going to have a rant about the story of a British teacher who has been found guilty by a Sudanese court of insulting religion by naming a teddy bear Muhammad. Well I should say she let her class of 7 yr olds pick the name and 20 out of 23 of THEM chose Muhammad. She's been sentenced to 15 days in prison and will then be deported. Like she'd want to stay in that country anyway ??

But plenty of others have voiced opinions and I'm not going to add to the circus. I think the whole philosophy of hard line Muslims can be shown up for the nonsense it is by the following excerpt from a followup BBC article :

Ibrahim Mogra, chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain's interfaith relations committee and an imam in Leicester, says the name should be reserved for boys. "Some of us believe we are assured of heaven if we name our children Muhammad."

Ah but what about the '70 virgins' ? Sorry but that explosive bonus is a bit harder to get.

Holy crap, when I think of the 80 years of good honest Catholic living and the thousands and thousands of hours of praying that she did, my sainted mother will be kicking herself that all she had to do was call me Muhammad !!

But I'm not going to rant. Well not more than I just have. It's just all too silly.

Tomorrow morning (Fri) Deb and Den will be leaving to fly back to Michigan as Deb has organised a twin baby shower for her two daughters-in-law who are 'heavy with child' right now. They'll be back on Monday evening.

I don't envy them. The outside temp here right now is 82F. The temp in Houghton Lake, Michigan is 18F (and it says with the wind chill, it FEELS like 3F). Somehow I don't think they'll be wearing their usual attire of shorts and t-shirts while up there. Oh lordy no.

So for 3 days I'll be here on my own......well of course the ferocious finger eating Pixie will be with me. Thanks to her, my left index finger end is now the size of a grapefruit, excruciatingly painful and the colour of Michael Jackson pre-Thriller.

But I'm a man, so you can discount one of those descriptions. Well ok two of them.

No, no, no. I still say that little dark blood scab to the left of my nail is pretty black looking. Yes it is.

The thing is, one tends to hold any sore appendage away from ones body to protect it from accidentally coming into contact with......basically anything. So for the last two days I've been giving totally innocent passersby the finger, so to speak. We were in a Wendy's today and I went to scratch an itch on the left side of my head and two huge 'dudes from the hood' glared at me as if I'd just spat in their (go large) soda drinks. It was a tense moment.

I'm hoping to use this time alone to catch up on the 100 or so tv shows I've downloaded and not watched yet. I don't feel right putting on my headphones and watching them when Deb/Den are here so now I can forgo the phones and let rip. I'll also feel less inhibited using Skype to talk with friends as it's a bit bizarre talking into a microphone when others are around. I call it "Amy Whitehouse Syndrome" and it should be avoided whenever possible.

I'll also be fitting my tv show viewing around walking, cycling and, of course, swimming. I mean I didn't come to Florida to spend all day inside. Oh no. I can do that in Leeds.

Here the sky is blue, the sun is warm and the pool is heated to a lovely 84F. What's not to like about that ?? Well I'm not supposed to get my finger wet so that IS a problem. I could pop a condom over it but I can see that backfiring big time. I'd be dozing on a sun lounger by the pool when several deafening shrieks wake me from my slumbers. Mrs. Horowitz has fainted in the shallow end with my discarded condom stuck to her forehead. I'd have to leave the pool area muttering that the old biddy probably hadn't seen a condom for 30 years so what was she doing fainting in the first place ?

20 minutes later Mr. Horowitz would be at my door with a twinkle in his cataracts, asking if I'd any free samples !!

Maybe I'll give swimming a miss for a while.

That's What I Get For..............

.....giving a Pixie update and thinking the dramas were over.

On Monday night Pixie was taken out for her last pee/poop of the day when she suddenly walked underneath our golf cart. She let out the same high pitched yelp that we'd heard when she had been picked up and ruptured a disc last month. This time the yelping went on for about 7 or 8 awful seconds as if someone was standing on her paws and not getting off.

I rushed out to help and immediately put my hand in to see if I could get to her, thinking she'd become trapped underneath and somehow twisted her back trying to get out. Doing this while she was in this state was understandable but, looking back on it, not the best move I've ever made. But you just don't think rationally - you want to help and you certainly want the pitiful noise to stop.

So she bit me and got me good. Right on the end of my index finger as that was the closest 'meat' to her teeth. I withdrew my hand, somewhat quicker than it had gone in and using the torch I had with me, surveyed the damage. Pixie had stopped yelping by now and when I moved the torch beam back to the ground, she was right by my foot and her tail was wagging !

I suddenly realised I was dripping blood all over her head and back. A combination of the depth of the bite, it's location and the fact that I'm on blood thinner medication, all meant that I was leaking blood faster than Arnie's stunt double.

When we decided we'd had enough fun for the night and were encouraging Pixie to return inside, we noticed she was dragging her back legs just as she had done after popping her back and before her surgery. Oh my God was she paralysed again ???

I had to go to the bathroom to take care of my finger as I was dripping blood over everything. I heard Debby saying.....oh she's walking !! I came out and sure enough, Pixie was up on all 4 legs, albeit wobbling quite a lot on the back ones. What a relief. Again thinking back on it, the wagging tail was the first clue that she wasn't paralysed but I'd forgotten about that.

Anyway, since then she's almost fully back to how she was before the golf cart incident although I don't think she's quite as steady on those back legs yet.

As for me, I went to bed with my finger washed and covered with a plaster. I had Pixie in my room so I could respond to anything out of the ordinary during the night and was reading my book in bed (me, not Pixie) when thoughts of tetanus came into my head. That was it. As a confirmed hypochondriac I knew I'd not get any sleep unless I investigated further, so I got up and searched t'internet for help.

Oh if only it was that easy. I got more confusing and conflicting advice about what to do if you're bitten by a dog than I really needed at 2am. Keeping the wound under running water for 5-10 minutes seemed to be a universal truth. I hadn't done that. Do not use antibacterial cream or ointment. Damn, I HAD done that. You'll probably need a tetanus shot. I'd no idea when I'd last had a shot.

I sought advice everywhere. Emails to still sleeping friends who had dogs and so MAY have been bitten at some time. Posts on pet forums. I even used Skype later on to talk with a friend who rang NHS Direct on my behalf for advice. The tetanus issue remained unresolved. Did I need one or not ? Geez it was only a little bite on the end of my finger after all.

In the end, after getting about an hour of troubled sleep, I decided I needed to try and find out when I'd last had a shot and so I rang my doc's office back in the UK. That was fun. NOT. Receptionists do not suddenly speed up and become efficient even when you tell them you're ringing from 5,000 miles away and it's costing a fortune. I was put on hold. I was finally told that such information wasn't on my medical record. Wonderful. She then suggested I ring the following morning and make use of the doctor call back service if I wanted to actually speak with my doctor.

I reminded her I was in America and actually heard her say "oh we can't ring you there". I never exepcted them to........never intended to make use of the call back service. I didn't need to talk with my doctor. I just wanted to know when I last had a tetanus shot.

I decided to get one here. I needed peace of mind.

So now I was going to make use of my expensive medical insurance for the first time in 18 years.
I read the Endsleigh policy booklet and the instructions for making a claim and rang the US number - for some company called ISIS. After several minutes of musak, the line went dead. I rang again. After several more minutes of musak I got a person. Success. She took my details and opened a file on the incident and gave me a reference number. I was told to go to a web site (of another company - GMMI) and enter my location and I'd get a list of approved 'providers' from which to make my choice. Fabby.

I got onto the site and a drop down list gave an impressive menu of specialists covering acupuncture to zenophobia. I picked 2, family practice and general practice. I picked a 10 mile radius and hit the search option. No results. I made it 100 miles, the furthest possible. No results. I unchecked the 2 specialist choices and left it on 'no preference'. Hey maybe a gynecologist could give me a tetanus shot. Why not ?

No result.

Holy crap I'm in mid Florida, not mid Sahara Desert.

I called back and got the same lady. She asked for my location. I could hear her typing and finally she says......you're right. NO SHIT, LADY !!! Did she think I was lying ??? I guess so. I said now what ? She said now I could go to ANY doctor or hospital and just mention yet another insurance name and ask them to ring for authorisation to treat me.

After talking it over with Debby, I decided to ring her doctor here in Sebring and use this as an opportunity to be registered in case I have some medical problems in the future. Fine. I ring them and give them the name of this latest insurance (sub)company and they don't use them, never heard of them and aren't prepared to ring them.

A foreigner could die in this country before being seen !

The receptionist adds helpfully, "we take cash"

So does WalMart lady but I'm not going there for a tetanus shot !

I ring lady 1 again and put this new development to her. Yes it's fine for me to pay cash, get the receipts and send them, with a copy of my policy and they'll reimburse me - minus the £40 excess (co-pay) I signed up for. I'm good to go.

I'll draw a verbal veil over the doctor visit as you, my dear and faithful readers, are probably falling asleep by now. It was......different. I'll just summarise it all by saying....lots of forms, weight and blood pressure taken, lots of questions, saw a nurse, saw the doctor, got my bite cleaned and dressed, got a prescription for antibiotics and ta-daaaaaaaaaa, got my tetanus shot.

I was also offered a flu jab but I couldn't work out a way to get that into the treatment for a dog bite and so decided the insurance company would refuse to pay for it. I'll take my chances with flu.

The doc visit was $110, the prescription (with added peroxide and bandaids) was $25 but the peace of mind was, as they say, priceless. I'm now registered with a lovely lady doctor, I have even more pills to pop daily and best of all, my jaws shouldn't lock together anytime soon. I'm also relieved of washing up duties for a while and that's a huge bonus. I may never play the violin again but I couldn't before. Old joke I know.

We'll never know what went on under the golf cart that night as Pixie isn't telling. It's high enough off the ground that she shouldn't have got stuck. Not normally. The thing is, with her current odd way of walking, she does arch her back a lot. Maybe she DID get stuck a little and turned in a panic to get out and twisted her back. I guess that would've hurt a lot, considering her surgery was only 4 weeks or so ago and maybe she was simply just scared out of her little head. We donno.

Now I have more forms to fill in and I can't believe trying to get some of this money back from the insurance company is going to be straightforward. It never is. I sense another blog post may result.

If it does, you'll be the 2nd to know.














BEWARE OF THE DOG !!!

Another Pixie Update

We took Pixie to the vet hospital again yesterday as it had been 2 weeks since her last visit and I have sinned, Father.

Opps, sorry. Force of habit. Once a Catholic....................

Anyway it was a 3 hr round trip and we were in with the vet for all of 5 minutes so after that, we're not sure if that may have been the last visit. Yes Dr. Todd did give us an appointment for 2 weeks time again but we may just cancel it if Pixie is still doing well. You may deduce from this that Pixie IS progressing very well and can walk (up on her back legs) short distances all by herself.

And then tends to fall over !!

It's quite funny when she goes to vacuum up after us in the kitchen as the flooring there is lino. She's like a cross between a new born lamb and Bambi on ice. Her head and front legs are going forwards taking her towards any crumbs she may have spotted but the back legs are doing their own thing and going where the urge takes them. It reminds me of setting up a deckchair on Brighton Beach in gale force winds or trying to adjust a tripod on an uneven surface.

I must get it on video before this phase passes.

The rest of the time she can get up on her back legs and wander around for a few paces and when she does tip over sideways, she can haul herself upright again. She could do none of this 2 weeks ago and so the improvement has been huge.

Sadly, as we were warned, her bodily excretions aren't as under control as her legs but most of the time, bless her, she does alert us to her need to 'go'. Unfortunately these alerts are the same as the ones for 'feed me, 'pet and pamper me' 'there is someone exciting at the door' and 'for God sake change the channel, this show is crap'.

So all in all, we're very happy with her progress and more to the point, so was Dr. Todd. He pulled her back legs to and fro like they were a couple of Thanksgiving turkey drumsticks and drew us a little diagram to explain the 'lump' on her back that concerned me.

And that was it. Pixie had been howling in the exam room and I'm sure it was because she felt the dreaded pliars were going to be used on her again - to check for deep pain. Thankfully for all concerned, mainly Pixie, the very fact that she was able to walk so well meant there was no need to test for pain. Instead Dr. Todd gave her some treats while we talked and she was a happy pooch for sure. Much wagging of tail ensued.

In a previous update I'd told how I'd devised a technique for helping her walk outside when peeing and pooping. It involved a rolled up towel under her rear end and we'd walk beside her all hunkered over because the towel length was so short.

Debby decided to improve on my initial design and with the use of a strip of material and some stitching expertise, she created the device you see below. We're in preliminary discussions with James Dyson.

We present....drum roll please.....the (patent pending) doggie walking aid. As always, click on the photo to see a bigger version.

We don't need to keep the material taut most of the time as she can walk well enough now without it's support.

We really use it to give her a bit of help when she gets tired or sways and just plops down.

As both rear legs tend to splay out and to the front when she does her business, it helps to hold her up a bit so that bits of her don't come into contact with the rapidly departing bits of her.

For those of a squeamish disposition, I think that was stated as tactfully as I could.

She's on a very small dose of steroids (a quarter of a pill twice a day) and we've begun to lower even that dose to get her off them completely. She should be drug free in just over a week and can then start training for Iditarod XXXVI next March.

I doubt she'll be among the favourites.

You Know It's The Holidays When..............

The Holiday Season is upon us again. Seems like it happens every year.

Now if I was back home in the UK, I'd have to leave this post for a month or so as I'd be talking about Christmas and in mid November I just can't bring myself to do that.

But here in The Colonies there is Thanksgiving on Thursday and combined with Christmas, it's all called The Holidays. So we go around wishing everyone Happy Holidays and good stuff like that. I'm still not sure what reply to give so mostly I come out with a pathetic "Thank You" as if I've actively done something to deserve their greeting.

So how does one tell that this holiday season is approaching ?

Well even if you don't have a clue about the current date, there are numerous clues all over the place.

One bizarre clue on tv this morning was President Bush on the White House Lawn giving a press conference to pardon 2 large turkeys. I know what you're thinking, but it wasn't Michael Vick and Mike Tyson. It was 2 real honest to God turkeys. The incumbent President has done this every year since 1947 and as usual with most things GW is involved with, it doesn't always end well.

Actually, this photo is from a previous year and apart from his usual embarrassing ad libs to journalists, this year's pardon went relatively to plan.

"May" and "Flower" will not make it onto a Thanksgiving menu (even though, according to a Bush quip, VP Cheney wanted to call them "Lunch" and "Dinner"). The silence from the assembled hacks was deafening.

For many years, the pardoned gobblers were sent off to Kidwell Farm in Frying Pan Park in Herndon, Virginia. A rather unfortunate park name if ever there was one.

But the times they are a changin' and these birds are being flown to Disney World where they will act as honorary Grand Marshals at the annual Thanksgiving Day Parade. I could have sworn GW said 'first class' but I can't believe that. I'm sure in the hold of a military plane would suffice.........just open the bomb bay doors over Main Street USA and let them go.

I guess when they hit ground zero the carnage might traumatise a few kids but then this generation are so used to bloodfests on video games that they'd just cheer and call it the best Parade ever.

Given the choice I suspect "May" and Flower" would rather have had their necks wrung yesterday.

Another sign of the times (holiday times that is) are the commercials on TV. The word Christmas is rarely used as this allows the commercials to be shown ad nauseam (geddit ??) from now till sometime in mid January. Anyway, the word Christmas isn't PC anymore.

Right now the main commercials focus on Black Friday which I blogged about last year but for those who weren't 'with me' back then and don't live in the US of A, Black Friday is the huge sale day after Thanksgiving. You can pick up some amazing bargains if you're prepared to sleep outside the stores and manage to get through the doors at 6am faster than an Olympic sprinter on steroids. Even then I suspect all the REALLY good sale products have somehow managed to sell out and you'd be better of breaking into the cars and trucks in the employee parking area !!

Oh when did I get to be so cynical ??

Another clue to the time of year - gas prices increasing. Over the next 2 days, most of America will be on the move. By road and by air, millions will suffer long lines at airports, long lines at car rental locations and even longer lines on the nations interstates.

Actually traffic jams aren't usually an issue here as whenever one occurs, they quickly build another lane and traffic flows again. That explains why a 36 lane highway now goes right into Cretinville, Arkansas (Pop: 247 with the birth last night of Silas Buttonmeister Jr) even though a few years ago all it had was a 2 lane dirt track. Everytime Chuck "John Deere" Jones drove his tractor along the road at 5mph and caused a 3 car jam to build up behind him, a new lane was added.

For the money grabbing petroleum companies, these are happy times indeed. Slap a few extra cents on a gallon of gas and it'll make no difference at all over Thanksgiving. People will still drive. Oh sure they'll moan and bitch about the extra cost but......sure as eggs are lemmings, they'll still drive. There is a homecoming gene in every true American and it kicks in at this time of year. The commercials play on it and offer minute long saccerine laden mini masterpieces with the head of the enlarged family standing over the (close your eyes "May" and "Flower") beautifully cooked turkey making a speech about family, good times and being thankful - with no mention of airport chaos, road rage or even Uncle Mort who was last heard of heading West into Big Bend Natl Park when he should've been with them in New Jersey.

( And yes I realise my suspect phrasing back there makes it sound like it's the deceased turkey making the speech. Enjoy )

With gas prices here approaching half what we pay in the UK (I noticed today that it's almost £1/litre now in my hometown of Leeds and that comes to £3.79 for a US gallon and so, at current rates, $7.76/gallon), many motorists are having to make life changing decisions about what they drive and where they drive it to. But at Thanksgiving, those sorts of thoughts are far from uppermost and anyone looking down on America from above over the next couple of days would think the country is being overrun by ants on a Cecil B. DeMille scale.

Us ? Well we're staying in the park and having our Thanksgiving meal with friends. Last year we went to the community centre and shared the meal with a hundred or so other park residents but this time there will be just 5 of us around the table.

No planes, no cars, just a few hundred yards along the park roads.

So Happy Holidays to anyone who reads this post and to Uncle Mort, I suspect they're getting you a GPS for Christmas !

I'll Never Look At My Bike In The Same Way Again !!

I like cycling.

I really like cycling here in Buttonwood Bay as the weather is lovely and hot and the roads within the park are (mostly) as flat as the proverbial pancake and smooth as a baby's butt.

I quite like the bike I have here. It was a pressie about 4 years ago and it's one of those ones where the frame under the seat is not attached to anything......if that makes sense. The suspension is awesome and I could ride over several collapsed residents before I'd notice even the slightest bump. I may well have done so in the past - who knows.

So I like my bike. I like it a lot. But that's it. Ok I may have said to someone at some time that I love it. I probably said it when it was given to me - as you do with a pressie.

"Oh I just love it" I may have said to show how much I........well how much I appreciated getting it as a pressie. Like you do. It didn't mean anything. You know how it is.

Robert Stewart has a bike. He lives in Scotland. Not that that's pertinent. I don't think.

Robert loves his bike. A lot. Really REALLY loves his bike.

But here the story goes off down some weird perverted path that only a Scot and his bike can take. I'll let the BBC article take it from here but it raises ....sorry.....a few questions in my mind ranging from bolting doors to being deaf.

But putting aside the NUMEROUS questions of what sexual gratification you could possibly get from a stationary bike (the real thing as opposed to the label given to a lady of easy virtue), then what puzzles me is what law did he break - or more to the point, why was he charged with it ?

Can't you do pretty much whatever you want, sex wise, in a hotel or hostel room as long as it doesn't hurt anyone ? Ok so his partner of choice was a bike. Stop tittering. Would he have been arrested if the cleaners had burst in to find him on top of something he'd had to inflate ?

Like a bike tube ? No stop it. Forget the bike thing for a minute.

I just don't see a crime here. I see someone who might need therapy and a few sticking plasters.
I certainly don't see someone who needs to be on the Sex Offenders List for 3 years !

Maybe a Halfords Offenders List but even that would be a bit harsh.

No, I don't think the punishment fits the 'crime' in this case. It's still funny though. Good for a laugh in the pub or over a meal. Thanks Robert.

Norman Tebbit would be proud that you remembered his infamous, but misquoted, words from 1981. Thing is, I don't think he meant them to be taken SO literally.

Happy Birthday

Not a who but a what.

Cryptic enough for you ?

Leeds is 800 years old today - if one can trust exactly when it's charter was signed in 1207. Why it didn't happen before noon is beyond me. Har har.

It was supposedly given it's John Hancock on 12th November so for most people, that makes the old girl 800 today.

But as it was mentioned in the Doomsday Book as early as 1086 as a Saxon village with a population of about 200 so I'm not sure why we're not celebrating it's 921st birthday instead ? I guess these sort of things need to start from whenever a charter is signed - whatever that means.

To add to my confusion, Leeds was granted city status as late as 1893 so on THAT basis, maybe it's only 114 years old.

Those of us who draw breath tend to start counting our ages from the day we do so and taking that as a guide, then I'd have to think Leeds began when Freddy Eadweard and his good lady, Udela sauntered into the general area known now as Briggate and decided to stay a while. I'm sure it looked a bit different back then although the City Varieties was probably still advertising that years pantomine. With Ken Dodd in the lead role no doubt. He's about that age.

So after Freddy and Udela did a spot of begatting (I read my bible and begatting was very popular back then) and a few more geographically challenged Saxons wandered in during panto season, I'm sure it didn't take long for Leeds to grow to that population of 200 in 1086.

Obviously a LOT more begatting went on after that as the population is now over 720,000 (estimates vary) to make Leeds the 3rd largest metropolitan area in the UK................or about 1.2% of the entire population if you want to belittle 'us' any more.

I'm not going to sing it's praises as for one thing it'd be a short song. It has probably the most hated team in British soccer so at least we're at the top of that list. I'll leave it at that.

But I like round numbers and 800 is a nice round number. I'm not likely to be blogging when the 114 (city) becomes 200 or the 921 (Doomsday) becomes 1000 so I'm going to fall in line with those who regard the city as being 800 today.

Even for some of the residents here in Buttonwood Bay, that's still an impressive age.

The Watering Hole

When Deb's brother and his wife came for a visit on their way down to Key West, we wanted to take them to the local eatery called 'The Watering Hole'. Just a word of info here : this official site for the restaurant wasn't designed with Firefox in mind so it's really only accessible using Internet Explorer.

It's as far removed from being a chain restaurant as you could possibly get and the word 'unique' hardly does it justice.

But it was closed. Sunday you know.

So we went to R.J.Gators instead and I posted a blog about that experience at the time.

Last Saturday we again decided to go to TWH as Deb and Den really wanted me to see it. As it has a sign out by the roadside advertising a live 14' gator on the premises, I REALLY wanted to go there too. I mean that's not something you often see on a restaurant sign in North Leeds after all.

As with a lot of the eating establishments in Florida, the outside of TWH gives little or no insight into the glories to be found within. I'm not sure why this is, but it is. We've been to many places up and down this state (especially in the Keys) and had wonderful food served to us inside a restaurant that, from the outside, looked like it would collapse at any moment or be declared a health risk even by the dubious standards of a 3rd world country.

I vividly remember eating at a place in Key West that had chickens running around that would sometimes jump up on our table to get at our food.

Anyway this is the outside of The Watering Hole.

Not the most welcoming place you've ever seen. In fact I'd go so far as to say it positively screams "keep on going, nothing good happening in here"

It reminded me a bit of the bar in 'From Dusk Till Dawn' even though that was in Mexico and was a huge imposing building.....and full of vampires.

But apart from that............

Anyway the solitary bike and the bars all around the place and the lack of windows - all made it hard to know if it was closed again or if we should even venture in if it WAS open. If I'd been a passing tourist, I know I'd have kept on going - but like a lot of places here, they rely more on word of mouth to get the customers in than how appealing the actual building looks.

It's the old 'don't judge a book by it's cover' thing.

Over to the right of where I'd been standing for the above photo, was THE sign that tends to grap your attention from the road.

Sadly 'Bully' the questionable live gator, moved about as much as this sign. If he was alive, then he had long since lost any interest in entertaining the customers.

Bully was in a huge cage with a mesh so fine you couldn't get a finger through. I couldn't even get a photo as the area was so dark that the camera needed flash and that just lit up the bars of the cage.

I just saw a gator shape and yes, it WAS large. But as a live attraction, he was worthy of being in Madame Tussauds or playing the lead in CSI Miami.

But back to the actual restaurant. You park around the back and first come to a raised wooden seating area which although covered, was still outside. It had a kind of thatched roof and yet was full of large ultra modern tv screens showing the usual mix of NASCAR and US football.

You walk on and go through large doors and arrive at another seating area and yet it's also the corridor into the main part of the restaurant. At the end of this corridor, just as it opens out into the large seating area, they have set up 2 examples of their signature meal which is based around Alaskan King Crab legs.

The platter on the left had one crab leg and a filet mignon along with potatoes, fruit bowl and so on. This full meal was about $46.

The other had 2 crab legs and was $50.

I put a 25c coin (a quarter) on the price tag of the meal on the right to try and give some scale. Those legs were HUGE and to get that meal for the equivalent of £22 (the one with the steak) sure seemed a deal to me.

But we were having something less grand and definitely less expensive. After we'd ordered and were waiting for the food to arrive, I went off to see the gator and take pics of the whole place.

This photo is a view into the body of the restaurant from our table. It was 'relaxed' to say the least but the atmosphere was enlivened by a whole load of golfers who must've been in a tournament nearby. The talk was all about the missed holes in one or the par that could and should have been a birdie.

The usual lies about lies (little golf joke there).

It was VERY dark in the restaurant and the flash on my camera could barely pierce the gloom.

I've had to alter the brightness in Photoshop just to see the people at the back and to remind myself of the layout of the place.

This was more important that a technically perfect image and it's one of those times when a photo will simply be a memory jogger in years to come.

I've already said that the layout of the place was bizarre but some of the wall 'art' was equally bizarre.

Here is a gator skull but it appears to have been some sort of devil gator as it has horns. I assume it's a made up skull but who knows. It was certainly a talking point and beat the hell out of the usual sporting posters or pretentious artworks you often find in restaurants. It also added to my earlier idea that we'd stumbled into the Florida version of 'The Titty Twister' .

At least the horned gator was happy and laughing when it died.

I continued my walk through this large and 'different' restaurant. The gator skull was guarding yet another room which was both a seating area and gave visual access to the kitchen.

At one point, when we were actually eating, a light mist appeared from this kitchen area and then it became quite thick smoke.

A lot of the kitchen staff came out and I asked a server if someone was grilling Bully back there.
She laughed in that sort of "what a dick" way and carried on. It seems something had briefly caught fire but it never got beyond creating a bit of smoke which soon dissipated.

As these photos show, wood featured heavily in the construction of The Watering Hole.

Add subdued lighting and you were left with an overwhelmingly dark and fairly unwelcoming atmosphere.

I've found that a lot in America actually. I think it's a nationwide idea that no one really needs to be able to read the menu or even see clearly what they're eating.

Personally, unless I'm wanting a romantic atmosphere, I don't appreciate needing to have the menu 6 inches from my face to be able to read it and then to be stabbing blindly at my plate, never quite knowing what my fork is going to have on it.

I'm exaggerating of course but replacing the 40 watt light bulbs with a few of 100 watts would be first on my list of improvements...........unless the cook has something to hide !!

Still on my travels around this cavernous restaurant, once I'd poked the 'almost' live gator in the eye with a tooth pick and got no reaction, I moved across this latest room and came upon an expanse of grass with artwork along the back wall to add to the idea that we were now deep in the Florida everglades - having a meal with a gator 25 feet away.

Like you do.

So in this photo we see more diners on the right, then the mini everglades to their left and just out of shot on the extreme left, 14' of the most tranquil caged gator you'd ever wish to meet.

All this wandering had given me an appetite and I headed back to my table where my meal was just being served. I'd ordered the Norwegian salmon and got a slab of fish that could have fed a family of 4. I placed my fork on top of it for scale. I know it came with it's own scales but that's another story and a joke I'll maybe use another time.

I wasn't that taken with the fries (overcooked and much too salty) and the other menu items were odd to say the least.

I mean why have a garnish including banana and a strawberry with salmon ? It was all too Gordon Ramsey for me but the salmon was delicious and I took half of it back home to have the following day.

I can't remember what Debby and Dennis had but they weren't overly impressed either. It was a real experience eating there but we'll not be rushing back anytime soon.

As we left, we passed by the outside/inside area just before the car park. Having gone to the official site and read about the place, I now know this was a Seminole Chickee Hut that was added in 20o3.

A what ? Oh you know, a Chickee Hut. It's a large Tiki Hut for chickens. Oh behave.

Go Google it if you're that bothered.

Here is a corner of the hut with Dennis sniggering at the antics of a local hobo who had just said something much too rude (but very amusing) to be repeated in a family blog.

So that was The Watering Hole.

Bizarre. Different. Unique.

I'd hate to condemn it based on one meal and, after all, we didn't try any of the steaks for which they are famous.

So this jury member is still out but if I had to recommend a local restaurant that will live long in the memory and has a live 14' alligator on the premises, I'd have to say, give this place a try !

It ticks all the boxes.