Month: April 2024

I remember the day Steve Irwin died like it was yesterday, not because Steve Irwin died but because it was the day Richard Hammond of UK Top Gear had a major car accident. Laura and I hadn’t officially started going out at that point but she was sniffing round me like a fly round shit. Attracted like so many before her to my Mustard yellow TImberland sweatshirt and my somewhat transient living situation.

Laura loved Richard Hammond, more so than she loved Jason Manford. Richard Hammond is about 5 feet 6 inches tall and looks a bit like a hamster, but regardless Laura was all in, so that is why I know exactly that Steve Irwin died in September 2006. Her responses to the many Steve Irwin jokes I sent her were at best muted, she was incredibly worried about Hammond.

Steve Irwin was a hero to many. Not to me, I thought he was an utter idiot, but many people did and still do love his closeness to nature and his bravery handling wild animals. I never really got it. Play with fire enough and you get burned and while getting impaled by a Stingray is high on my list of unusual causes of death for him it seems fitting.

I had largely forgotten about the poor mans Crocodile Dundee until this weekend, much like Harriet had forgotten to hand in 2 weeks worth of homework despite doing it all flawlessly. I mean Jesus Christ, at least Fred gets to play on his X-box for 3 hours when he gets a zero in his homework. H sat there and did it and then still scored a zero….

Saturday though brought the memory of Irwin home hard though. I was out in the back yard by the pool trying for the millionth time trying to get the damn airless tire on Freds scooter. My hands cut to ribbons, sweat pouring from my brow, occasional swear words yelled at the top of my lungs, drowning out the gentle birdsong and the low hum of the pool pump. Laura and Fred were with me, supposedly pushing down on the tire with all of their might.

Laura was doing that, she was genuinely trying. Fred on the other hand was using his finger tips to transfer his body weight onto the tire. That was annoying me, but when the wheel slipped and I cut myself for the 5th time in 20 minutes I am not to proud to say I lost my shit.

Not wanting to go into explicit detail to Fred of exactly what I thought of his effort I walked away towards the back of our screened in area and again swore, quite loudly. As I got about halfway back there I stopped dead in my tracks. There was a 5 foot long snake trying to climb up the screen and it was on the inside…

I am British, we don’t have snakes, we aren’t Ireland, St Patrick didn’t banish them all, it’s just too damn cold. So when I saw this snake I shit myself. Laura then saw it, she shit herself, Fred couldn’t have cared less.

One thing I forget to say when describing the scene is that I was dressed for the day, Fred was dressed for the day, Laura however had her pyjamas on, it was only 1pm after all. Consisting of some extremely baggy booty shoots and an even baggier vest top, this is important information.

I don’t know what to do with a snake, it wasn’t venomous but it’s still a snake. Adrenaline was high in 66% of us. In situations like this I like to take a step back, work out a plan and get it right first time. Laura, the ying to my yang just goes to town. Before I had chance to properly assess the situation, blood pouring from my cut hand, Laura was in the corner trying to “shoo” this snake out with the pool net.

I am unsure what was less suitable for the task at hand, the net or Laura’s baggy arse PJ’s but this just made the situation worse. The snake got rightfully pissed off, it nearly went in the pool, but then just made a beeline for Fred and I. Moving at the speed of light spurred on by the shit plastic net hitting it and Laura’s ear piercing screams it just came at us, then right at the last minute turned and scooted behind my bar.

This was a problem. When we could see the snake it was bad enough, but now like when Superman puts on a pair of glasses we had no idea where it was.

Now we could pivot to the Dave solution. Take our time. Nope…

Under “strict” instructions from a 5 feet 3 woman with 3/4 of her ass hanging out of her shorts I moved the fridge, slowly because I was still shitting myself. It was there staring at us, just out of reach. All we had to do was wait for it to move and then we could “guide” it out of the door a mere 2 feet away. I don’t think i verbalized this plan because the pyjama wearing paramilitary was banging the bar within 3 seconds of us locating it.

Surprisingly this didn’t work. The snake climbed up the bar and into all of the glasses. At this point we are truly fucked. We can’t move the glasses, we cant use the super aggressive sweeping tactics that had got us this far. We were stuck, or so I thought.

In the blink of an eye Laura had a can of wasp spray. I don’t 100% remember if I thought this was a good idea, adrenaline was flowing. But just as quickly Laura is spraying the entire area with wasp spray, particularly viciously directly into the snake’s eye.

Incredibly this worked. The snake was stunned and just slowly and of it’s own accord slid down the bar and out the door, never to be seen again. We were saved. Laura stood there victorious, ass cheeks still sticking out of the sleep shorts, like a red faced, slightly older Daisy Duke from the Dukes of Hazzard. I had completely forgotten my scooter inflicted injury and Fred had moved about 3 feet from his original starting position.

It was at this point and with the thrill of the chase over I hatched my plan. It was not a venomous snake, it was medium in size, I have gardening gloves. I could have put them on and picked it up, there was no danger. All I needed was 30 seconds to think without the distraction of the screaming and the ass cheeks.

What has come of this though is that Laura now see’s herself as the savior of the house (rightly so) and very much the Canvey Island Steve Irwin.

I on the other hand am seriously considering going swimming with the Sting Rays.

I have a fancy office job, for the last 20+ years my idea of a hard days graft was to sit in a padded chair in an air conditioned office, the most physically demanding thing I have had to do is walk to my car at lunch time. As I type this however, my hands are dirty, my once white T-Shirt is blackened almost certainly beyond any future use and sweat is pouring off me like I am Josef Fritzl on an episode of MTV Cribs.

I think I have said before that one of my life goals was to earn enough money so that when manual things went wrong I could pay an expert to fix them. I am an expert in very few things, sleeping, alcohol consumption and losing my wallet, so why would I do a half arsed job of fixing things around the house? It just isn’t my skillset.

About 25 years ago I had a summer job at a factory that made tractors. I was so bad at putting together the bits of the axel that I was responsible for I got moved to a role cutting the cable ties around the electronics. I messed that up most of the time.

So when Fred comes to me about 2 weeks ago to tell me his electric scooter has a problem with it’s back wheel I am less than overjoyed. This is yet another toy one of my children has that is entirely my fault they have it. Something you should know about me is I like Christmas, particularly giving the kids presents at Christmas. They get spoiled. Somehow I always seem to hit my biggest bonus of the year around October/November and that means they end up with presents like a $600 electric scooter, or a random hoverboard, or and I kid you not a 6 foot long human sized dog bed.

The huge dog bed is front of mind right now because as I sit in my office I can hear Laura shouting at Harriet that we need to find somewhere for said dog bed to go because we have a visitor coming and it can’t stay in the spare room. Honestly it is 6 foot long and 4 foot wide, we have a pretty sizable house, but even so there is nowhere this thing can go.

But I digress, back to Freds broken scooter. I promised him I would have a look at get it fixed one way or the other and he was OK with that. When I said it 2 weeks ago I meant it, at some undetermined point in the future. Yesterday however it became the most important thing in our families history and needed to be fixed immediately. This directive came not from Fred, but Laura, angry that I was working from home and she had to go into the school she decided to follow up on every little possible task at once because it was “on her to do list”. Firstly, all the jobs on the list are jobs that have been given to me, so it is MY to do list, secondly I am working from home, not having a day off. I had a full day of meetings, training, calls and tasks to be getting on with. Nothing on that list appeared more important than fixing the scooter.

Lunch time came and I took a break from work and I did what I do whenever I am doing anything like this, I watched 15 YouTube videos on how to fix it. This is common knowledge in my house that Dad watches YouTube videos on how to do almost anything. It seemed complicated. The tire that is flat is on a wheel that has the motor in it, its a monumental job. I called around four different bike shops to see if anyone would touch it and that’s when I realized I was in trouble. Not one person wanted anything to do with it. Apparently it is a tough job, that isn’t worth doing, it takes too long and nobody has any 8.5 inch tires.

Undeterred I went to Amazon, purchased a completely new wheel, with a tire already on so I can just change the wheel and thought while I wait for that to come I will at least take the rear wheel off and have it all ready to go.

Jesus Christ I am stupid.

Part of never doing any manual labor is that I have about 6 tools. None of which were even close to taking the nut off the rear axle (Super technical phrasing here I know). So what do I need? A socket set. Don’t have one. Another trip back to the computer and Jeff Bezos’ black hole of spending and a socket set will be with me by dinner time.

It’s incredible they deliver so quickly, and when it came I snuck back out to the garage at about 8pm to undo these two nuts then it should be simple from there. The fact I am dedicating a whole post to this means it obviously wasn’t. This socket set had sockets up to and including 9/16 of an inch. At best guess I would say these nuts are 3/4 of an inch, not..even..close… Time to pack it in and fight the good fight another day.

By the time I got in today the new wheel had arrived I had been to Home Depot and bought the right size socket this should be a 10 minute job from here. It took me 45 minutes to undo the first bolt, I swore a lot, I lost about 8lbs in sweat (it’s so hot here right now) and I am filthy, but with a great sense of satisfaction I did it, now just put the new wheel on with it’s fancy airless tire and jobs a goodun.

I have bought the wrong fucking wheel…. I cannot adequately explain how angry I am right now. The wheel doesn’t have motor on it, so if I put it on Fred has an incredibly expensive push scooter. So far this flat tire has cost me $139.67 and all I have to show for it is parts of a scooter spread across my garage, a T-shirt I can’t wear and a bad attitude.

I came in to the office sulking and swearing under my breath, closely followed by Laura asking me if I had thought about watching a YouTube video on how to fix it. That calmed me right down…

I’ve just ordered the right wheel and it gets here tomorrow morning before 11am. It was $114… I should have just bought a new scooter.

Living in America is awesome and I am very lucky that I get to do so. It was my childhood dream and even now nearly 10 years after I got onto the plane at Heathrow to move to Houston I still have to pinch myself most days that it is actually happening.

Before I moved to America though I had been loads of times to visit and in my head America was kind of the same as England, just with better weather, absolutely enormous soft drinks for 89c at the gas station and cheaper McDonalds. That actually couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes both countries speak their own version of English, yes a lot of shops are the same (damn you to hell IKEA) and yes a lot of the TV shows are the same, but there are some things that are just very different.

Recently something has caught my attention over here and I need to share it particularly with those who would have no way of ever seeing or hearing it, it also made me think of a load of other examples of something very different

One of my favorite parts of the day is my commute to and from work. Back in England I used to slog my way up to London on the bus and train, it was awful and in fact provided no end of material for my first ever blog. Everything from people using their iPads to look up reviews for prostitutes, to the never ending delays and someone starting a bee farm, there are no words that can accurately describe how much I hated that commute.

Here though I get to sit in my nicely airconditioned car, nobody bothering me listening to whatever podcast or radio show I want. My drive is 20 minutes each way, but sometimes I go the back way to drag it out a bit longer, especially in the morning, just to put off the inevitable work day a little longer. It’s a weird thing to enjoy, but enjoy it I do. It’s my time to myself where nobody is asking me questions, I am not having to try and do 13 year old’s Science homework or teach Harriet the 8 times table for the 150th time

During this 40 odd minutes a day I generally listen to different podcasts, some from back home, some American based, usually either sport or comedy in content, sometimes a mixture of the two in one and it was during one of these podcasts that I stumbled across what may be the most unintentionally funny thing I have ever heard in my 44 years on this planet.

The podcast in question was The Dan LeBatard Show. Dan LeBatard is a Miami based sports journalist who surrounds himself with a lot of funny people and it is something that has become integral to my routine since I first moved to America. It gives me just enough US Sport to be able to have conversations with other men but is funny enough to keep my interest when they get into the depths of who the Oklahoma City Thunder might be picking in the 5th round of the NBA draft.

This particular day they were speaking about a new commercial deal they had signed to advertise on their show. Usually this is a sports betting company or a car spare parts company, something really obvious for a show aimed at men aged 30-55. This deal however was something very very different.

They cut to an advert to introduce this new headline sponsorship deal and the advert started with a very upbeat jingle and then the first line…. “If it hurts when you poop sometimes”… OK I thought, my diet is 95% meat, sometimes it feels like its coming out sideways so whilst this is unexpected I am all ears.. The jingle continues

“Like pinching off a porcupine” Err what?? “wrestled out a wrecking ball” OK this has taken a turn, “pushed through a pineapple or two”. This is getting very odd, the jingle is on a ukulele and it’s this really sweet sounding woman going into graphic detail about how she can’t shit. But it gets even worse…

“Tried to pass an elephant, rolled out a watermelon, strained until you turned a shade of Oooooh!” I am color blind so I don’t know much about shades, but I fear that if you are turning a shade of Oooooh then you might have some serious issues that can’t be fixed by this sweet ladies jingle. Perhaps a trip to a trained medical professional may be in order.

Then as is the case with all America adverts about medicine, and their are a lot, a voice over comes on and explains “When pooping is painful, Doctors recommend Colace”.

Never mind Colace, if it feels like you are shitting an elephant I’d think some Bran Flakes might be in order.

American adverts are insane, truly something I can’t get my head around even still. I can’t watch anything live without the good people at Manscape coming on my TV and telling me my balls sweat and I now need ball deodorant, or the Pepto Bismal ad where a woman looks over her shoulder seductively at the camera, pats her arse and whispers “diarrhea” before walking off into the middle distance. All time great wrestling legend Ric Flair has started telling me to buy Generic Viagra for $1.29 a tablet recently, literally straight after an advert for diapers that are 100% “Poonami proof”. As a father who has had to hold a child at arms length, and climb into a shower fully closed because their child (I am not saying which one!) was coated in shit from their forehead to their hairline on the back of their head I can tell the good people at Pampers that their product is not in any way shape or form “Poonami proof”

We still get UK TV here through some service that at best is operating in a grey legal area, but when we watch something on ITV the most annoying song we hear is that one on the postcode lottery, “Someone’s knocking at my door, Someone’s ringing my bell” That is a proper ear worm. I was singing that for months until the absolute masterpiece “Pinching off a porcupine” entered my life. The looks I get at work now humming along or singing that song. Ironically it has meant that I have spent more time in trap 2 avoiding people asking me what I am singing.

And for those in the UK who can’t believe that this advert is real…. I beg you to please watch the below

It’s been a minute since I last graced you all with my incredible written word and I am sure there has been a hole in your lives that simply could not be filled. Well after a solid 5 weeks of trying to work out what the login is to get back in and type away, I am back to fill your hole…

It turns out I signed up to this platform with an email address that was weirdly specific to our previous life in Texas, but that’s all water under the bridge now, I am back in and ready to update you all on the highs and lows of our life over here.

So what has happened I can hear you all scream. High level overview coming up. We bought another house, renovated it and moved in. While this was over a year ago now I still suffer the occasional bout of PTSD when I remember the moving in day, how smoothly it went and how Laura didn’t raise her voice even once.

Our young children have become teenagers and pre-teens. It’s hell on earth. I love them more than anything, but what I wouldn’t give to have 5 year old Freddie and 2 year old Harriet back for a week.

After not being able to travel for 3 years we have become weirdly addicted to cruises. I sit and write this on April 5. We have been on 3 cruises since Christmas and when Laura gets downstairs in a minute we are looking at booking our 4th for later in the month.

Most importantly though, Laura has “taken a job outside of the house”. She works at a school, which even though it has been well over a year blows my mind. She literally hates kids, especially other peoples but apparently she turns into some sort of Mary Poppins character the second she isn’t around any of the Shroders. Other than that life goes on much the same, the usual meandering from crisis to crisis, none of which are all that bad, just enough to piss me off.

“What has happened to bring you back to us Dave?” I am sure you are wondering and if you aren’t I am going to tell you anyway. What has brought me back is Escape Rooms….

Over the last 3 years we have got in to some random shit. I already mentioned cruising, I contribute to a Boxing podcast now as well as make a dismal attempt to train and I am currently working on becoming a certified professional darts player (more on all of these over the next few blogs, they are all things that genuinely happen) but none are as weird as the strange fascination we have for Escape Rooms.

If you are not familiar, an escape room is exactly what it says it is. You get “locked” in a room with a theme and some clues and you have to solve a mystery in order to get out within an hour. Orlando has absolutely hundreds of them, all sorts of random theming, some really good, some rubbish, but we don’t care we go to any of them and take people with us when they come to stay. One thing I should say about these rooms is they are monumentally expensive. Think $300 for an hour and for $300 an hour I want, no demand we get out and ideally at the 59 minute mark. I want all my money’s worth.

Despite the fact we do an escape room on average once every 6 weeks, we are shit at them. We have never got any better, we never will and I am going to explain why we are so shit at them. Firstly until VERY recently, Fred honestly thought you would be locked in there forever if you didn’t get out. The level of fear he had going in there was palpable. I am not 100% sure why he thought this, if I did a bad job of explaining the premise, but for at least the first 12 times we went Fred thought we would end up like one of One Eyed Willie’s victims in the Goonies.

Secondly as a family we do not think alike at all in any single way. We go in there and you have to work as a team. We do work as a team, just the shittest team imaginable. We have shit scared Fred, worried he will never see the light of day again and not quite sure why we keep putting ourselves in this situation. Harriet, the laziest child in the world. Absolutely certain she is right on the first clue, never is then just sits down in the corner complaining she doesn’t have YouTube to watch. Then comes Laura, normally the foreman of the family gently guiding us in the right direction and never raising her voice (this is dripping in sarcasm). When we get into these rooms she becomes so focused on one of the 48 different problems we have to solve that she completely ignores everything else. Finally me. I am a logical thinker, like way too logical. If I can’t reduce a problem to a number or pattern I have zero chance. I work my round the room shouting at everyone. The worst type of teammate.

Finally we are absolutely shit under pressure. We crumble literally the second we get in there. Each room has some ambient music as you work your way through it and as you get closer and closer to time running out this music increases in intensity. I am not built to deal with that. The sheer panic I start to feel about 40 minutes in and then for the remainder of our time in there is akin to the feeling I got when I got made redundant from my job 5 months after Fred was born. It’s a weird mix of fear, stress and a feeling I’ve let everyone down. I mask this feeling like all good men by just shouting loudly and directing people to pointless tasks.

Every time we go in we have the same talk. “We are going to stay calm, we are going to be methodical, we are going to solve each clue in order and we are going to work together. Oh and Fred, you absolutely can get out at any time if you need the bathroom, or you just don’t want to be in here. OK? Lets go have fun!” Every single time without fail after 45 minutes I am snapping at someone to pass me some random tool or hold a flashlight so I can see a clue written in braille or hieroglyphics. Laura has her head 3 inches from a clue we don’t need to solve for 10 minutes, Fred is trying random codes on the door to try and guess the final answer and Harriet’s initial enthusiasm has gone the same way as her enthusiasm for the guitar, running club, Wednesday night volleyball practice and school work of any kind.

Typing this out I have started to wonder why we keep doing these, it doesn’t sound a lot of fun, I am about $4,000 in the hole on them, but in all honesty we weirdly enjoy it. We get out almost all of the time, usually as the result of MANY clues and as yet Fred has not been left in the room to rot. Harriet could take it or leave it, except the one we did that was based on a Grandma’s house, she would do that one again because it has a sofa she can sit on.

Most importantly it has taught me some vital problem solving skills that I can use in day to day life. If it wasn’t for Escape Rooms, I’d never have got the login for this website back!