Author: The Shroders

Florida has basically given up with Corona now. Our Governor opened up the state a couple of weeks ago, cases are up, nobody gives a shit. Restaurants are filling up, Bars and Pubs are getting busy, Universal Studios is ramping back up and apart from the crippling fear I have every time I leave the house, it’s almost as if nothing has happened.

One of the things that opened up recently is the Victory Casino Cruise ship. This is some sort of World War II era ship, with the interior ripped out, replaced with some slot machines from 1987, two craps tables, 6 blackjack tables and the worst restaurant in the world. This historical relic docks at Port Canaveral, about 45 minutes away from our house and sails exactly 3 miles off the US coast where it drops anchor and sits for 5 hours in international waters, so that it can avoid all laws.

It doesn’t move the entire time, so you don’t actually go anywhere, the bathrooms are rank and usually full of vomit. Entertainment is limited to what looks like Bob Marley’s Grandfather on the steel drums playing Bryan Adams songs and (in a sweeping generalization) the people onboard look like they are only on there to pass the day before they go back to their cardboard boxes under the freeway.

With all of those things put together, you are probably not picturing a fun day, however, it is amazing!

This past weekend after God only knows how many consecutive days without going out without the kids Laura and I with another couple took the plunge and jumped in to our Uber driver Kelvin’s 2006 Toyota Highlander, with our McDonald’s cups filled with beer and Malibu and headed east to the port.

COVID-19 or not, Laura and I never get to go out together much. With no family here finding people to look after Fred and H can sometimes be tricky and adds some cost to us having regular date nights, so when we do get the chance to go out without them we take it with both hands.

One of the things I didn’t mention about the boat is that for the entire duration you are in international waters the good people at Victory give you unlimited free alcohol.

We pulled up at the port after a short journey and obviously Laura needed the bathroom. So after the very thorough temperature check and putting on our Chinese face masks (I’m sure this whole thing is just some con job from the Chinese mask manufacturers trying to pump their stock price) I raced to stand outside the ladies, a place I spend 75% of my time anytime we go anywhere. We went through airport level security and made our way on to the good ship Victory.

As you board the boat a group of people desperately trying to give a shit clap and cheer you on, making you feel like royalty. Not tier 1 royalty like Prince William and Kate, more your Princess Michael of Kent unrecognized royalty. The kind that could be a minor royal or might be a geography teacher. On you get and the fun begins.

Deck 4 or “The Dophin Deck” is where our fun begins. This is the outdoor bar, a place where masks just like inhibitions are optional. We made our way up there for a drink and to look out over the stunning views of …… a working cargo port. It was here that I noticed a man pressure washing the dockside and wondered if there was a more pointless job in existence.

Now what I was most impressed with about Deck 4 was that at 10.30am there was a woman, mid 40’s dressed in a baseball T-Shirt and Daisy Duke style jean cut offs. That in itself is not impressive, in fact it basically describes a lot of Florida women, what was impressive was at 10.30am before we had even raised anchor she couldn’t stand she was so drunk. She was so drunk that she must have started drinking before 7am. We spoke with her, she claimed she just “hadn’t got her sea legs”, we hadn’t moved yet.

After a couple of pleasant drinks, a nice little boat ride out to sea and a chat with some of the patrons the gambling tables opened. Deck 4 cleared faster than the ballroom when the Titanic went down and we were left to enjoy the dulcet sounds of Summer of 69 on the steel drums on our own.

The free drinks are inside, on the gambling floor. The second you go back inside you have to put your mask back on, the petri dish of novel coronavirus, social distancing all but a distant memory. People huddled round the craps table cramped in like an Indian train.

You don’t have to be actually gambling, but you have to at least make it look like you might. It also helps if you tip, I have learned that if you tip $5 with the first drink you don’t have to look far for the next 15. I may have occasionally frequented the odd casino during my life and the free drinks have often been weak as piss. Victory go the opposite way, 85% alcohol, 15% mixer..

This worked out great for me! Apart from the fact that it took at least 4 before I could drink them easily. Laura managed to keep it together and not get absolutely slaughtered and by 3.30pm we were back on the Dolphin Deck getting crazily sunburned sitting round a table drinking cocktails with the Orlando Gay Poker society.

Kelvin was back waiting for us outside for his off the books Uber journey and we staggered in a bit worse for wear. Somehow I managed to order $80 worth of Chick-fil-a halfway home which was waiting on the doorstep when we got back at 5.30.

After an unholy amount of chicken burger and waffle fries washed down with another Busch Lite at 7pm I was ready to keep the party going, I just needed to sit down for 5 minutes.

I woke up at 11.30 on the sofa. I’m so old…

For the uninitiated there are a couple of things you need to know about Central Florida. Firstly, it used to be all swamp. I don’t mean a bit damp, I mean 100% swamp. I am pretty certain that if it didn’t rain here for 15 years I would still squelch as I walked across the fairway playing golf.

The fact it used to be all swamp means that if your life depended on it and you were being attacked by one of the 13 foot long gators you have displaced by living here, you absolutely could not get a signal on your phone. Unless this attack happened to take place directly in or outside of a Starbucks and you could use their WIFI you couldn’t even text someone to help you.

Where I am from in the UK there is a “Secret Nuclear Bunker” you can visit, it is underground, made of 3 feet thick steel and was designed to keep out fallout from a nuclear bomb in London. I got a better signal from the bowels of this not so secret bunker than I do sitting in my house.

The second thing you need to know is that it rains, a lot. In the UK I used to think that if you looked out of your window on any given day of the year it could be any season. Low cloud, grey, not too hot, not too cold. You would get two weeks where it felt like you lived on the surface of the sun, two weeks where it might snow and you would love that for 20 minutes, then it would be brown slush for the next 13 days. In Florida it is fairly similar, if by similar I mean completely opposite.

When I get up and look out the window, every single day, without fail, it is glorious. April, sunny, June, sunny, December, sunny. That is at 7am. 7am in central Florida is why you move here. It’s warm, you can sit outside, it is perfect. Then by 12 midday you cannot breathe because it is so humid and hot. Any kind of manual work is not happening and I’ve turned in to this moist blob sitting in my chair moaning that the air con can’t be working.

After that you get the storm. From April to September, every single day at 3pm. From 3pm to about 5pm, it is like the end of the world. No matter where you live within about a 100 mile radius of my house your life is in danger if you put your head out of the window. When I first got here the storm would coincide with me leaving work. For the first year I honestly googled videos of cars getting struck by lightning to see if it could happen, looking for tips to survive. During these storms enough water comes down to flood my home town three times over. When I drove a mustang on slick tires, getting struck by lightning was the least of my worries really, keeping it on the road was like doing P90X.

The storm eventually ends, all my electrical appliances are in tact and not blown up by the power surge, and then we’re back to normal. 20 minutes after the rain stops you wouldn’t know it had happened. It goes from looking like Bangladesh when the Ganges floods every single bloody year, to just a normal street. It’s so weird.

Anyway, because it is so hot a lot of people here have swimming pools. We’re poor, so we don’t. What we have is an enormous 12 foot wide, 3 foot deep paddling pool. Something that once Corona is over the people who run our Homeowners Association will no doubt fine me for. (On a side note those people are ruthless)

I bought this right at the start of the lockdown for what I thought was a very reasonable $160. The good people at Amazon delivered it the day after I ordered it and 22 hours after I clicked it was set up in our back yard. A very cost effective solution to getting the kids out of the house, cooling off and having some fun while we can’t go anywhere. I was very pleased with myself.

I was wrong.

12 weeks we’ve had that pool, so far the $160 I spent has more than doubled. According to the boss we need chlorine tablets, new filters, a cover, pool toys, some thing to float around checking the “levels”. Not one person in this house, me included knows what the ph value of swimming pool water should be. I’m guessing 7, but that is a massive shot in the dark. What I do know is the second I walk out of my back door the smell of bleach is like Bourbon St at 6am.

There was talk of getting a heater! It’s 95 degrees ever day! I’m not heating that thing. I’m pretty certain that the piss I have first thing in the morning could fill that pool up, there’s not enough water to heat. As I type this Laura is changing the filter. I know this because the person I have seen most over the last 11 weeks was here this morning. Bob the Amazon delivery guy, dropping off another pool related purchase.

I also know this because at the weekend, someone who shall remain nameless opened up the mechanical filter to see if it needed changing and basically emptied the pool all over my patio.

All this is good though, if the kids are in it every day, getting away from their tablets and Xbox, blowing off some steam, getting some fresh air, enjoying how fortunate they are that their Dad works hard to get them a pool and that they live somewhere they can go swimming any day of the year. I’d love to jump in, but I am still not able to after surgery.

12 weeks ago I bought this thing…. Today was the 6th time anyone has been in it, I am 99% certain Harriet only goes in it when Laura tells her she needs a shower. She is very much like her Dad who only took 4 pairs of underwear to Ibiza when he was 17 because “I’ll wear them in the pool it will be fine”

The pool has gone the way of Fred’s golf clubs (birthday 2019), Harriet’s guitar (no particular reason just wanted it 3 weeks ago), my truck (March 2018) and Laura’s bread maker (I can’t even remember when). The novelty has completely worn off and it just sits there, the water perfectly warm, still and fantastically chlorinated.

Like most people I know, I am not an essential worker. In fact I’m barely essential in my own home, the only time anyone in this house thinks I am essential is when they want something and typically that something is not free.

That has meant that since the beginning of March I have been working from home and this corresponded with me having an operation and being bed ridden. First off the operation. I somehow managed to detach my retina and this meant that after the pretty nasty operation to reattach it I had a gas bubble put in my eye. For the first three days I had to lay face down for 45 minutes of every single hour of those 3 days. I’ve led a sheltered life and been lucky that I’ve not ever really been stuck in bed, especially not face down. It was hell on earth.

After the first day I tried to set up some sort of mirror based solution to allow me to at least watch TV. Unless you’ve ever tried to watch TV in a mirror for 15 hours straight then you have no idea how annoying this is. So I then graduated to a mattress on the floor, my head dangling over the end, watching 1990’s WWF matches on my iPhone. After those three days there is nothing I cannot tell you now about the life and career of both The “Macho Man” Randy Savage or The Ultimate Warrior. I stand by my comments to Laura that it was time well spent.

Finally I was able to sit up and do some work, dressed in my own non work clothes and with my eye taped up I looked like some sort really shitty hobo pirate, my hair already due a cut and my old man reading glasses not fitting over my bad eye at all but the worst was over and I was able to get going.

I have worked in an office for nearly 20 years, in those 20 years I have worked from home maybe 3 times. I was always jealous of people who got to roll out of bed 15 minutes before logging on in their underwear, bashing out a few emails from their back yard, TV on in the background, no commute. Those people had the dream life to me as I was up at 5am and cramming onto a packed train or busy freeway. I am about 11 weeks in now and I’ve learnt some things,

1.) I need to redecorate this house

We bought a house in September, after 5 years living in the US (Yes it has been that long!) we finally took the plunge and bought our own home. I loved it, I was proud we managed it and we thought it was beautifully decorated. One of the main reasons we bought this particular house was because we would not need to paint anything or get anything fixed. Well I have spent 9 hours a day 5 days a week sat in one room, looking at one wall. When I log off at the end of the day I sit in the same seat in the same room every night, looking at the same wall with the TV on.

I have redecorated this house in my mind about 300 times since lockdown. It feels like I’ve lived here 10 years. I hate every color in every room now and I am colorblind. The only room I am not completely fed up with is Fred’s and that’s because the noise that comes from his room during his Fortnite battles scares the living shit out of me so I don’t go in there

2.) I have slowly grown to absolutely hate Zoom/Facetime/Teams

When you live 4,000 miles from where you grew up video conferencing is vital. It’s how we keep in touch with family, it’s how we share news, it’s how the kids Grandparents get to see them. Let’s be honest though, it’s shit isn’t it?

“Can you hear me?”, “You’re cutting out”, “You’re on mute”, “Can you turn the phone round, I can’t see you”. Video conference bingo, the game where absolutely nobody wins. Lockdown has been many peoples first experience with this. We’ve been doing it week in week out for FIVE YEARS! It’s got old for the rest of you in 10 weeks. We do our calls back home on a Sunday, or as I like to call it technology groundhog day. Approximately 500 times we have made these calls home, you would think we would be over the technology teething problems by now.

Also, I’m gonna call it here. I’ve done a lot of virtual happy hours, quizzes, drinks etc. They are a means to an end. At first I was all in, lets do it it will be fun I thought, and it was. We’ve been able to go outside for 5 weeks now, why are we still doing it?? I can now go to the pub. Have a shower, get changed into something other than shorts and flip flops, go to a social gathering and have a drink. Why am I sitting on my couch, drinking 15 cans of Busch Lite with 10 other people staring at their screen talking over each other? In the UK the smoking ban was the death of the pub, virtual drinks are not compounding that death. Not one human ever by choice said “Let’s all sit in our own houses and drink our own drinks and pretend it’s the best thing ever”

3.) Boredom is the biggest killer

In Florida we had distance learning, the kids at home on laptops on yet another Zoom call, doing show and tell or long division or some other activity where the poor teacher is having my problems from the last point magnified 100 times. So fairly regularly, I would be in the office working away, Fred would be diligently working out some 4 digit multiplication question and Harriet would be showing her class her new guitar. Everyone of us busy in our own way…….. Except Laura.

Laura has the boredom threshold of someone with ADHD on ecstasy. During this 2 hour window she literally just paced from room to room, appearing on all of our calls. I was asked 9 times in two hours if I wanted a tea. I actually had 3. She asked me one time 3 minutes after dropping one off.

I’m no better. During the 6th week of lockdown I hadn’t left the neighborhood for the entire time. I had had no face to face interaction with anybody other than my family. I needed to get out of the house. I was so bored I booked a Coronavirus test, despite having no symptoms and no possible way I could have caught it, just so I could see some different people. It was really uncomfortable, I didn’t even leave the car and I had literally zero conversation with anyone during the whole process. I maintain it was a good use of my time.

4.) I probably drink just a little too much

I’m gonna put this out there, probably oversharing but who cares. I do not drink alcohol to “just have a couple”. I don’t understand people who get home from work poor a glass of wine and that’s it. I really do not get it. I love beer, but even I am not going to say it is the greatest tasting drink on earth because if it was, then I would drink non alcoholic beer all day.

I drink to get drunk. I am also a larger man and have been blessed with an ability to drink beyond the majority of people. Not everyone, I am not Andre the Giant (second WWF reference in one post) but quite a lot

So when I sit down and crack open a delicious, refreshing Busch Lite I am making a commitment. I am not having one, or two, or three, I am having at least 12. This is why generally I don’t drink at home. I am your stereotypical UK binge drinker. Monday through Thursday sober as a judge. Friday through Sunday, all bets are off.

Only during the lockdown, it’s slipped a little. 24 cans cost $14, they sell them at the gas (petrol) station. Every 3 days I am buying 24 cans. I am not drinking every day. Thursday is the new Friday in my house. A few beers and some guy DJing from his garage on You Tube, by 10.30 I’m hammered and fighting my way through beer cans and empty solo cups. It’s like a frat house.

5.) Time is a completely made up constraint

I think it’s Wednesday, someone told me it was June, but if I am honest it could be any day of any month. I’m still indoors, despite being able to go wherever the hell I want. I’m still sat here in shorts and t-shirt. I did manage to shower this morning, although I can’t swear I have managed that every single day. I know it was Monday recently because Laura did curry, we have had curry on Monday since 2009.

Curry night is the only way I am able to judge time right now. It’s the only constant. If I am eating curry it is definitely Monday, outside of that I really don’t know.

I’m thinking about going to the pub tonight because it feels like Friday, but something tells me it’s not.

All in all the lockdown has been decent, there have been more good times than bad and I’ve seen lots of Harriet. I’ve not seen Fred, I’ve lost him to the world of Xbox now. We are lucky to live somewhere where the kids can jump in our redneck overground pool every day and I can get Chick-fil-a delivered 6 days a week. That being said, I’ve had enough. There hasn’t been a case of COVID in our zip code for 6 weeks, I want to go out. I think I actually miss working in an office……

So on a different note, I haven’t blogged for a long time. 2 years. I am looking to do it differently this time. Harriet wants a You Tube channel, so we are going to film stuff. Just when we go places that might be fun. I will post the links here and share it all around. We can’t get a proper web address until we hit 100 subscribers and I can’t believe 100 people want to watch Laura scream at the kids running round Universal Studios.

Stay safe everyone!

The Shroders in Florida, we’ve been quiet here for a while haven’t we.

Well I am bringing this back, but slightly differently this time. Along with the blog, I am going to launch a You Tube channel, so people can watch some of the things we get up to as well as read about it.

It has been two years since I last blogged properly and lots have things have changed. We bought a house, I have visited 28 states, the kids have turned in to moody teens despite being only 9 and 7.

Laura has basically become American, she uses zee instead of zed now, measures ingredients in cups not grams, and spends 90% of her time in yoga pants.

I’ve continued to collect old man illnesses, from skin cancer to cataracts, sleep apnea to a detached retina. I am only just 40. I will outlive you all!

In between illnesses, shopping for “active wear” and trying to get Fred out of his room and off of Fortnite we have had lots of adventures and I will start posting about them all again soon.

The You Tube Channel is registered and videos will start soon, but until I get 100 subscribers I can’t register TheShrodersinFlorida with a proper address, so when I add a video, please do subscribe!

Looking forward to sharing all the things we are doing, the people we meet and the places we go.