It's been a long time my friends, one year to be exact!

 Well, well, well, has it really been a year? Well.......it's actually been 13 months but you get my drift, it's been a while but what has there been to write about..............LOADS NOW!

Where would you like me to start?

Lets start from November 2020 as my last update was October 2020.

Sian and I are doing amazing and thanks for asking. Both working very hard although I've limited my working to 3 days a week but still do 30 hours a week so I'm not being a work shy fop, as if I could ever be that. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday then off all weekend to do what we want although poor Sian works 4 days a week and often gets the Friday off so we can then have long weekends away or just doing stuff, mainly pub and food, they go hand in hand of course.

Covid is still with us and the moronic, numb nut, divs who think they will never get it or can't be bothered to follow plain simple rules of transport, shops and entertainment premises are still out there being the assholes they are. There should be no mask exemption these days as there are hundreds of different visors out there. Got asthma, buy a visor with headband. Claustrophobic buy a full face visor. Just a simple brainless idiot, stay indoors. NO EXEMPTIONS! It's not difficult to make it a law now without exemptions.

We are both proud to declare that as of this season we are season ticket holders to the Cardiff Devils. Every Saturday or Sunday off we go down to Cardiff Bay for our weekly fix of coffee, beer, curry & chips oh and of course ice hockey. We ourselves also go out on the ice now and I have to say Sian is very impressive, no wet arse as of yet so her central core is very good, as long as she doesn't get better than me it will be all good.

Me on the Devils ice pad. I think their players are worried I'm coming out of retirement lol and yes they are my own hockey skates, no blue wellies that have had a thousand feet inside for me.

We are looking to move from our present home just a bit further out of Cardiff, literally about 1 or 2 miles further outside as we are on the edge of Cardiff as it is but we want a bit more rural and peaceful area with a bit of land for some animals if possible.

Our list is this:

Rabbit (our little bunny Squid), Dogs (Beagle & Daschund), Donkey, Pigmy Goat, Squirrels, Ducks, Micro Pig and a Raccoon (Don't know where we're going to find this). 

And this is Squid our Dwarf Lilac Lop

Squid at 12 weeks old

Squid prefers junk food to veg.

She enjoys the TV

And now she is one year old

Food is not your own anymore lol

That's the plan so we keep an eye out but no rush as we have SOOOOOOOOooooooooo much going on next year. Talking of moving i have moved the Swansea home now even closer to the sea, in fact exactly 320 meters from the beach. It was time to make the move so my mum had a bit more quality of life as she loves the beach and goes for walks down there every morning so the obvious move was to the beach, she's well happy and all settled in within a week, this week in fact. Sian and I are quite jealous LOL.

So how have your holidays been this year? Stressful i bet with all the uncertainty. I still get asked "Do i miss the bar?" and the answer is no, not at all BUT we do miss my best friends Tassos and Demi, my very dear friend George at Kanalos up on Skopos, Cafe 34 after a midnight close on a Saturday, fresh fish restaurants, Bochali for a liquid lunch, our house out in the fields all peaceful and quiet, drinking frappe's just watching the world go by wherever we stop, riding around on our motorbikes enjoying the tranquillity and of course gyros pittas, of course i miss you my wonderful friends from the bar and all the great customers that helped make Oceanic the best bar for the whole of Greece (Fact, Tripadvisor said so 2016-2019, BOOM!) so these things are what we miss the most, life moves on though.

Travel in 2021 for us was quite good, we decided to have Staycation weekends away every other weekend, a week down west Wales and a week in Switzerland for Freddie Mercury's birthday party. 

Where do i begin, i have to remember them all, memory not as good these days as not having to remember hundreds of drink orders.

Ok so,  i think it was in this order. 

Weston-Super-Mare. Sian had never been and of course there are lots of DONKEY'S! The place itself is a bit of a dump but we stayed in a lovely hotel away from the main centre but on the sea front. We had a very long walk all around Weston, think we did 14 miles that day over to the Birnbeck pier that was used as a weapons development base and up to Worlebury roman fort above Weston, met and petted loads of donkey's then just sat in the beer garden with a few drinkies which was great as the bar and beer garden were for guests only, nice.

St. Davids (Smallest city in the world) in Pembrokeshire, Sian has never been here either so we went for 2 nights which was great as the weather was brilliant, saw Griff Rhys Jones on a ramble but i was to chicken to approach him as i had had a couple of beers. After St. Davids we moved on to Amroth for a week where we stayed in a lovely one bedroom cottage. This destination was planned with a motive.........ANIMALS! Here within a short distance you have Folly Farm park and Zoo also Manor Wildlife Park. What great places. We saw so much and as a surprise i paid for Sian to feed one of her favourite animals, a giraffe. Sian had a great time although the giraffe did dribble allot when wrapping its tongue around Sian's hand to grab the leaves, BLURGGGGH!

Monmouth we visited twice. What a lovely little town, we like little places like this with a small shopping street, a few pubs and river running through it. Here we fed the most ducks i've ever seen in one place and visited Raglan Castle, that's a good place for a stroll around.

Ross-on-Wye. Again we visited here twice. We found a pub that only cost us £4.50 for 2 pints, in fact thats one of the main reasons we went back a second time, cheap skates. Great restaurant here called Leonards at 39, really tasty freshly made burgers and great cocktails, not as good or as strong as mine of course. Here to has a river running through it.

View from our balcony room

Tewksbury. This place has so many really old buildings that gives it great character and an Abbey. Went for a really long walk here around a little island which is a field, we both forgot to take water and it was a boiling hot day, the island looked allot smaller than it actually was, in fact a 45 minute walk more than we expected, the pub was calling by the end of it. We ate at the best Italian restaurant we have eaten in Caffe e Vino. Our table was out in the garden on a warm Saturday evening and we were the only ones there due to booking as soon as the doors opened, it was amazing. By the time we had finished the restaurant was full and we could see why. Once again a town with a river running through it. There's a pattern forming here.

Tewksbury Abbey

Chester. This time our hotel was next to a canal, no river. This weekend was full on animals and shopping. Blue Planet Aquarium along with Chester Zoo and retail therapy at Cheshire Oaks. We booked our zoo entrance time for the door opening time which was a great idea as when we left it was crazy full so we had almost whole of the zoo wherever we walked to ourselves. It's the biggest zoo we've ever been too and we've been to 5 different ones now i think, maybe Calgary Zoo was bigger but i don't think so. Blue Planet, don't bother. Don't get me wrong, it was good but really small compared to the ones we've been to in Britain and France.

My fav animal, the red panda at Chester Zoo.

Chester town centre

And last but not least Switzerland for a week for Freddie Mercury's birthday party and by luck Cardiff Devils European cup ice hockey. So first up we landed on the Friday and the ice Hockey was on the Saturday in Lausanne. We had an apartment in Vevey, we like Vevey as more bars and restaurants than Montreux where the birthday party was. Popped over to Montreux to see what was going on for Freddies birthday on the Sunday and loads of exhibitions , stalls and fans just having a good time drinking and listening to Queen songs from a DJ. On to Lausanne. The ice hockey was on freeview channel freesport and guess who were spotted quite a few times on it, WE WERE! Firstly we were filmed signing loud and proud the Welsh national anthem, that's all you needed to see, the rest was us chanting and drinking. What a great night, great company with the supporters, great beer Cardinal Blonde and the owner of the Cardiff Devils Brian Parker came and joined us for the second and third periods buying us all beers, what other team would get to chat and drink beers with the owner?

Sing it loud and proud, WE ARE CARDIFF DEVILS, WE ARE WALES!

Sunday over to on Montreux for Freddie's birthday bash. NO PARTY, in the casino, BOOOOOOOO!

Never mind lots of celebrations outside with bars, live guitarist Queen karaoke and Freddie beer.

Every time this year we've been away no matter what time of year we've had great weather. In Switzerland in September i burnt my shines, my legs don't see the sun that often these days and sitting on the bank of Lake Geneva enjoying the peace and view was my shins downfall.

And the winner of the knobbly knees competition is..............

View from our home from home bar, Barrel Oak

Always eat where the locals eat.
 

but don't always eat what the locals eat, Fondue, BLURGH,YUK! Sian enjoyed it though.

So we have been very lucky to get away as much as we have but then again we work hard and deserve it, why sit at home doing nothing watching shocking rubbish TV (Apart from Tiger King and Brassic), we love life and are hardly ever in if we can avoid it, we enjoy being with each other and that's all we need.

On to 2022, bloody hell where do i begin! We have so many holidays that have been pushed back due to Covid that it's all come to a head in 2022. So here we go:

New years eve - London - New Years Eve party at Hard Rock Cafe with 3 course meal, live band and a table for 2 all night from 7pm till 3am

Feb - Paris - 5 days with France V Italy tickets at the Stade de France for the 6 nations

April - Nottingham - Ice Hockey playoff finals weekend

June - Milan - 5 days with Imagine Dragons concert on the Saturday and Foo Fighters on the Sunday at the San Siro race course

June - Birmingham - 2 nights with VIP tickets to see Foo Fighters

July - Canada - 2 weeks with business class flights (It's over 8 hour flight, not sitting in the cattle hold, LOL), an apartment in central downtown Calgary and 10 days of the Calgary Stampede and 2 nights in the town High River where Tin Star was filmed, the town in Tin Star was renamed as Little Big Bear. 

September - Hydra/Athens for 9 days, just a relaxing holiday this one as all the others are pretty full on.

I think that's it. Most probably a few weekends away in between and haven't looked at anything past September yet but yeah, a pretty full travel schedule all due to Covid.

I don't want to waffle on to much just in case you slip in to a coma while reading this but to sum up, life is great with us in the UK, we're not pining for Zakynthos, not at all but we do miss the things i stated at the beginning.

So, i hope your all well out there and are keeping safe, this blog still gets a high volume of readers so a little update may keep you all going. I hope one day we can all meet up when its safe too and raise a beer to good health and happiness but as i said before you can drop me your email addresses through the comment section at the bottom of this post and only i will see it so it's nice and private and i will get back to you.

Love All, Peace All, Stay Safe All, Kevlar Out!