Time to meet the family.

I celebrated the week before going to the USA for the first time to meet my new in-laws by getting chicken pox. Not bad at 29, eh? I just cleared travel fitness by 24 hours and off we went. In those days, you could smoke on planes, so everything was OK. It was also ten years before radical Islam decided to change the way we travel, so there was no turning up at the airport six days before your flight was due to leave, either. Travelling in those days was a pleasure, even if it was linked to a marriage that should never have come to pass, but there you go. L's family were delightful and made me very welcome. Years later, when we split up, I felt I'd miss her parents more than her. This trip was the first of many I'd make to the USA: New York, New Jersey, Washington DC on business, two music theatre National Tours etc etc. Between 1991 and 1999 the USA and I were close friends; our relationship began as a backdrop to my first engagement and ended in December 1999, when I boarded a flight from Minneapolis to Reykjavik, bringing down the curtain definitively on our tempestuous, eight-year long affair. There were times when I adored America and times when I loathed and despised it; it was a wonderful place to work but the most boring place on God's earth if you didn't have anything to do. I felt there, more than anywhere else I've ever lived, that if I wasn't being noticeably productive my social stock would fall at least 100 points. The pressure to work and to be seen to work was immeasurable. This was easily fulfilled in DC and on tour; not so easy in Minneapolis, where I was truly a freelance musician, looking around for any kind of work which might rear its head. My savings were slowly diminishing but there was a steady trickle of gigs coming in, but nothing remotely sustainable. That's when I booked a single flight Minneapolis - Paris via the Icelandic capital.

Despite our differences even at this early stage, L's and my sex life was pretty damned good. She loved to fuck, and fuck hard: one night, we did it eight times; she came eighteen times. We watched porn videos together, she loved it front and back and adored being spanked. We still managed to split up twice more before finally getting married on August 15th, 1992. Her family came over to England for the ceremony and we all headed off to Wales and Ireland on our honeymoon, taking in Tom Jones' homeland (for Aunt Dorothy) and southern Ireland for my in-laws, whose grandparents had left the country for the USA at the beginning of the twentieth century. Our families actually came from neighbouring villages in Westmeath. British soldiers pointed guns down our throats as we crossed the border into Ulster from Donegal and our landlady in Portrush fell in love with my new brother-in-law. All in all, it was an unforgettable week, particularly for my wonderful in-laws, who will never forget the fabulous time they had in the UK and Ireland. L and I flew back to Hamburg while her family trudged off to Heathrow's Terminal 1 for their flight back to Newark, NJ. Only then did things start to go seriously downhill.