2008 An Absolute Belter

An old friend provided the title for this review of the year in his Christmas message. Stuart, currently located in Cape Town, South Africa expressed the hope that I had “an absolute belter”. By any standards 2008 has been an absolute belter, a cracker, a great year packed with great moments and I’ll say this now, I see no reason why 2009 will not be the same.

Luna is due on or around 5th July so it hardly can get bigger than this. Sure much can go wrong but in truth my expectations are modest. This time next year for me personally I hope I can report that I am healthy, that I am meaningfully employed, that I am a happy husband and father and that my faith in God is stronger than ever ….. not necessarily in that order!

Obviously my wedding day, 18th October 2008, stands out as a particular highlight. This was a near perfect day. First up my bride, Luna, looked stunning. Many have asked what a beauty sees in a doddering old fool like myself! I can report that there are now a number of western men pursuing Filipino women in the Ratchaburi area! The service was beautiful, wonderful liturgy, fantastic music provided by Luna’s Filipino colleagues and friends, gorgeous flowers, and an array of priests on the altar led by Bishop Panya who blessed our marriage and provided such wise words. We have subsequently joked about how good the Bishop’s blessing really was because we reckon Luna conceived on her wedding night or very soon after, but most certainly not before!

We were both moved that people made such an effort to attend our wedding…. from Scotland, England, Australia and the Philippines and a fair few who travelled a distance in Thailand. We received messages of congratulations and presents from all over the world. It was a truly lovely day and as you can gather the results have been immediate!

Luna is a wonderful wife. Today as I write this, a veteran of just over two months of married life, I understand how blessed I am. Given the events in the five or so years of our courtship, how fragile the early connection was, the sheer lottery of our initial meeting, followed by physical distance between us, I have no doubt this is what God intended for us both, certainly for me! Otherwise we would never have been married.

At the beginning of 2008 I knew I was scheduled to pay a surprise visit to Luna in January. What joy to arrive in Bangkok January 17th and jump in a taxi to Ratchaburi and show up at Mai Tai restaurant where Luna’s friends had managed to bring her completely unaware that I was going to arrive. The poor girl was shaking with disbelief when she saw me. At one level it was a cruel thing to do but I had forewarned her in a round about way that 2008 was going to be full of surprises and added that some might occur more quickly than she might be expecting. And it just kicked from there…. events unfolded from my arrival right throughout the year.

As always we had a very happy few days together with weekends spent at our favourite resort, Cha-am, a few hours south of Ratchaburi on the gulf of Thailand, staying at Cha-am Beach Villa Hotel. When Luna was at work I played golf at Royal Ratchaburi, surely one of the best golf courses in S E Asia?

During this trip we decided we would try to get Luna UK entry in April/May during her school holidays. Unfortunately Luna does not simply walk in as a visitor but has to apply for an entry visa. It is the same even now we are married. The anomaly is our baby will automatically qualify for full UK citizenship through me and this could result in a situation where baby and I walk in but Luna can’t get a visa. So I’ve told Luna to be on her best behaviour!

Never having done this type of thing before I was fearful about whether Luna would get the visa, especially given my circumstances…..following the years of carnage I am not a picture of probity! We also agreed that we would attempt to get married in October in the Philippines in Luna’s home town, Bacolod City.

Back to the UK end of January for me a few more months grafting with Addison Lee. I must say I did really well with them in the build up to Christmas and the Festive Season 2007 and it was on the strength of this that I was able to make a trip to Thailand and then to contemplate bringing Luna to the UK later in the year. Back home life was fairly predictable, work through the night for Addison Lee, sleep, play golf and meeting up with friends.

My Uncle Peter passed away soon after I returned from Thailand and I was able to attend his funeral in Glasgow. I bumped into an old teacher, Dan Divers, at this mass which was a poignant moment as Mr Divers was very kind to me over the years I attended St Aloysius’ College and I had not had any contact with him since leaving back in 1975. He needed some prompting but once I told him who I was he remembered me well and commented on the amount of weight I had put on! At the same service my old primary school teacher, Mr McCabe, was also present. Nice to meet up with family again and my cousins Peter and Ron, brother to Colin, were able to make it from Australia. Uncle Peter,Big Peter, left his male nephews the sum of £500.00 so thank you very much! I think he had it in mind that we would need a little diversion away from our day to day cares.

Luna remarkably was granted UK entry with a minimum of fuss and arrived April in time to attend my sister Katherine’s wedding to John Donoghue just outside Edinburgh. Congratulations to the happy couple. Nice to see my sister Katherine paired with a man who will look after her.

It was a great pleasure to have Luna with me for a month. Luna was like a little girl in absolute wonderment as we toured London carrying out all the mandatory photo stops. By a stroke of good fortune prior to Luna’s arrival I had been elevated into the chauffeur section at Addison Lee and as she stepped off the plane I had been given a brand spanking new E class Mercedes with 12 miles on the clock and the deal with them is I keep the car when I take time off. So Luna saw London in style with the benefit of my expert knowledge and we even managed a Saturday night trip to Stratford upon Avon to see a Royal Shakespeare Company performance of The Merchant of Venice.

Then we gunned the Merc north as I took two weeks off and we visited the Holy Island, various Northumberland castles and on to Edinburgh for Kate’s wedding. Luna still talks about the spiced onions in Khushi’s restaurant which until recently was the best Indian in Scotland if not in the UK; I say recently because I believe it no longer is as it was gutted by fire prior to Christmas. Sad, and no doubt this was an accident as the Khushi’s people are decent in every sense of the word and the restaurant was a flourishing success story.

At Kate’s wedding I found myself toasting the bride (the intended speaker had been taken home somewhat the worse for wear for drink!) unexpectedly all of which Luna has recorded on video. Luan met my sisters and the extended family. We had a memorable sea food meal the day after the wedding with the newly weds at the Dakota by the Forth Road Bridge. We then headed north up the A92 to Inverness and somewhere along this road Luna saw snow for the first time in her life and after a pit stop in Inverness, at MacDonalds of all places, we crossed the great wilderness to Ullapool and dropped down over the highest road in Britain, the Bealach na Bath, to Kyle and a first ever crossing of the bridge to Skye.

We stayed in some great bed & breakfasts, real value and brilliant service and Luna developed a taste for fried breakfasts, including black pudding!

We crossed Skye , where the cloud cleared long enough at Sligachan to view the Cuillin Ridge in its majestic glory. We proceeded to board the ferry at Uig to North Uist and we dropped down from Lochmaddy to South Uist. I hadn’t been there since 1979. But I felt as if I wanted to show Luna something of my roots and I am glad I did. For the duration of the trip we were blessed with great weather and I have a distinct memory of visiting Bonnie Prince Charlie Bay on Eriskay and the skies were blue and the sun was shining, but still cold.

Our wedding plans gradually developed and we decided it would be most practical to get married in Thailand. Too many forms to complete in the Philippines left me fearful that we might have guests arriving to be told, sorry it’s been delayed a week because there is a mistake with how my name is spelt on one of the documents. So with a plan emerging I bought Luna an engagement ring from Hebridean Jewellry in Iochdar, South Uist and placed an order for her wedding ring there. Thought it would be a nice touch for the rings to come from the place my mother’s people come from and indeed Luna’s wedding band is engraved on the inside with “Gu bràth”, which some of you will know means “For ever” in Gaelic.

On either side of this tour of Britain we managed to attend a marriage guidance course at my local Catholic church, various meetings with the local parish priest in order to obtain his blessing to our union and to assemble the documentation to submit to the Archdiocese of Westminster for approval for getting married overseas. There were some difficulties, purely of a bureaucratic nature, but we managed to get the certification and off it went to Thailand. We even managed to play a little ten pin bowling with my friend Fr Cristiano Braz.

From South Uist we headed back down south via Skye and the Armadale-Mallaig ferry, down through Glenfinnan and Fort William to Oban for a few days in Glasgow. Then down south proper via Hadrian’s Wall and Salisbury Plain and Stonehenge and back to London! Quite a trip! What is known in the trade as a busman’s holiday! Sad to see Luna go when her term started in May but she went back a happy camper and I think it was a good move to let her meet my family and see how I lived in the UK.

Once more back to the grind at Addison Lee. The chauffeur job meant I could work less for more money! I continued to graft and established a rapport with the actor Jude Law who started requesting me for his bookings. This worked really well as I found him good to work for. As a result a friend phoned me up one Sunday morning in the summer and told me I was on the front page of the Sunday Mirror as they wholly misrepresented developments in his love life! Also worked for the infamous Russell Brand, a truly good guy who gave me a copy of his book signed and including a nice personal message, with my name spelt correctly. Interesting also as our biggest client was Barclays Bank and we were driving their top people about as the current financial crisis gathered…… taking bankers to private airstrips on Saturday morning for flights to Abu Dhabi….no surprise when six weeks later Barclays were announcing Gulf investment. Many other people of note sat in my motor. Great fun!

At the end of June I was back in Scotland for the wedding of my nephew Daniel and his bride, Cat. A wonderful event at my sister Christine’s farmhouse and the wider family assembled once more from the lowlands. I enjoyed a game of golf on one of the St Andrews Links’ courses with Stewart, my cousin Christine’s husband. The wedding was memorable for the food, all the meat was home reared and it certainly tasted in a different class.

July 10th was my 50th birthday and to mark this milestone I treated 15 fellow travellers to a game of golf and a slap up lunch and evening curry. We played at Aldenham in Hertfordshire, a very pleasant day out and nice to make it to 50. At 45/46 as some of you know, it wasn’t looking so good.

As our wedding preparations developed and as work slowed down in August I decided to take another quick visit to Thailand courtesy of Air France, who were offering a sub £400 return to Hong Kong and a cheap return to Bangkok via Ethiopian Airlines. There were no surprises this time for Luna; she knew I was coming and I was able to present her with her engagement ring all the way from South Uist.

During this trip I also met Fr Siripong the parish priest of the church of St John Bosco in Ratchaburi who was investigating me! He’s also the headmaster of Daruna, so is effectively Luna’s boss. As I write this I wish he would tell me when he has finished the investigation! We also met Bishop Panya who indicated it would be an honour for two foreigners to marry in his diocese and that he would be delighted to marry us. Remarkably these two clergymen took us out to dinner and paid! That was a great shock to both of us!

On my journey home I was upgraded to business class on the Hong Kong - Paris section. That was a real blessing as well as a first. I think that ticket cost me £329.00, probably the best value I have ever known. I slept in perfect comfort most of the way and was back at work the following night!

My sister Katherine & John joined me in London to say farewell as my departure loomed. That was kind and once more I did them the honours in the smart motor. Finally my friends Gaye and Maria put on a little farewell party for me in September as my time in the UK came to an end. It was nice to get such a send off and messages of good will and good luck from people.

Remarkably I managed to vacate my flat, remove all my personal effects, ship various things and hit the airport 1st October for the 2130h Eva Airways flight from Heathrow to Bangkok armed with a 12 month multiple entry non-immigrant Thai visa.

I am exhausted! What a belter of a year! Since October I have been busy trying to sort out our house….progress slow, motivation low at times! Regular trips to Hua Hin and Bangkok. We registered our wedding on 19th December 2008 after an enormous amount of coming and going and now we have a nice Thai wedding certificate.

We are ending our year in Langkawi, Malaysia. My visa requires me to leave Thailand every 90 days. So hopefully I get another 90 days when we return on 1st January 2008. I reckon Langkawi is the most disappointing place I have been to in 2008! Can’t wait to get back to the Land of the Smile and some decent food

My golf remains rubbish and the only real New Year’s resolution I have is to hit sub-90 in 2009.

God bless you all in 2009.