Dave 'Dodgy' Jones (1954-2025)

 I heard the news yesterday that my great friend and social activist Dave Jones passed away recently. I can't say that I will miss him, as I have already had that experience while he has been shut away in a dementia care home in Teddington West London for close to 15 years. I visited on occassions when other reasons took me down South, but as is always the case, his memory of me or SWMBO diminished to nothing very quickly. One has no idea if the visits do register as certainly the exchanges indicate they do not, but I was advised to keep going as long as I was able, to keep the care home on their toes, and in case there was some cranial activity I was stimulating.

Dave was a long standing member of the Tuesday club, a group who convened at 9pm in The Prince Blucher in Twickenham, and pretended we had all been rugby training and needed a recovery pint or three. Clearly in our fourties, our rugby training days were long behind us, but the social couple of hours were always rich in stories and memories.

There were memories for SWMBO and I as well. We would often meet him in Paris when England were playing, although his allegiance was always to Wales!! We stayed in his apartment in Amsterdam and in Rome when his work with Cellnet took him away for months at a time, but most memorable, we were with him in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympic Games as he was liaison officer for Helen Rollenson of TV fame, and we were working in the Georgia Dome. Dave sorted accomodation and had a good knowledge of  Buckhead and its bars and restaurants and we had a real blast for two weeks. 

The World was always a livelier place with 'Dodgy' around, and I felt priveliged to call him my friend. May you finally be free .

The road to Augusta

 So after more than two years of trying, Cookie and I are in Atlanta ready for the golfing adventure of a lifetime.

Goodness me though it was still a nightmare!!

Firstly hurdle was the lateral flow test to be taken within a day of travel and needed to be observed. The lady operative was great but Zoom went down or froze during the test sending me into a panic! We got there in the end and my six day isolation justice as I was negative. It was the most stressful thing I had experienced since leaving work

So off to the airport  where the first senior moment kicked in. It was 10:15 and the board showed the Atlanta flight gate had already closed. More panic until the Virgin girl pointed out I was going to New York and onward from their!!

Second senior moment as Cookie rang to say he had got to the airport and forgotten his tickets passport and vouchers and was now going back to meet his wife half way with said items. Would he make it back in time?

Next challenge was that my ticket would not let the check-in desk allocate me luggage. That got sorted as apparently we were booked on three NY to Atlanta flights later that day.

Cooke arrived in time and we settled into the flight. After two hours there was a medical emergency but luckily we were too far out to turn back but more pleasing was that the passenger did not need resuss.

We landed fine. She was taken off by medics and we gigot to homeland security. I get the red light so get whisked off to the naughty boys step for a 45 minute watch and wait. Still don't know why but given we had a 6 hour stop over it killed some time!!

So after that all the other delays were routine, and 20 hours later we got to the hotel. So let's see how the golf goes today!!

Georgia on my mind

In 1996 SWMBO and I were fortunate enough to be volunteers at the Olympic Games in Atlanta USA. Our brief was to help man the Georgia Dome, a multisports venue which, at the time had been purpose built for the Atlanta Games.

We worked some long and hard shifts from 06:00 in the morning to gone midnight some days. venue was split in two and was used for the men and women gymnastics and the men and women basketball events. We were lucky enough to be on duty in both halves of the arena at various times.

We met the world during those two weeks, which nearly became three, as the pre-qualifiers began before the opening ceremony and the finals of the basketball were held in the second official week.
I chatted to the CEO of Delta Airlines who was happy with a bit of man chat while his wife and three daughters became engrossed in the women's gymnastics. SWMBO was vetted for a visit by Bill Clinton, but that never came off which was a pity. Our uniforms were awful, but did get us lifts home in the rain on a couple of occasions.

Today, therefore, marks an end of an era, as the Georgia Dome was detonated and reduced to rubble in the space of very few seconds. It was a 21 storey building and the biggest indoor sporting arena in the World when it was built. There are , no doubt, plans to erect something else in it's place, but a bit of our heritage seems to have disappeared with the building today. Our memorial bricks are still in Centenary Park and some parts of Buckhead remain, like The Five Paces and  Mike and Angelo's but progress has no time for sentiment so accept today for what it is and move on! An anniversary tour in 2021 might be a goer though, y'all.

Happy birthday to you....

The third anniversary of the blog passed while we were away. Gosh doesn't time fly. I started the blog to track the sale of the London property and would not have guessed that it would have taken two and a half years to complete that process, and at some cost. Still i got a very pleasant e-mail from the new owners this week enforcing how pleased they were with the purchase.

One is never sure what these old houses unearth once renovations start so it is good that no skeletons have been found in the attic. I must have done a good job bricking them up!!!

The place needed a new touch and I know they have done some alterations so good luck to them. They have kept my stained glass windows which they removed, so I will need to collect those at some stage, and may get a guided tour then.

So what else is new since May 2007....Tim , our oldest, got married, Emma, our youngest, produced our first grand child, Ava. I got to play golf with Tiger Woods (almost) in a Pro-Am, I managed to hang onto my job, although for how much longer is up for debate. Everybody had maintained good health given age and circumstances and all in all life has moved on in a reasonable and controlled manner.

In three more years I will have retired, my countdown clock says 1015 days to go!! I am sure we will have other grand children by then, and Ava can show them the ropes. England may have won a football trophy to go with the rugby World Cup and the World 20/20 cricket victory, but will the mighty Green Army bounce back into the Championship (that's the new Premiership for poor clubs who play British players in the team)?

So into year four we go, the blog at least gives my Google entry some credibility and it sits nicely with my named brick in the Olympic Park in Atlanta, the S Club brick at Twickenham Stadium and my fathers golf trophy at the golf club in Plymouth. A trail of discovery awaits anybody researching the Weathers clan.