Leaving the United Kingdom

The last weeks in the United Kingdom with all my friends and family were the most epic of all my memories l have with them all. They were the golden cap on the painful goodbye to everyone I knew and loved. It was a shame I had to leave the UK to move with family to Canada then on to America so my dad could work for Microsoft, but staying in the UK would have not been the same place without having close family.
It all kicked off on a Friday in June 2008 with a pre-leaving house party to start the weeks of partying off with a bang. The party was at my house since my mum was on a hen weekend with all girls for my cousin’s wedding and my dad was in Kenya teaching people how to use computers. I had invited everyone from my college course plus Matt, who has been a best mate since we were young, to my house to drink as much as possible on my newly finished decking that I had spent the last 2 weekends building before we moved out and our tenets moved in. We basically drank a mountain of booze that everyone had come with and rocked our faces off to the massive stereo until the sun came up in the garden. The next memory was of the midday sun full in the sky with the sound of “Ladies and gentlemen, you already know what it is” blazing from the stereo that was streaming though the French doors of the house from the night before. In the morning we cleaned up all the empty beer bottles and cans into a 3 foot square plant pot which we filled.
The official Leaving do was on a Tuesday the next week and was a lot more civilized than my first house party. It was held at my local Shell Workers Club across the road from my house, which is pub with event rooms for the use of the community or employees’ of the Shell Fuel Refinery. It was all arranged by my parents and consisted of family and friends some of which I had not seen in over a year. The disc jockeying was done by a family friend and had an amazing laser show and also Karaoke, which I slaughtered by singing the song “Angels” by Robbie Williams later that night after I had a few too many to hear how bad I was singing. After that I had drunkenly walked to get a bag of chips and sausage from the Woodland’s chippie; indeed, those chips have never tasted so good.
The Friday after the leaving party, I went to see a band with Paul an old family friend. At the Shell Club it was a lot of fun. The band was called the Mustard Club an Indie band, the drummer turned out to be a science teacher from my high school who had given up teaching to rock. They did covers of The Who, Oasis, The Eagles and their own song 232425 “Where do you want to be when your 23?” sang Mark the leader singer
“You will be crying out for more when your 24,”Sang the Bassist.
“Are you happy with your life now your 25?” Sang the James the drummer
“I Don’t Know, I Don’t Know,” The band sang together. About halfway through the gig we left to find a better pub in Paul’s amazing BMW which handled the country lane like they were completely smooth. On either side of the car were the empty black fields that surrounded the curving road. We tried the mega bowl on the Cheshire Oaks, but it was nearly empty so we headed to Chester about 10 miles south of Ellesmere Port. We headed to the Cross Foxes for the pool tables cheap beer and dart boards. It was packed full of people all squeezing together to fit next to the bar in this tiny pub. Most of the people in pub were mainly from Chester University. We played a few rounds of pool and darts upstairs then headed to a house party on the way back to the port. The next day after packing up most of the items in the house, I had arranged to meet the Big Phil Matty and Josh at Mega Bowl around six pm a glorious break from partying. The lads had wanted to play 10 pin bowling this was a much needed slow partying day since packing up the house for moving had made me tired. Keeping up with Big Phil was like trying to out-drink a cement mixer, which is impossible but fun to try. That was the last night I stayed in my house that I had spent a lot of time and energy repairing and building a better garden. From then on I was crashing with Matt for a week until my flight out to Canada.
The weekend after moving out of my house, my cousin Kate got married to Mark an Irish man. It was the best weddings I had gone to that summer. The wedding service was done in a high church fashion. The church itself was sandstone church with gold trimmings and beaming light through the stain glass window onto the alter area. Mark stood at the altar wearing his family tartan kilt as Kate walked down the aisle in amazing white dress with the green tartan down the back. There was a classical string trio playing at the side of the church. About halfway into the service, my Nan had fallen off the chair probably from the hot weather and emotion of the wedding. She was when rushed off to the Countess of Chester Hospital. Both my mum and Aunt Trisha went with her to make sure she was ok. After the wedding service, everyone headed to the reception me and my brother went in the same minibus as my Aunt Sue and Uncle Chris, the Bride’s parents. We were the first to arrive at the reception, and we waited on the stone porch of the garden, drinking the pink champagne and looking out at the picture perfect view of the willow trees leaning over the pond at the bottom of the massive grass lawn. It took about an hour for everyone to arrive at the hotel for a reception meal. After that a lot more guests arrived for the evening’s entertainment and the celebrations began. The best men and the ushers did “O Macdonald Had a Farm” with animal thongs, lifting there kilts up at the right time. The Life O'Riley band was pumping energy and excitement into the whole room with their Irish songs as the singer was dancing on the tables and jumping all round the room. By the end of the night the singer was half naked. It was so amazing that they are now banned from that hotel. At the end of the night the whole hotel had been drank dry of all its booze. There is only one nation that can out drink the British that is the Irish.
The last few weeks I spent with all my friends and family were some of the better times I have spent with them, even with the knowledge I would be moving and would not see most of them ever again. It just made every last day count even more. I don’t think I could have made any more use of time to say goodbye to everyone those weeks were the end of an epic era of my life. I just cannot wait to go back to the UK in the summer because North America is driving me crazy.