Football

So I am stuck in Florida at a conference. Disney Boadwalk Hotel just outside Orlando. Need to get to see the game. There is an ESPN sports bar. Go there. They are showing the Manc game and the Barca game. No idea where might be showing the game I want to see. Bump into a fellow attendee of the conference. An English Millwall fan who lives in Saratosa. Explain my problem. He comes up with three bars in the area showing the match. We get a cab together. First bar is shut. Second bar open. $35 for the cab there. Basically a hut by the side of a freeway clad in mock Tudor. Go in. About half a dozen people in there. All apart from a bar maid English. They turn off Emmerdale and put on the match. Landlord was English and around 50 and Spurs. Two of the punters were late 60s and Wolves, one with a newly acquired Wolves tat on his calf. Everyone is behind the English side. We win. The cab returns. Another $35 back to the hotel and the conference.

A window into a world that I will never encounter again. I suppose all over Florida there are little bars like that serving ex pat retirees and somehow making a living.

I lived in California for three years in the mid 90's and found a couple of haunts that sound not too disimilar to this. Places like that provide some old home comforts to the expat community. To an extent, we are all just "Brits" to them and more often than not I was fending off questions from the natives about whether I was from Liverpool and knew the Beatles or some random bloke call Bob or somesuch from Birmingham.

I always considered myself an expat during my stay there and for that brief period would cheer on any English club against foreign opposition.

I don't miss my stay over there.