Emma, Sue and Neil & Marc Too.

I think I’m starting to take over Marc’s mantle as writer for the Ollington Oracle. He claims he is working too hard to write the blog at the moment! I can’t believe it’s already November and almost Christmas time. I can’t wait for Christmas. In fact this year I can’t wait for Thanksgiving, Christmas and even New Year’s Eve for once! Marc and I are heading to Vegas to see in 2009, it’s going to be brilliant.

Anyways enough of wishing time away, I thought I should fill you in on Mr. & Mrs. Spoons LA trip. For those of you who don’t know Mr. Spoons is in fact Neil Witherow, and Mrs. Spoons is his wife Sue. Neil has worn (and indeed wears) many hats in life, not only was he Crystal Palace’s official mascot (where he had to dress up as an eagle!) but he is known to many fans as Jim Bob’s right hand man. On tours he does everything from driving, to tuning guitars, to doing the lights and being the security! The list goes on! All Marc does on tour is eat crisps and drink full fat coke. Neil also designs websites, has edited a top football fanzine, does database management and best of all he is also a top wedding DJ.

Sue is also a lady of many talents. She has the best mortgage brokers business in town. In fact Marc and I, and many of our friends, have all relied on her to sort out our mortgages and to handle all the insurance malarkey that it entails. She is a demon at the mortgages and got us the best deal around. You tell Mrs. Spoons you want a mortgage and the next thing you know you have your own home. She is the best. I think I’ve bigged them up enough so on to their trip. We were extremely excited about them coming out to visit. The excitement reached ‘fever pitch’ when collecting them at the airport we bumped in to Nick Hornby and Matt Lucas as Neil and Sue had been hobnobbing with them on their flight. Their trip was off to a flying start! (How many puns can Emma get in? – Marc)

As we had such a jam packed week I thought I’d give you my top ten highlights of their trip (in no particular order).

1. Doubletree Bar - Neil and Sue were staying in a hotel just down the road from our place. This was to become our home from home as every night we ended up at the Doubletree Hotel bar enjoying a nightcap. It would normally be just us in there. The bartender would pretend not to mind us rolling in every night just as it was closing, thereby forcing her to keep it open and stay later. We weren’t happy one night mind to get back and discover a whole host of people in there, in our favourite seats. Luckily these new found patrons didn’t last long and it was back to us being the sole occupants of the Doubletree Jazz Lounge. Come to think of it though, I never saw one bit of Jazz in there.

2. Presents – Now obviously we’re not just bigging up their trip as they bought us presents but they did come supplied with some ace stuff. Lots of lovely English chocolate bars. I hate American chocolate and have discovered that this is because it’s made with sour milk, not proper milk like back home. Hence why it tastes horrible. Sue came supplied with lots of magazines for me and they had kindly got Marc the new Russell T Davies book. This was met with near on hysteria from Marc. Neil told him he wasn’t allowed to start reading it until after they’d left as otherwise he wouldn’t be able to put it down and we’d not see Marc for the rest of the week. Marc managed to restrain from reading it for all of 2 hours. I had to force it out of his hands most nights in order for him to go to sleep. He’d already finished it before they left.

3. Neil’s beach cruiser experience – We decided to hire bikes one day and cycle up the coast to a restaurant on the edge of Malibu for lunch. Neil decided to hire a proper beach cruiser (the ones where you cycle backwards to brake). It looked the bomb and all seemed good as we set off. The bike path along the beach is pretty much flat all the way, bar a couple of tiny minor inclines. It was here that Neil discovered an issue with his bike. Any sort of uphill motion would for some reason make the brakes come on and bring Neil to a complete standstill. Neil therefore had to take any hills extremely slowly whilst we all waited patiently for him, trying not to laugh too much.

4. Lunch with George Clooney – Well sort of. This took place at the aforementioned restaurant in Malibu. We were relaxing with cocktails when Sue overheard a nearby table saying George Clooney was here. Obviously we acted cool and unbothered and tried to nonchalantly gaze around the restaurant to spot him. Unfortunately we couldn’t see him anywhere so after a delicious meal we decided to head back. Typically as we were hopping on to our bikes we heard them call out “George, your table is now ready”. So close, but yet so far….

5. The Number plate game – Neil always seems to have some sort of number plate game for whatever country he is in. It was therefore no surprise to learn he had a US version. For this game you had to see a number plate from every state. A very hard feat to accomplish I tell you. Somehow I got completely hooked on this game and started avidly looking at every number plate. During our bike ride, we spotted a plate that Neil didn’t have but we couldn’t be sure as the car sped off. Due to Neil’s bike not being the fastest of machines he uttered the cry of “Em – follow that car!” so off I sped after it on my bike. I have never cycled so fast in my life. I felt like James Bond. But a girl version and on a bike, not in a super douper Aston Martin. After several minutes I started to gain on him (as he began to slow down to be honest, not due to my speed) he then did a U turn and went straight back past me and parked up. I needn’t have bothered! But it was a State we didn’t have so it was high fives all round. Neil didn’t manage to see all 50 states during his stay, so has passed on the list to me to see if I can get the remaining few. I’ve only found one since he left – I think I need to up my game.

6. Cocktails at the Penthouse – There’s a lovely bar opened up in Santa Monica called the Penthouse which resides at the top (as you probably guessed) of a very plush hotel, overlooking the Santa Monica and Malibu coastline. It’s a lovely place to have a few cocktails, take in the sunset and people watch. It’s also where you find a lot of the stereotypical LA people i.e. Plastic Fantastic. We estimated that at least 50% of the people in there had had some work done, and while in the restrooms you would hear ladies discussing their ‘friends’ bodged facelifts. Brilliant.

7. LA Galaxy game sans Beckham – Anyone who knows the Witherows will know they like a bit of football, so Marc had sorted us out tickets to see LA Galaxy. It was going to be an interesting game as Beckham wasn’t playing, and Donovan wouldn’t be playing for much of the game due to International call ups so we were keen to see how the team coped without their Chief. They didn’t disappoint. It was an exciting game, made even more so with copious amounts of beer throughout the game, free hot dogs, free footballs and the final contestants for the Miss LA Galaxy title vying for our votes. That last one was obviously more interesting for the boys than Sue and I.

8. Converting Neil in to an X Factor Fan – Marc and I have to confess that we do still watch X Factor even though we’re over here. We can’t help it. We love it. Sue is also a fan. So after getting back from the LA Galaxy game we decided to head back to our place and order a takeaway and watch the latest X Factor installment. Neil ‘claimed’ he hated the show but was happy for us to watch it as Marc had given him Doctor Who books to read instead. For someone who disliked the show he seemed to enjoy commenting on the performances as much as the rest of us and I have a feeling that Doctor Who book was a front. I think his favourite act was Daniel. We all know the truth Neil, stand up and be proud of your love for the X Factor!

9. Dinner at Gordon Ramsey’s new LA restaurant – Neil and Sue very kindly took us out to Gordon Ramsey’s restaurant “The London” on their last night. We couldn’t wait to go and it was definitely the highlight of the week for me. It’s part of this swanky hotel over in West Hollywood and had received rave reviews since it opened. Well some reviews had complained the portion sizes were too small, but this is Americans who are used to an average portion being able to serve a family of 5 for a week we’re talking about. Sue just emailed me to tell me it’s just received a Michelin star. Well deserved I say. The setting was gorgeous; with views out over Hollywood and a few Hollywood actors thrown in to boot (we all recognized a couple but none of us knew their names – impressive stuff hey?) We decided to opt for the 7 course tasting menu. They let Marc change the first course of Sweetcorn soup for an almond soup - as I’m sure you have all heard Marc’s thoughts on sweetcorn being the work of the devil, so we knew we were on to a winner. The food was fantastic and truly delicious. The only course I didn’t like was one of the two dessert courses – an orange pudding thing. But that is only because I’m not a great fan of oranges so I can’t hold this against them. The service was superb and we’ve even promised to bring one of the waiters a box of Oatabix over from the UK for him.

10. Neil and Sue – ‘Nuff said.

I did aim to keep this blog short but as you can see I failed miserably. Will leave it to Marc next time.

Emma x