Happy New Year and a Catch-up on October 2024

Happy New Year! I hope the first couple of weeks of 2025 have been kind to you, especially if 2024 was a challenge.

Was it really as far back as 4th October the last time I wrote a blog post? Eek! I have no idea where the last three months of 2024 went. I had so many exciting things to share with you but life was so hectic that I never managed to find a spare moment to blog about any of them. So let me do a photo-filled catch-up now but, rather than bombard you with everything at once, I'll split it into three posts, one per month.

October was a particularly chaotic month as I needed to cram everything into the first half due to a big holiday. More on that shortly. Last year I was honoured to speak on a panel of contemporary romance authors at the East Riding Festival of Words and, this year, they invited me back to host a session with the fabulous Milly Johnson. I've met Milly a couple of times before but have only managed to have brief conversations so it was lovely to spend a lot longer in her company. She's such an engaging speaker and it was a privilege to be asked to host the session.

I took my bestie, Sharon Booth, along with me and we hoped to have a catch-up meal afterwards. We thought it would be easily to find somewhere to eat but we were too late for the first two (or was it three?) places we pulled into before finally finding a pub in a village still serving food. The woman behind the bar was welcoming but we very clearly got the sense from the customers that we were non-locals in a very local pub. Several more locals came in as we finished eating and we ended up being surrounded with them encroaching on our table without asking and, fearing getting trapped in a corner, we abandoned our drinks and left. It was a while before Sharon's train so we drove to Filey Country Park but it was a tad chilly and we only managed five minutes on the bench before retreating back to the car.

The following night, I took my daughter to see Will Young at Scarborough Spa. I've been a fan of his since he first appeared on the X-Factor many years ago and this is the third time I've seen him in concert. He was doing a series of intimate gigs in theatres and similar with just him and his keyboard player. I'd never been in this particular theatre and it was pretty snug, especially on the balcony where we were. We arrived about ten minutes before the warm-up act was due to start and joined the end of our row. There were four people who needed to let us past and, my goodness, did the second couple make a fuss about it, muttering and moaning as they reluctantly stood up to let us through. We're not talking an elderly couple with mobility issues here – just a pair who clearly didn't want to move. We removed our coats and my daughter, who was sitting beside the woman in the couple, managed to get her coat draped over the arm, resulting in a nasty comment from the woman as she shoved the coat away. Seriously. My daughter's only seventeen and had done nothing wrong.

The support act was an American singer called Casey McQuillen who had a stunning voice and was very chatty. She shared some body image challenges she had after gaining a lot of weight during lockdown and sang a song called Skinny about this which had me in tears, as well as some shocking stories about men who'd commented on her social media telling her that she wasn't hot but might be if she lost weight. How disgusting is that? Anyway, my daughter and I thought she was talented, lovely and inspiring. When she said she'd be selling CDs in the foyer at the interval and would love to meet people, we knew we definitely wanted to meet her. After the fuss that couple had made about giving us access to our seats, we wondered if we could go the other way - only two people to that side - but it took us up and across the back where there were lots of lights set up. Somebody small and slim might have made it past the lights without knocking anything over but it was obvious it wasn't a proper exit and we were going to need to go past grumpy couple. The abuse we got from the woman, muttering about how we could have gone the other way. We couldn't! There were lights there. I really couldn't understand their attitude towards us. If you sit in the middle of a row in a theatre or cinema, you know you are probably going to need to move to let people past. You don't own the leg space. And it's not like we were up and down constantly – arrival and interval and that was it!

I was quite shaken by how nasty the woman had been and then my daughter shared that she'd been muttering to her husband throughout Casey's set about how overweight she was and how she hadn't paid to listen to 'that'. THAT! Said in a disgusted voice. What is wrong with people? We did meet Casey and had our photo taken with her but I was shaking when I returned to our seats, knowing we'd get abuse again, which we did. And do you know what happened when the gig was over and everyone was leaving? They just sat there so we couldn't get past. So we sat there until they moved. It's such a shame as it really spoilt what should have been an amazing evening because, even though he apologised that he had a sore throat and actually had to cut his set short, Will Young was brilliant. That voice!

The next day, hubby and I went into York to see some ghosts. 'Ghosts in the Gardens' was an art installation organised through York Bid with 21 sites around the city centre where you could discover 45 different 'ghosts' - sculptures of people and animals made from narrow gauge wire mesh. You can read more about it here and it looks like it's returning in 2025, which is great news.

We didn't manage to find all the ghosts and we missed out some of the outlying ones but I'm pleased with the ones we did find and hope you enjoy the photos I've shared.

A few days later, I was in Florida! We'd originally had a family holiday-of-a-lifetime booked to Orlando for early December 2023 figuring it would be cooler and quieter as well as lovely to see Disney decorated for Christmas (I went in late November 2000 and it was fabulous). Our daughter would have been in her first year at sixth form college and I'd specifically asked about their attitude towards holidays during term time when we'd had a tour. I'd been told that they were more ideally avoided but there wasn't the big issue made of them that schools make. The daughter then started college that September and the first thing the principal said was that they don't tolerate absence at all and anyone dropping below a certain absence level will be kicked out of college. What a fabulous welcome on day one! She would have dropped below that level and we couldn't risk her being thrown out of college so we moved our holiday to this October across the half term and the reading week the college have added to that.

Disney done up for Halloween and in autumnal colours was fabulous to see but it was hotter than we'd have liked as well as being busier than expected. I remember standing in queues when I went in 2000 but nothing like this. Some queues were longer than two hours and it's exhausting standing for that long.

Across the fortnight, we walked over 100 miles around theme parks. We loved Disney and Kennedy Space Centre. We also loved the shopping centre Disney Springs and Celebration - the town set up by Disney. However, we didn't rate Universal Studios quite as much. It wasn't as clean and looked a little unloved in parts, we didn't find the staff quite so friendly and we had some terrible food with the most horrendous wait which kind of put us off. We had tickets to visit Disney and Universal as many times as we wanted across the fortnight but ended up only spending two days at Universal. Some people will love it but we've not really into enormous rollercoaster rides and there are some amazing-looking ones at Universal, all of which we skipped as, even if we had been fans, the queue times were shocking. I don't know about you, but there's no way I can queue for 3 hours without needing the loo!

We had some wonderful experiences at Disney, a great day at Icon Park where we visited Tussauds, the SeaLife Centre and went on the wheel, and hubby and I had the best time on an airboat searching for alligators at Boggy Creek while the daughter had a down day in the apartment studying but I thought a more interesting blog post might be to share some of the dramatic and traumatic moments while we were away. Because there were a lot of them!

The first was the trauma of getting our hire car and being completely ripped off with it. We'd booked Hertz and went to the wrong desk so were directed across the airport to a different desk, only for them to say it wasn't them either! Turned out we could collect our car through them and could have done at the first desk too! Anyway, we were all geared up for not falling into the scam of upgrading the booked vehicle, only to discover that you'd have got the upgrade for free because they didn't have a car available of the size you'd booked, but this didn't happen. Instead, we bought a toll pass for $140 only to discover that the tolls had been suspended all week by the Governor of Florida on the back of the recent hurricane. Two days later, the suspension was lifted but there weren't any tolls between our resort and Disney - just the roads to Kennedy Space Center, Universal and back to the airport. I didn't add it up but the tolls we encountered would have added up to somewhere between $10-20. Grr! And we were talked into paying for them to refuel the car at a cost of just over $40 only to discover that it cost more like $25 to fill it. Double grr!

When we made it to the car, hot and stressed, it smelled horrible, the key wouldn't come out the ignition after we started it, and the sat nav wouldn't work. So we had to track down someone to help us, lend us a TomTom (which we later ditched in favour of Google Maps on the phone). Getting out of the airport in the dark with an ineffective TomTom and driving on the wrong side of the car and the road was not great and we ended up doing a big loop and finding ourselves back in the airport.

Finally we made it to our resort – a place called Holiday Inn at Orange Lake Resort – a little after 7pm US time but 2am for us so we were shattered. Check-in took an eternity. I don't know what they were doing but I've never known check-in to take so long in any hotel I've ever stayed in. We were told we needed to then move onto another desk so they could activate our wrist bands. I had my hands full with passports, bands, purse, map and paperwork as we were bundled over to a second desk. The pleasant young lad serving was taking forever to activate three wrist bands - surely an easy job. He kept asking questions about our plans and frowning when we said we'd already booked our park tickets. Is there anything else you want to do while you're here? No - more than enough with the parks and Kennedy. Would you be interested if I gave you $400 of vouchers to spend on the resort and $200 in the shop? Yes, of course! And then I realised the catch and where the whole conversation had been heading... We have a couple of spaces left on our resort tour tomorrow. This was a timeshare! It was heading for 3am at this point for us and the last thing we wanted was a sales pitch. The pleasant young lad suddenly wasn't so pleasant when we refused to be signed up and said we were shattered and just wanted to check in.

A couple of days later, I went into my purse for my debit card and it wasn't there. Panic! You know that awful sinking feeling when you check every zipped compartment and every inch of your bag but it's not there. Lost? Stolen? Thank goodness for banking apps as I was immediately able to freeze the card until we were back at the apartment to search through everything. I'd used it at check-in but not since. Perhaps it had got lodged in one of the passports? Perhaps I'd put it in my other purse with my UK currency? It was nowhere to be found and I concluded I must have dropped it in the hotel lobby in the farce of being shuffled from one desk to another but security weren't open. It took several days to finally be there when they were open but nobody had handed it in. To this day, I don't know what actually happened to it but nobody spent anything on it and it got cancelled.

The first Disney Park we visited was Animal Kingdom. If there's anything winged that's going to bite, it'll munch me. Midges and mosquitos love feasting on me and I always have an allergic reaction to them so have to drench myself in spray when they come out on evenings but I didn't think to spray myself for Animal Kingdom which was a big mistake because something bit me and I had the worst reaction I've ever had. At first it was red and itchy, then the redness grew. By the end of the following day, a small blister had formed which grew and grew until I had the most enormous blister – wider than a pound coin – on my left shin about halfway between my knee and ankle.

Google is your friend at times like this and we'd discovered that blisters weren't anything to be worried about and were the body's natural defence to protecting a bite from infection. But it still looked pretty scary so we poddled over to a pharmacy immediately opposite the resort entrance for some advice. The lovely pharmacist gave me some reassurance that all was good and recommended a cream to put round the edge of the blister which would help heal it. She also told me I couldn't get it wet and I couldn't burst it myself – had to let it go down naturally. I had no intention of doing anything to it myself but the not-getting-wet thing was a pain. We'd deliberately chosen a resort with pools so we could relax in the water after a theme park day and I wasn't going to be able to do that now. I couldn't use the enormous bath in the apartment unless I dangled my leg over the side uncomfortably, and it's pretty much impossible to shower without getting your legs wet so we had to stock up on bandages and clingfilm at Target (supermarket) so I could strap myself up to shower. What a faff! We called my blister Percy the Puss Pocket. Mmmm. Sorry if this makes anyone squeamish. I won't post any photos here although you can spot him in his early formation stages on some of the photos where I'm wearing shorts if you look closely!

Percy the Puss Pocket proved to be a challenge for the whole holiday. He looked gross so I didn't want to wander round in shorts and have him on display. I didn't want him to get irritated by sun lotion or burnt either so I needed to wear longer trousers. I only had 2 pairs - some baggy cotton ones I'd travelled in and some narrower combat-style ones in case of cooler weather. I spent most of the holiday swapping between these (as you'll see from the photos), thankful that the apartment had a washing machine so I could wash them out each night. Percy didn't like the tighter ones as they made him ooze (sorry!) Going on rides was an issue as sometimes there's not much leg room or there are bars across your legs and trying to get settled into a ride without knocking/pressing against Percy wasn't easy.

Then, on the penultimate morning, I woke up and Percy had deflated. No mess on the sheets anywhere. How weird is that? Nearly four months on since that bite, I still have a large circular red mark on my leg. It's faded a bit but I suspect I'll be scarred forever now.

So we have the car trauma, the checking in trauma, losing my debit card and Percy the Puss Pocket but there was still more to come...

All the theme parks have security checks and bag searches for anything flagged, which is completely understandable. When we went into Disney's Animal Kingdom, I got pulled over for a bag search. I found the whole thing very traumatic – that feeling that you've done something wrong and are in big trouble even though you know logically you haven't. It's also humiliating having a stranger remove everything from your bag, especially as a woman when there are personal items in there.

The following day we went to the Magic Kingdom and I got pulled over for a bag search again. I mentioned to the security guard that this had happened twice and asked if there a reason. After he'd been through everything, he said it was my glasses case and I should go through the security the next time holding the case above my head.

It was Epcot next for us and I followed his advice... but was pulled aside again. I was really upset at this point and the security guard was scary. He barely spoke to me and made me feel like a criminal. I couldn't face that every day so I braved asking him again what I was doing wrong and that the previous security guard had told me to hold the glasses case above my head. Turned out I'd misunderstood and I needed to hold it out in front of me so the glasses effectively travelled through security gate ahead of me instead of at the same time, which was what was happening when I had them above my head. I'm pleased to report that this worked from that point onwards but the last security guard had made me feel so low that I burst into tears when I joined hubby and daughter and it took quite a bit to calm me down. So be warned if you visit Disney and have glasses with a magnetic shutting mechanism!

The daughter was eager to meet as many Disney characters as she could and had an autograph book with her but we hadn't appreciated just how long the queues would be. After queuing in the Magic Kingdom for an hour to meet Cinderella and the same again for Tiana with a mystery visiting princess (who the daughter hoped would be Rapunzel and was), I couldn't face many more queues for characters but we did another hour in Epcot for Anna and Elsa from Frozen as at least they were together in the same visit.

After that, it became a balance – rides or characters - and the rides won out. Most of the time, it was a case of the daughter with the character and then the two of us but I did manage to grab a few on my own including a dance with Goofy and a lovely hug with Mickey Mouse. Meeting The Mandalorian and Grogu was my absolute highlight. We were told not to approach him and he'd pick people out if he wanted to talk to them. He spotted the Grogu cover on my phone and chose me. Yay!

I also met Peter Quill aka Star-Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy in Epcot (see previous set of pics) and it was the most excruciatingly embarrassing moment ever. They never break character and I made the mistake of telling him I was there to help him save the galaxy from the baddies. He asked me if I'd seen the baddies and wanted me to describe them. I've seen the films loads but I completely blanked on any names and he just kept asking more and more. Dude! All I wanted was a photo! The daughter was mortified with how completely un-cool I was. I get it. I was mortified too!

Let's continue with my dramas/traumas. On our second day in Universal during our second week, we were nearly done for the day - just taking a few more photos before leaving the park at closing time. I reached into my pocket to take my phone out and it wasn't there. Cue another enormous panic. I knew where I'd left it - in the nearby toilets. I usually put my phone in my pocket or bag in the loo but this particular toilet block had flat-topped toilet roll holders and I remembered putting it on there thinking it wouldn't fall off due to the flat surface. Only I hadn't picked it up. I raced into the toilets and typically the only cubicle being used was the one I'd been in. A woman and a young child came out and I asked if they'd seen a mobile in there. She gave me a very strange look and it was only later I registered that mobiles are cells in the USA so she probably didn't know what I was wittering on about.

In the meantime, hubby and daughter had activated the 'find my phone' function on their phones (cells?) to track mine down and it was very close by. So off they raced into the exiting crowds and I tried to keep up but I couldn't see them because I'm too short (5ft 2") and they were engulfed by people. I couldn't call them because I had no phone so I had the panic of getting lost to add to the panic of the lost phone. Oh, and the fear of what they might say to the people with my phone if they worked out who had it!

I followed the crowds but found myself at the exit barriers and there was no sign of hubby or daughter. Pretty close to tears at this point, I asked a security guard where someone might take a lost phone hoping that whoever had picked up mine had been a good samaritan and that's where I'd find the phone and my family. She directed me to the lost and found and I was so relieved to see hubby at the front of the queue and, moments later, my phone. Phew! But no daughter. She'd gone looking for me! It took a while but eventually we were reunited. Double phew! They decided I needed everything glueing to me after that point and that I also needed to wear baby reins as I was becoming a liability!

The following day, the losing stuff continued. I left my sparkly Minnie Mouse ears in a pouch on a Star Wars simulator ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios but the lovely cast members found them and I got them back. Then later I put the same ears on over my cap. We entered the Muppets Theatre Show and I removed my cap and knocked the ears flying but didn't realise until moments later. Fortunately the cast member standing by the door had picked them up but hadn't seen who'd lost them so I got them back again. They went in my bag after that. The official ears at Disney were $35 but these were a cheap version from Target. I say 'cheap' but they were still $10 and I didn't want to have to replace them.

I'm not the sort of person who loses things. I'm really careful with my belongings but everything seemed to be going wrong this holiday. Despite all that, we did have an amazing time as I said at the start... until the airport going home where several more traumas awaited us.

Every airline seems to have different rules and every airport does too and it's really confusing as a traveller. When we'd travelled out from Manchester Airport, the daughter had made a last-minute decision to put her laptop and college iPad in the suitcases. I've only ever travelled with equipment like this as hand luggage and wasn't sure what the rules were. We were asked about laptops/electronic equipment at check-in and discovered it was fine as long as it was switched off. Typically the daughter hadn't switched hers off so we'd had a suitcase rummage and found them quickly. Coming back, we made sure they were turned off. Except it was different rules at Orlando Airport and the check-in staff said they weren't allowed in our luggage at all. Cue hot and bothered rummaging to find them and load them into my hand luggage. Stressful but okay...

But then he pointed out that one of our cases was too heavy. We had a large baggage allowance and were nowhere near it. Going out, the staff hadn't been bothered how it was distributed across the cases as long as it wasn't over the overall limit when combined. Coming back, we couldn't have any individual cases at more than 23kg. One was 27kg but another was only 16kg so we needed to swap 4kg into that one. Except that was going to be pretty much impossible because we'd bought so many soft toys and other bits and bobs while away that there wasn't a spare inch of room in our cases. Hubby and daughter had no choice but to head into the airport shops to buy another suitcase while I moved to one side with our cases, pouring with sweat and humiliated in front of the rapidly-building queue. They returned later with the cheapest case they could find - a Samsonite business carry on case for a whopping $140. Ouch! We filled that with all the heaviest items from the overloaded case and finally checked in.

That had to be it, surely? Of course not! We went through the gate and discovered there wasn't much on the other side - couple of eateries and a couple of shops. The daughter had eaten before check-in as there was a fast food restaurant there she'd been desperate to try. Hubby wasn't hungry and I didn't want to sit down in one of the two restaurants by myself or as the only one in our party eating so, spotting that one of the eateries did take-out, I ordered loaded chips with a pot of ranch dressing and plonked down on a wooden bench with it, surrounded by all our luggage, while hubby went to look at the couple of shops. He thought the daughter was staying to keep me company but she turned up in the shop too so he came back to me, which was kind of him. I was taking up the whole of the bench with my big pile of chips so I flipped the lid over it with the intention of eating off my knee. Only I'd forgotten I had a huge pot of ranch dressing sitting in the lid and it launched itself at my hooded jacket on the floor in front of me. It went everywhere. And I mean absolutely everywhere. Down the sleeves, in the hood, all over the inside. I honestly don't know how a tub that size managed to empty about four pints of creamy mess onto the only item of clothing I had to keep me warm on the plane, but it did. I burst into tears. The stress of the check-in disaster on top of this was too much. Yes, we could try to wash it out but it would be stained, it would stink, and we wouldn't be able to get the hoodie dry.

They've got some Orlando hoodies in the shop over there, hubby said, trying to placate me. Not in my size! I cried. But thank goodness for America and having some larger bodies as they did have bigger sizes, the hoodies were half price in the sale and very warm and snuggly. So I got a hoodie while the daughter, bless her, did her best to rinse out the worst of the ranch dressing to avoid staining. I'm sorry to report that the jacket didn't recover. I pre-treated it at home and popped it through the washer with a stack of stain remover but it had travelled too many hours in a state and came out the machine a stained mess. But I do love my Orlando hoodie. I'm also sorry to report that I didn't eat my loaded chips after that. My stomach was in knots after the stress of it all and I couldn't force any food down.

It was a night flight and I couldn't sleep on it as it was quite turbulent - nothing major but just steady movement. I have a phobia about people being sick and every time I heard someone cough, I thought they were being sick so I was on edge. Thankfully hubby did manage to sleep which was just as well as he was the driver coming home. There were roadworks and accidents and what should have been about a 3-hour journey home took double that so we were fed up and shattered by the time we made it back. And then it took me a fortnight to recover from jet lag! But we still did have an amazing time ... I promise!

I'll leave it there as we flew back on Halloween, arriving in the UK on 1st November. I'll be back soon with a November update.

Big Disney hugs
Jessica xx