Note before: This is an old “Diary Entry” from the Modem-Help site, re-jigged into the etmg format. The original site is now long gone.

A break from modems, Linux, databases & almost all the rest as I fly to California to witness my son’s marriage to Ms Liisa Golightly...

First “proper” passport, first long-haul flight, first visit to the USA, first dip in the Pacific, first son that got married (and indeed first conscious conversation with his fiancé - that’s another story - plus first meeting with her family), first trip in a speedboat, first public fireworks display, first personal experience with a CD-RW.

Britain & America each have public holidays at almost the same time. In this case England had a Bank Holiday Monday on the 27 August, and this was the day I chose to set off from Nottingham, where I live, to London where my son, Davin Kemp, lives. Davin earns his living as a financial advisor, lives alongside the Royal Victoria Dock & commercially is doing a damn site better than I am, God bless his cotton socks.

America’s holiday in this case was Labor Day & was a week later than the English one - I reckon that America got it right in this case, as the Full Moon (the Harvest Moon, and one of the two strongest Full Moons of the year) was closer to the American Holy Day than to the British one. The wedding was due on the Sunday of this Labor Day weekend.

This was my first visit to Davin’s home, and on the following day I had yet another first when I met Davin’s brother Daniel & his excellent girlfriend Becky, both also for the first time. Daniel shares the same mother as Davin but has a different father. Daniel was to be one of Davin’s 2 Best Men, and Becky one of Liisa’s Bridesmaids.

Liisa had met & talked with me a couple of years ago, but I remembered none of it. I was in a hospital bed, shortly after suffering a heart-attack. At the time I knew neither where I lived nor where I worked, having had an extended period of oxygen deprivation. It was good, therefore, to (re-)make her acquaintance, and smoke my cigarettes on her balcony.

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Alex Kemp