#7 Moving to Greece

Once I had broken the chains and left Edinburgh, apparently London just wasn't far enough.

It was the summer of 1998 when I left my home city for the bright lights of London. I'd go into more detail about it, but it appears further up my Top Ten, so you'll just have to wait.

I was working and living in a bar in central London and had been seeing a beautiful girl from New Zealand called Dionne. She, along with three other friends, had decided that since it was summertime, they were going to carry on their travels and see a bit more of Europe. They'd headed off to Turkey and were then going to Greece afterwards.

I was gutted at having met such an amazing girl, only to have her disappear on me, but I understood why. I contented myself with tearing it up with the rest of the guys that were still at The Cittie of Yorke. That was the summer I was taught how to do the Haka. At 2am. In the middle of the legal district. Drunk. Stark naked, except for my trainers. What can I say? Boys will be boys and a dare's a dare.

So it's safe to say that I was still having fun and getting on with life without Dionne. It didn't stop me thinking about her, but what good did it do to just mope around? I had resigned myself to her departure pretty well, when early one saturday morning, out of the blue, I got a shout from upstairs in the office from the manager, Stuart. He said that Dionne was on line 1 for me. More than a little surprised, but excited, I picked up. The line wasn't great, but I could still hear her. She told me that they'd had a great time in Turkey, but now that they'd come to Greece and had gotten jobs and accommodation, that something was missing - me.

I was quite taken aback. I knew I had been missing her, but I had figured that this was more me than her. She didn't waste any time and blurted out that she wanted me to join her. The impulsive side of me jumped straight in and I agreed instantly. We spoke until her phone card ran out and then I headed up to the office with a massive grin slapped all over my face.

As soon as I walked into the office, Stuart looked up at me with a hacked-off expression of resignation and said: "Are you here to hand in your notice then?" I looked back at him, thinking 'I should probably try and look like I'm sad to be doing this to him', but I just couldn't manage it. "Yeah. I'm afraid so," I said, "sorry." He just looked at me and said: "Don't worry about it - this isn't the first time it's happened." When I thought about it later, the bar was staffed almost entirely by Aussies and Kiwis who were on working-holiday visas, so I would imagine that it had happened to him every year.

The following week, I had my flight booked for Athens, I had packed up my gear and said my goodbyes to everybody at the bar and headed to Luton Airport. The train journey was expensive and my leaving party had wiped out a lot of the money I'd had left. I hadn't saved any, because I didn't know I was going travelling. My calculations had told me that I had just enough to cover my trip out to the island and in my last phone call to Dionne, she had told me that I would be starting work in the same place as her a day or two after I arrived - provided that the restaurant owner liked me, obviously.

I got on the easyJet plane and tried to settle in to my overnight flight, despite my growing excitement. We landed at Athens Airport around 5.30am and I patiently waited to get my luggage. While I was hanging around the baggage carousel, I began to wonder if there was anywhere open yet to change Sterling into Drachmas. I had figured there probably wasn't, but as luck would have it, even at 6am, there was one bureau de change that had been open all night long. It was around then that my new-found luck deserted me completely. When I went to search for my wallet, it was nowhere to be found. I checked every pocket. Then I checked every bag. Then I checked the whole lot again, twice. I still couldn't find it. My heart had sank. Here I was in a foreign country, with no money, no travel insurance, no i.d. except my passport and I didn't speak the language.

I went outside and lit up a cigarette. While I was stood there, I realised that, since I had been limited by the funds I'd had at such short notice and had only been able to afford a one-way ticket, that I had better shoulder my bergan (very large army-style rucksack) and get my arse to the ferry port. I didn't even know what the port was called or where it was.

The port of Piraeus is 12 km from the airport and I was pointed in the right direction by a friendly policeman who spoke very good English. I noticed straight away that he had actually pointed me towards the bus stop, but found a map there that helped me quite a lot, although being a bus stop map, it gave no clear indication of the distances involved. There was nothing else for it, but to saddle up and start marching.

It was a little after 6am when I began and the sky was getting light, but the sun was yet to make an appearance. The few cars on the main road still had their headlights on. As I stomped along, my mood began to improve considerably as I thought about where I was and what I was doing. Every time I passed a bus stop, I would stop and check on the basic map there (if it still had one) and then carry on.

I was getting hot and sweaty and was already tired from the late departure from London and the lack of sleep, but I was doing fine. That is, until around 7.30am, when the sun decided to make an appearance. It was by then fully light and the first rays of sun were now coming over the tops of the hills and the buildings off to my right. As I walked along, I noticed something rather strange - most of the buildings seemed to be under construction. Those that weren't fenced off completely still had the odd pile of materials lying around and almost all still had the steel rods sticking out of the corners of the flat-roofed structures. I found out later that summer that this is because the owners don't have to pay tax on their buildings until they are completed, so most of them leave these steel rods there in order to convince government officials that there's still another storey to go on top.

By the time I was almost into Piraeus, I felt like I was dying from heat exhaustion - and it was only 9am! The heat from the sun combined with my forced march had drained me completely. I remember thinking to myself: "If this is what it's like at 9 in the morning, what the hell is it going to be like at midday?!" I found a shady spot near the bus terminal there and flopped on my bergan. I had not long moved from Edinburgh and had spent my time in London struggling to acclimatise to their weather.

As I lay there on my bags in the heat, I began to assess the problem. I had no number for Dionne and no money to call her, even if I did. I couldn't call my parents and, I thought, even if I could, they had no way of getting any money to me. I was stuck.

I've never really gotten very stressed in situations like this. I don't see the point. By this point in proceedings, my feet have already left the 'roof of the dentist's' and I'm in mid-air waiting to hit the ground - it's either going to be a good landing or a bad one. Either way, there's no going back.

Wondering what to do next, I started looking around for the ferry offices to get prices for a ticket. I had no choice, but to try and figure out how to get to the island. As I was wandering around, I passed a couple in their late twenties, chatting away to each other in English. I barely thought about it, swallowed my pride and walked straight up to them.

"Hi. Sorry to bother you. I couldn't help overhearing you speaking English and I wondered if I could ask for your help?" I said. The two of them looked at me with barely a fraction of the suspicion that this kind of opening gambit would elicit back in the UK. I explained to them what had happened and what I was doing there and I think they were so touched by my romantic, yet nearly-tragic tale that they took pity on me. That, or I was seriously starting to look rough and was stinking by then. They gave me 20,000 Drachmas and I insisted on taking their address, so that I could return the money once I had reached the island. They said it wasn't necessary, but I wouldn't let it go. I didn't like the idea of scrounging off of anybody, let alone some loved-up couple who could well have been on their honeymoon.

I said as many sincere 'thank-you's as I could and left them to their holiday. Now that I had some money, I had to find me a ticket office. I checked all the different lines that went to the island of Paros and, since they all cost about the same, I went for the one that was leaving next.

I'd had no idea how much 20,000 Drachmas was worth at the time (turned out it was around £40), but was ecstatic when I got my ferry ticket for only 8,000 of them. When I walked around the shops and restaurants by the quayside, found that I had enough money for some lunch, water and even a packet of cigarettes. This made my day, since I had finished my last one a couple of kilometres from the airport.

I now had all I needed and after eating and drinking, I sat in the shade and watched this busy port bustle about its day, waiting for my ferry to dock. Most of my friends know that I've never been a fan of boats or the sea and I had had a particularly horrible crossing from The Hook of Holland to Harwich back in 1996 and I was now filled with memories of this as I got myself up and into the queue for the ferry. This example of sea-going craft wasn't in half as good nick as the one from back then, so I was getting more and more apprehensive as I boarded the ferry. Once we had made it out of port and into the open sea, I calmed slightly, mainly due to being filled with huge excitement that I was now finally on my way and the sun was shining down hard on me out on the open deck.

From Piraeus to Paros only took a little over six hours and we had made a few stops along the way. I was already in tourist mode, as I watched us pass by beautiful island after beautiful island. Each island port that we stopped was a stunning vision from the top deck of the ship. In between the islands, I was engrossed by the dolphins riding the bow waves and the rich colours of the deep blues of the water. I had only ever seen dark green or grey, angry-looking seas before and was surprised to find myself with the urge to dive right in.

We pulled into Parikia, the main town on Paros and its port, around 5pm and I was already well-up in the queue to get off while the ship did an ungainly three-point-turn and docked backwards into the quayside. This had been roughly the time I'd told Dionne that I should be arriving, so I only hoped that she would be waiting. As I waited for various cars and pick-ups to get themselves off the ferry, I spotted her waiting next to a very old-looking windmill about a hundred yards away. Everyone who didn't look Greek was immediately accosted as they hit dry land by an army of kamakis (those, sometimes sleazy, Greek men who stand around outside restaurants, and the like, chatting up passing women to come and sample their wares, which of course are always 'the best in all of Greece!')

These kamakis were touting accommodation and some bars and restaurants that were, of course, perfect for the weary traveller. Once I had repeated several times that I had somewhere booked already, I managed to fight my way through them to Dionne. I dumped the bergan at my feet and we threw ourselves into a tight embrace. I guessed I had been wrong - she had obviously been missing me way more than I had thought. After the hugs and kisses, she told me that she was technically still working, so we had to go. I picked up my gear and we headed off to the left of the big windmill and down the seafront, straight by what I supposed passed for a town square.

The main drag was lined with small boats and little concrete jetties on my left and several Greek-style coffee shops and tourist shops to my right. Parikia itself is a natural bay and the road followed the curve of the bay all the way round to the other side and out of sight. We walked along, chatting excitedly about my new surroundings and I relayed the story of my ferry journey. I was keeping the tale of my near-disaster until later. After a short while, we arrived at a restaurant which formed one side of a courtyard with a sun-bleached fountain in the centre of it. The restaurant was called The Cactus and was run by a Greek guy called Yannis and his Yorkshire wife, Vanessa.

I had to wait around while the people in the restaurant were served and then left and then I was sat down for an informal interview. I got the job without any problem and was told to start the following day. Dionne was just finishing up, so I waited for her and she lead me to our accommodation. We walked up through the main street of Parikia and began to wind upwards through narrow, white-washed streets. The paths between the houses got steeper and narrower the further we went. Eventually we came to a three-storey building and Dionne rang the bell. An old Greek woman came to the door and started spouting off enthusiastically in Greek, before trying out her limited English. We were handed another key for me and she showed us up the stairs by the side of her front door. They lead all the way to the rooftop, where she showed Dionne and I into a double room with a few bits of furniture in it and wooden shutters where the windows should be.

I was happy enough just to be somewhere I could dump the bergan. There was a flat roof outside, about three times the size of the room. It had a couple of washing lines stretched across it, some solar panels in the corner and a little table and chairs. When I looked around the views we could see, I realised that we had gotten ourselves that highest room in the town. The only things higher than we were were a couple of very small, blue-domed churches.

When she left us, I went in and flopped on the bed. Dionne and I were going out for dinner with the girls and Nick (another Aussie friend from London). I got showered and changed and off we went. After a very nice meal and some fairly strong Greek wine, the evening seemed to me to let out a sigh; like someone undoing their belt a notch after a big meal. We drank some more and laughed and joked late into the night. It was one of the nicest, most chilled-out evenings I've ever had.

I was awakened at around 7am by an almighty crashing sound. I sat bolt upright in the bed, wondering what the hell could be making such a loud noise. Dionne sleepily reached over and touched my back. She mumbled into her pillow: "It's okay - it's just the morning ferry dropping anchor. It does that every morning." Now that I was awake, I had to get up, so I left Dionne snoozing and went out onto the rooftop for a cigarette. The sun was only just cresting the small hills that surrounded the town. It was already very warm. As I stood there in my shorts, stretching, I looked around me and started to giggle.

Something had occurred to me that I still couldn't quite believe. Something that would make me giggle every morning for at least another month. I lived here. I had no address in London or anywhere else. It wasn't like I was just on a gap year and would return to my parents' house. This was it. This was my address.

This is just the story of me getting there. The rest of that amazing summer is a whole other story.

#8 Boston, Fenway Park and the Red Sox...

They hadn't won a world series in 86 years!

The legendary "curse of the bambino" - Babe Ruth - had haunted the Boston Red Sox baseball team since 1919, after their then owner, Harry Frazee, sold their star player to the New York Yankees for a measly $100,000. All so that his missus could finance a Broadway musical; a musical that ended up being a complete flop anyway. When Ruth was sold, against his will, he "cursed" the Red Sox, saying that they'd never win another World Series without him. He was right. His last year at Boston - 1918 - was their last championship while he was alive. He ended his days a New York Yankee, who went on to become the dominant force in baseball for the rest of the century.

This was pretty much one of the first things I learned when I became part of the "Red Sox Nation" back in 2001. I have been a fan of North American sports since I was 5 or 6 years old. I am now a mad-daft fan of baseball, ice hockey, American football and basketball. I came to each one at a totally different time in my life and each in their own unique set of circumstances.

My love of baseball started when I was living on the island of Paros, Greece, in 1998. That was the year that Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire captured the imagination of baseball fans everywhere by slugging it out to see who could get the most home runs in a season. The record was definitely going to go... the only two questions on everyones lips were by how many runs was the record going to be smashed by and which of these two amazing players was going to win out?

To be fair, I'd never really noticed baseball before, but the bar I frequented was owned by a Greek-American called Costas, who had relocated there from Los Angeles, to get back to his roots and to escape the madness that is California life. He had the TV on everyday, tuned into some sports network that showed the games. I spent a lot of days there drinking free beer and watching the games with him. He became my unofficial baseball tutor.

That was where my love of the game began, but when I got back to London that winter, it disappeared from my life after the World Series had ended - not that anyone really noticed it happening. Apart from the fans of the teams taking part in the post-season, the rest of us were totally absorbed in the "slug-fest" and couldn't have cared less about what entire teams were doing. It was the most compelling, gladiatorial struggle between two professional sportsmen since Borg and MacEnroe.

Anyway, that was where it all started. I still didn't follow a team, but when I started university in 2001, one was chosen for me. I met a really nice young girl from Boston with a typically Boston-Irish name, called Shannon and we became good friends. She was a Red Sox fan and spent many an afternoon extolling the virtues of her city and her team. The truth wasn't sugar-coated though - she warned me about the inherited pain of becoming a Red Sox fan, the fact that we never win and the fact that we hadn't won since 1918. I was well-warned about the heartache of so many lost World Series; like the gut-wrenching, emotional rollercoaster of the '86 WS, when the Red Sox lost to the New York Mets in dramatic fashion at Shea Stadium in New York.

I had been a Hibernian fan for many years and figured that this made me the ideal candidate to join the ranks of the Red Sox Nation. My Edinburgh football team hadn't won the league since 1952 and their last Scottish FA Cup win was 50 years before that - I was used to disappointment. But the dogged determination to follow each of these teams til we die is what makes us some of the best sports fans in the world. I can't help wondering if the Irish connection to both teams has something to do with the obstinate dedication to the cause - no matter how hopeless it might seem.

When the chance came up in 2004 for a 10-day holiday to Boston and then onto Niagara Falls, I started making instant plans for a trip to Fenway Park to see my beloved Red Sox. There are loads of games a season to go and watch and they're very well varied between road and home games. The team were playing a 3-game home series against the Detroit Tigers and after a quick look at the schedule, I chose the game that had my favourite pitcher on the mound, Pedro Martinez.

My missus, Fawzia, had been told by some American colleagues that in order to get tickets, it was best to get down to Fenway early. Since the game was starting in the early evening, we got down there for around lunchtime and managed to get a spot that was only around 30 or 40 people from the front of the queue. The weather was hot, humid and mixed with the grimy air from interstate-90, which is right over the other side of the small row of buildings opposite the stadium. The Lansdowne Street side of Fenway Park is all part of the iconic "Green Monster" - a 37-foot-high green wall that forms the left field boundary and contains and old-fashioned manual scoreboard. The queue we were in was the other side of the Green Monster and I couldn't stop looking up at it, thinking: "I can't believe I'm actually here!"

I already had a Red Sox baseball cap, that had seen better days, but Fawzia didn't look like much of a fan, so I tempted her into going into one of the Red Sox stores strategically placed across from the ticket office. We asked some of the lovely people in line to keep our place while we went to the store and they agreed, but I got the impression that it wouldn't have mattered if we hadn't. I got myself a new cap and Fawzia got herself a Red Sox vest top. She got a huge cheer from those around us in the queue for managing to change into it under her other t-shirt.

After waiting a couple of hours for the ticket office to open, we filed in and got our tickets. Everyone else just seemed to be staying inside the stadium, so we did the same. There were plenty of little food and drink stalls tucked away underneath the stands, so we got ourselves some of both and wandered around, drinking in the atmosphere of this oldest of ball parks. It is a well-known fact amongst my friends that I have no sense of smell whatsoever, but I got the distinct impression that, for once, I was really missing out on something. Fenway Park looks like it should smell of baseball, in the venerable sense.

We found our seats, on the lower tier, way out in the right field, just past the famous "Pesky's Pole" (the right field foul pole named after Johnny Pesky - a Red Sox player in the '40s and '50s). We had a pretty good view of the field and a great view of the Green Monster and the bull pen (where the pitchers warm up during the game). The teams came out to warm up and I got a close up view of Pedro warming up with teammates and occasionally tossing a baseball to one of the hollering kids hanging over the small perimeter wall around the field.

Everytime I have visited the United States I have felt the same sense of awe borne out of the fact that we here in the UK only ever see the US on television or in the cinema, and so it has always felt like wandering around on the world's biggest movie set to me. This was no different. Once the ballpark began to fill up and the noises got more intense as game time approached, the sense of being a part of something intensified. I had been to see Arsenal versus Manchester United at Highbury some years before and, like that night, there are certain events, in certain places that just cannot be replicated or equalled. Fenway was one of those times. The feeling that I was being included in the American national past time was overwhelming.

It was hot and sticky, but made bearable by the army of vendors walking around amongst the fans selling beers and hot dogs. The sun still shone over the top of the main stand as the players came out to take the field. The game itself was amazing, but I won't bore you with a play-by-play account... suffice it to say that the Red Sox came out victorious 5-1 and the difference between a televised game and the real thing was immeasurable. One thing I never knew until we went there was that in the US, simply because of the distances involved, they have no idea of the concept of "away fans" and this meant that unless the team was up against it, then there was very little in the way of chanting. This, of course, was entirely alien to me. Since I had decided to "represent" that day, I had gone to the match wearing my Arsenal shirt and during the three and a half hours of the game whenever I got a little bit bored (and after a few beers) I would stand up and start singing "ARS-EN-AL, ARS-EN-AL, ARS-EN-AAAALL!" This went down quite well with the Red Sox fans nearby, who blatantly hadn't a clue what this crazy Brit was shouting about, but who always welcome something a little out of the ordinary, in much the same way as a streaker always gets a cheer at a football match here in the UK.

I knew the Red Sox were having a good season and some of our players were hitting their top form at the best time of the year, since there were only around 30+ games left of the regular season. We finished second in the American League that year and made it into the post-season in the "wild card" slot, those damned Yankees having pipped us to the league pennant by just three games. While the whole of the Red Sox Nation was overjoyed to see the team get to the post-season at all, it was, of course, met with the same feelings of dread that the team would only go ahead and do the same thing they had been doing to Red Sox fans since 1918 - get tantalisingly close and then blow it. Again. Just to keep us all topped-up with heartache.

It would be very easy to sit here and say that I knew something was different now that I know the outcome of the whole thing, but with the players we had, there was definitely a buzz around the online chatrooms and in the media. Would this end up being one of those years where they took us to the very brink and then didn't win it? A curse is a curse, after all.

Then the team manager, Terry Francona, and the boys really started messing with our heads properly. To get to the American League Championship Series (which is a semi-final for the World Series - which , in turn, is always played against the winners of the National League Championship Series) we had to get through the Anaheim Angels... which we did in stunning form, winning that best-of-five series 3-0.

And who should be waiting for us in the ALCS... it just had to be the bloody New York Yankees and because they had finished above us in our division they had four of the seven possible games at home. Yankee Stadium remains the most hostile place for the Red Sox to visit and the prospects were not looking good. To cut this part short, we won an amazing ALCS 4-3, having been 3-0 down and are the only team to have ever come from 3-0 down in the post-season to win.

Once the Yankees were out of the way, the rest was agonising. We came up against the St. Louis Cardinals, who had finished the season with the best record in baseball, with 105 wins and only 57 losses.

The Boston Red Sox team of 2004 blew them away four-zip and won their first World Series in 86 years and, finally, laying to rest the curse of the bambino.

I know that I had nothing personally to do with their success and I wasn't even there for any of their momentous post-season matches, but I have always been left with a sense of having been a part of it. I had been a part of that season.

I still like to think that it was damned nice of them to wait until I'd been to see them play before they went ahead and won it.

With the curse broken, they only went ahead and won it again in 2007. Strangely enough, the Yankees won it in 2000 - the actual last year of the twentieth century - and haven't won it since.
There is some justice in the universe after all.