holiday – Steve's Blog

A New England Wedding

On Saturday we attended the wedding of my wife’s nephew. The wedding was held at Butternut Farm Golf Course near Stow in Massachusetts .

But of course we had to get there first.

So at 04:45 on Thursday morning we left the house
At 05:15 we took the Coach from Cheltenham to Heathrow
From Terminal 2 we flew to Reykjavík where we changed planes
From Reykjavík we flow to Boston
Then from Boston we took the Concord Trailways bus to Portland
We were collected in Portland by Rick and taken up to Augusta…. arriving about 24 hours after our alarm had gone of.

On Friday we collected our rental.

The rental - we'd booked a car but got a free upgrade — The rental – we’d booked a car but got a free upgrade

Then we drove about 200 miles down to the Golf course for the rehearsal (Rick was one of the grooms-men).
After the rehearsal we drove over to the Embassy Suites in Marlborough and checked in – we were in one of the premiium suites on the the 6th floor.
Then it was over to The Chateau (which despite it’s name is in fact an Italian Restaurant) for the rehearsal dinner.
Then a final trip back to the suite where we collapsed!

So the day itself dawned.. it was sunny but cool (well what do you expect – it is November after all). We had breakfast – it was a help yourself buffet and was quite good, and there was unlimited coffee which was very good – and then went out and dropped Diane off for her hair appointment – we then tried to find the post office and somewhere that sold alcohol (its all rather restricted in Mass), before going back to the suites and getting ready for the wedding.

Then it was over to the Golf course for the wedding – luckily the weather had held as the wedding was being held outside.

Even though the sun was shining it wasn’t the warmest of days and most of the guests kept their coats on. However the wedding party just had to grin and bear it.

By this time the sun was down behind the trees and things were starting to cool off. Luckily the ceremony wasn’t a huge long drawn out affair – just a couple of readings and a nice little speech by the local Justice Of The Peace. But by the end Ashley was looking a little chilled in her wedding dress and she looked very relieved when she could head back into the club house and warm up.

The wedding reception was held upstairs in the club house where there is a very large room and a bar. Matt and Ashley had asked people to request songs to be played so whilst people got settled and relaxed those songs were playing in the background. There was an open bar with some great bar staff who once I’d ordered a couple of beers just knew what I wanted, and a candy bar (each guest had a small Kilner Jar to put candy in) and a impromptu photo booth.

Once food had been served and eaten the dance floor was opened up and after the traditional first dance, grooms mother’s dancw and brides father’s dance the floor was filled with guests dancing.

At 9:15 the courtesy bus turned up and took everyone back to the Embassy Suites where we basically took over the bar until the end of the evening.

What’s in a name?

There’s just something about the names of places in Maine: Perkin’s Cove, Nubble Rock, Cape Neddick, Cape Porpoise, Goat Island..

They sound like places out of a pirate story, but they’re all very real and we didn’t see a single pirate at all which was a great pity.

We had a very enjoyable and relaxing weekend down at Kennebunkport staying at the Nonantum Resort . Although it was a bit odd when we came back on Sunday and found that the main part of the building was in complete darkness and that there were only 4 cars in the Portside Lodge parking lot. I can’t remember when I was last in a pretty much empty hotel, and we were torn between running round the place causing havoc or holding a ghost hunt – but I suspect the main hotel building is the place to do that…. even if its a bit a long hike for Parasoc!

Some of the other big hotels were also locked up tight, “The Colony” was all in darkness apart from some outside lights, and there was no indication of any caretaker there for the winter, so at least there wasn’t going to be a Shining style incident, even if the hotel did look similar to The Overlook in some aspects. But we all agreed that being the over-winter caretaker in a hotel would actually be quite interesting and fun. So if you own a Maine Coastal Hotel and want some winter housekeepers……..

We ate a couple of times at The Maine Diner which does really good food in a very uncomplicated way, in very simple but comfortable surroundings. So if you’re ever on Route One near Wells then I really recommend pulling in and eating there.

I nearly called this post “Goodbye Marginal way” but decided not to (which I’m sure is something you’re really grateful about). We’d been for a walk along Marginal Way after going down to Cape Neddick. The last time we’d been down to Cape Neddick the weather had been rather bad and getting out of the car was not something you really wanted to do, but this time the weather was a lot better and there were quite a few people there. There were quite a few people on Marginal Way too, taking advantage of the good weather to enjoy an afternoon walk along the coast and we took our time and took in the scenery and the sounds and Jeff and I didn’t even get splashed once in all our rock scrambling.

Mortgages

If you have done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways

Never, ever, ever try what we have just done.

My previous Blog covered the problems with getting my wife’s name on the bank account. Well to that we had to redo the mortgage because the RBS Current Account Mortgage scheme is now dead and they do “OffSet” now which is basically the same but uses two accounts.

The CAM basically ran the mortgage as a huge overdraft with your account balance being negative. Mind you there was something good about going to an ATM and it saying Your Account Balance is £100,000DR. You May withdraw £400 today

Anyway CAM is dead so we have to set up a new joint account (which was fun) and then redo the mortgage.

So then we get a letter from the Offset Mortgage team asking for EXACTLY the same things as we had already provided for the account (Proof of ID, residency etc.). So I tell them – that the bank, their own bank has all of that so why don’t they try to talking to other parts of their company.

In the Middle of all this process we go off to the USA for Christmas. Bank is happy – they will fax us the paperwork that needs to be signed (as long as we sign the originals when we get home). So we sit and wait for a fax.. it “will be there on Monday”, it doesn’t turn up.

We phone them.. its “on its way”, nothing, we phone again, its “on its way”, nothing.

We phone again. The Offset Mortgage team have cancelled the joint application because “the bank told them it was a single application”.

By now we are both pissed off – we now have two bank accounts : our pay checks are going into the new one BUT everything else (bills etc) is still against the old CAM account… you can just see whats coming cant you?

Angry words are exchanged with the bank. They say that they will process it as a single application and then migrate it to a joint application afterwards. OK I guess thats acceptable. So they fax it through to us and I sign it and fax it back.

Now here comes another curve ball. When I moved to the CAM account my old RBS account was never removed from the system for some reason – it sat in Wigan containing no money but with a £1000 overdeaft facility. We never touched it (~more fool us!). The bank in Gloucester said they would delete it for us.

So the Offset Mortgage team settle the outstanding amount on the CAM and then where do they put the rest of the money? Yup thats right – into my OLD account in Wigan, and not the new account in Gloucester.

So we now have my salary in the new account in Gloucester, some Mortgage money in the old account in Wigan, and the CAM account has GONE with all the bills transferred over to the new account

So there we are in the USA doing digital banking shuffling money round from account to account before they decide the close the old Wigan account (which we can only access via Digital Banking).

To be honest – the Royal Bank of Scotland have been useless. It would have been easier to move to a different bank.. it certainly could be any more difficult. It seems that the Offset Mortgage part of RBS is totally disconnected from the rest of the RBS and they deal with them in exactly the same wasy as they would with another bank.

Crazy, Crazy.

Still I did have fun in the US.. Never eaten Deep Fried Turkey before 😉