The Boy and The Coconut Tree

I've celebrated Christmas or part of Christmas in Australia, the USA, and Vietnam and now it is the turn of Spain or more specifically, Catalonia. In Vietnam and the USA the Christmas resembled the one I am used to, trees, Santa Claus, Reindeers and images of Snowmen etc, Australia was almost the same except the heat on Christmas day was 100f and I ate grilled prawns in someone’s garden and drank chilled beer from a cooler. Here in Barcelona over the past few weeks the lights have gone up, the trees are decorated and the stores are full of the signs saying Bon Nadal or Feliz Navidad depending on what language you speak. In Spain the children receive their gifts on January 6, it is a holiday called Reyes (Kings) and is the day the 3 Kings arrived to visit the baby Jesus etc. and gave him gift vouchers from M&S and Argos (or is that the British version), or something like that. In some Spanish households the children also receive some gifts on Christmas day the sa

Today's question is: should we go bald gracefully or not? As  people who know me well will concur, I have lost a lot of hair since my floppy fringed teenage days. I am now crowned with a head of hair most suitable for the armed forces or lice victims but I like my hair short and greying as it is one of the least bothersome faces of middle age. A clipper cut looks good on most men and some women so it puzzles me why so many men rather than show off their heads, and wear a tidy clipper cut, choose to wear a wig or one of those hair transplant things. I am writing this because today I’ve encountered two middle aged men (both American) that despite their age (in their 70s) were wearing wigs/weaves/hair transplants that wouldn’t even suit a full haired teenage boy. Do hair weaves only come in 2 colours, shoe polish brown, or varicose mahogany? Do they do it because they think it makes them look younger, it doesn’t. Both men looked strange, the first thing you can see is the od

shaunism: [The Life of Shaun #485] Dubai : After the horrible start to 2013, I wanted to do something to end the year on a good note.  I decided to go back to India, which had been ca...

As I have my 2 hour lunch break in a café on this cold windy day (needed a scarf today) I am watching the world go by as usual. Central Barcelona is a great mix of people. Next to me are 2 Russian girls who have lip implants, either that or they are having a bad allergic reaction to the coffee. Across from me is a Japanese couple and the guy is wearing a backpack that is taller than me. His back must be made of steel to carry that around with him all day. Winter has finally arrived here in Barcelona, last week it was 20c, today it is 11c and the locals are dressed as if they lived in Siberia. It isn't that cold and the sky is blue and the sun is shining. I am dressed for Spring, they are dressed for the next ice age. Even those Russian girls had fur on, probably a favourite pet that recently died (it looked like rabbit though they acted as if was mink). They begin the Christmas festivities early here too. The lights are going up, the plastic snowmen and santa clauses are

My bank is in trouble, the great and noble Cooperative Bank has fallen foul of something or someone and turn itself from a mutual into yet another plc, floated on the stock exchange and only 30% controlled by the original owners. A sad day. I've read many stories and many stupid comments but how a US hedge fund managed to be the driving force behind this is beyond me.  A blame game has begun, was it the takeover of the struggling Britannia BS, or the attempts at buying over 600 branches of Lloyds Bank or , as many believe, something more sinister?  We will never know unless there is a major investigation by the financial authorities (which I doubt will happen). As a mutual , Cooperative Bank, had to put customers first, this didn't always work but it certainly won't now. How can company directors at a plc put their shareholders 2nd, or 3rd. This won't work.  What puzzles me more is they believe their own lies.  I received an email (as all customers did) from Euan

It has happened to me before, in a village in Italy. I was wandering around a small shop and the old couple who ran the place started speaking to my friend Luca about me. I heard the word "americano" a few times and I heard him laughing. They thought I was an American tourist. Not that I was offended but I was more concerned at why they didn't think I looked like an Englishman. That was in 1997 and it happened to me again in Cambodia and in Vietnam and once in the USA which was very bizarre.  Me looking very non American at Montserrat How an American could mistake me for an American after hearing me talk is a mystery to me. It happened to me last week in Barcelona thus my little story. I am very British/English. My teeth aren't whiter than snow, I am not obese, I am not loud, well I am not THAT loud. I don't wear golfing clothes on holiday and I am probably way to left wing and liberal to ever be accepted by the political class in the USA but yet agai

I am posting this because I wrote it in 2006 as the Iraq war began to wind-down and the post-war chaos was beginning. I am posting this again to remind people what happens when we intervene in another country and go after a bad man and how we claim to be doing the right thing yet do all the wrong things. Syria beware. Originally published June 2006 The latest on Saddam Hussein is that he is on hunger strike. Is he attempting to commit some form of asymmetrical war against the coalition? He has not yet died of starvation, so this cannot be seen as an act of war just yet. He is on hunger strike because "terrorists" have killed yet another one of his defence lawyers. The killing of Khamis al-Obeidi seems to be yet another delay on the road to trial for Saddam, who has been in coalition custody since December 2003. Saddam has asked for international protection for his defence team at his  trial , which is still in its early stages. One assumes the prosecution team is

According to our chancellor, the British and our politicians will have some soul searching to do following the government's defeat in  parliament last night. Soul searching to do? The British people have a soul and they expressed it yesterday via their parliamentary democracy. We are not cowards, we are not racists, we are not helping the enemy but we are tired of imperialism masked as intervention, of regime change masked as "emergencies" and we are tired of helping out the USA, being the fig leaf to its naked militarism of recent times. The soul of the UK remembers that we helped create the international laws and conventions that we were about to break. We want international interventions to be backed by the international community, most of it not some of it and we want to do the right thing for the people here and in the world's worst places and our politicians cannot accuse us of being cowards or traitors for not wanting to attack Syria. And since the

My love affair with budget airlines began and ended in a single day in 2009 when I travelled to Cyprus with Easyjet. My 7am flight was overbooked and me and 20 other people were told to wait for the 5pm flight, losing a day of our holidays and no compensation offered. Gatwick airport is not the nicest airport at the best of times but on a normal day you would rarely spend more than 2 hours there, I had to spend 12 hours there. The Easyjet desk forgot EU rules on delays and tried to shrug it off as as computer error and expected 20 people, including kids, to fend for themselves for 12 hours, little did they know that armed with my LLM in International Law and my law book I had informed my fellow passengers about the rules so eventually we were all given £15 to spend on food and drink and after 2 complaint emails to Easyjet I was offered a free change of flight if I wanted to extend my stay in Cyprus, I didn't, Paphos is a dump. So it has been 4 years since I've used a budget ai

One of the great things about living less than 3 hours away from home in a major city is the ease at which I can head home if I feel the need (finances willing). There were no direct flights from Madrid to Newcastle and Vietnam to Newcastle would have involved 14 hours of flying and at least 2 changes of plane. No thank you. Having originally planned a 5 day trip to Menorca and realising it would be beautiful but lonely I chose to visit my family instead so rather than not seeing them for  8 months, I would see them twice in 8 months. My niece is now walking and as she has just started to walk I wanted to see her toddle around rather than wait until December when she was walking normally and we all took it for granted.  So I will have a summer holiday in Tyne & Wear rather than Menorca but it is the people you surround yourself with, not the place, that are the most important? Don't you agree.  This song has been playing in my head for a while, long before summ

5 weeks into my Barcelona teaching adventure and I think I’ve finally hit the ground running (though I am sure you are supposed to say that at the beginning of an adventure, not 5 weeks in, but you know what I mean, well anyone who knows me will know what I mean? Now I’ve written about national stereotypes before and will probably do so again, they are interesting but can be annoying when they are true. My students, not those in the school as they are mostly on time and I get paid regardless, the other students, the students whose offices etc I travel to or sit in cafes near their offices waiting for them, those students. Punctuality is not a strong point, I am tempted to teach them the word, have the spell it and use it in a complex sentence, well I will do if they turn up. The latest act of or rather lack of punctuality was Thursday when my 530pm student texted me at 525 pm to tell me she wasn't able to make it and was busy at work. I am sure she knew she was busy at work at

There are good sanctions, ok sanctions and then there is bloody mindedness. Take Cuba as an example. As most of you know, I’ve been to many countries including one that is communist and had a rather bad war with the USA that cost millions of lives (mainly local, Vietnamese civilians) and it is an easy place to get to and buy American goods and it is possible to use American owned websites to arrange that holiday. So this gets me to the subject of Cuba.   I was trying to help a friend book a trip to Cuba and as the local travel agent had quoted him a price of over E2000 for 8 days I suggested we hit the internet to find a better deal. Seems sensible, the internet was supposed to encourage competition. Wrong. Not when it comes to Cuba! First I went to   Kayak.com   – Cuba doesn’t exist in their databases, it has been wiped off the map. Next I went to   Expedia . com   (and I even tried the Spanish and British sites), again, Cuba doesn’t exist.  Booking.com , sorry we don’t do C

More of my musings and homages to Catalonia. No Orwell pun intended! On Sunday I saw towers made of people and it wasn’t some freaky horror movie but an unusual but impressive Catalan tradition. These towers of people or Castellers   are basically, teams of towns folk climb up in a sort of gymnastic display, trying to make the tallest and most stable human tower as possible, despite a few wobbles, most of the towers were easily 4 or 5 people high (20-30 feet in old money) and they did this in 30c heat. I am not sure of the historic purpose of it all and I am sure it is something brave and noble but it is worth seeing once or twice though I am being coerced into seeing them at least 5 times and I am practising my surprised face which I can usually only express once or twice.  The completed tower Starting the tower In other things that have been crossing my mind in the heat are things like: Do Spanish dogs understand English? Anecdotal evidence would sugge

I had dinner last night at a restaurant/café near to where I am staying in the centre of Barcelona, on Gran Via de Catalanes. I sat outside to watch the world go by as the restaurant was close to Urgull metro. Dinner was not worth mentioning, a bog standard fixed price menu, 11 euros; I don’t recall what I had. I do remember the events and sights around me though. To my right sat an older English couple who had ordered a lot of food, enough Paella for 4 people and various other things. They ate for a while, I heard raised voice in, what I think was, a Birmingham accent then the woman wandered off in a bad mood, I presume to her hotel but she seemed unsure. The man continued to eat and looked more relaxed than he had before the argument. The restaurant was getting busier and by 930pm all the tables on the terrace were full. Now they call it a terrace but really it is the pavement with some chairs and tables, terrace is far too grand a word for the reality of sitting a metre away