The Boy and The Coconut Tree

If there were ever anyone who has thoroughly tested the idiom "the grass is always greener" it has to be me. I have jumped over more fences into more gardens in the past 22 years than I care to count. I am not even sure why! It started in 1992 or so when university ended as did the cozy cocoon like life I had with my friends. It ended abruptly on a June morning in 1992 as my Dad woke me from my sleep. I was asleep on the sofa in my tuxedo, hungover. It had been the last night of university, the Summer Ball,  The summer ball with Penny, Kirsteen and Mathew it was fantastic. We all sat in a park and watched the sunrise, the first day of our new, adult, post graduate lives. I remember the drive home, 5 hours of hangover hell, I was so sad. I realized life was never going to be the same and I have spent the past 22 years looking for something like it, a security blanket, an adult life I can feel comfortable with. I've never really found it. One of my students is a ...

July has been a lovely mix of sunshine, thunder storms and visits from friends and though there are no more scheduled visits for July I am sure the lovely summer will continue. I go to the beach quite often, certainly a lot more than I did when I lived in England and almost as often as I did when I lived in Sydney, Barcelona has so many beaches and on Sunday I was persuaded to go to the gay beach, Mar Bella playa, which is a little further away from the centre and a world away from Seaburn beach where I spent many a childhood summer. It is mixed in so many ways, young old, fat, thin, gym toned and deep fat fried, gay and straight. There are areas which seem to be dedicated to these different groups. We sat on the edge of the area populated with the beautiful people, they looked too beautiful and critical for our liking. I was sat between a group of German nudists and a Spanish man who had so many piercings that he looked like a small scrapyard, personally it wasn't a pretty s...