The Boy and The Coconut Tree

There are now less than 12 hours left of 2017 as I type this,  11 hours and 43 minutes in fact and I have still not decided what I am doing or where I am going tonight to spend the last few minutes of 2017 and the first hour or so of 2018, I can never decide.  I really want to stay home and as I always do what I want, unless other human beings stop me, it will be  cozy evening on the sofa planning my 2018 trip to Australia, paid for by the lovely people at Barclays who overcharged me for PPI not long after I graduated from university. They paid me enough to pay for a good flight and decent places to stay so roll on Melbourne, Sydney and perhaps Perth. 2018 will also be the year I go back to my old employer but in a different job (I did this in 2015 as well but that didn't work out so well). I am trying to review 2017 in a simply terms as I can and to sprinkle the review with some of my favourite songs of 2017 and some photos. Travel I visited Florence, Montreal, Quebec

All I want for Christmas isn't 'you' or 'them' or 'it' unless peace and quiet is considered an 'it'. Christmas seems to have been with us for weeks, certainly since Halloween.  I heard Christmas carols being played in a cafe in Paris in mid November and I thought even the French would not be impressed with this nonsense, this Americanization of Christmas.  I don't want to shop and eat and drink all of December. I want to spend a few days with my family and friends around the actual days of Christmas.  Even the Christmas work party filled me with dread and thankfully, due to a lack of places I could offer my place to a new member of staff and avoid being nice when people say things they deserve to be slapped for, all made worse thanks to a few nasty cocktails. Don't get me wrong, I am no Grinch and the girls in the office are lovely, without them my office would be a lot harder to face each day and I will be sad to not work with them anymore.

As the train speeds back down south to London and my anxiety of being at home, not wanting to be there, and not wanting to leave fades I am laughing at the photograph my mam shared with me today, taken in September 1981 as I headed to the senior/comprehensive school for the first time. I was probably no bigger than 4ft tall, 7 stone and still had some of my baby teeth, freckles and a love of Lego, my nana (grandma to all you non northerners) and little else. My mam has kept this image in her purse for 36 years hence the creases and folds. We are not sure who or how my hair was cut but my fringe is epic and the smile is definitely one of my more cautious smiles. Now I grin and smile full beam, this is a photo of a little boy half excited and scared at the same time.  Going to the comprehensive was a big deal, we had uniforms, we would be doing classes in subjects I'd not yet studied (but would soon love) and I didn't realize I would be in a school in which most of the teachers

I spend a lot of time in coffee shops and thus drink a lot of coffee. I am onto my 4th large coffee of the weekend. Sitting in coffee shops in central London gives me the opportunity to observe the world, hear peoples' comments and conversations and watch odd behaviour. I've noticed a lot of people only come into Starbucks to use the toilets and if they have to ask for a code, they don't, they scurry out, looking guilty and confused.  The Starbucks I'm in now is popular with the street drunks of Charing Cross, the toilet doesn't need a code (I wish it did). The Chinese woman sitting right next to me (but opposite) is tapping her straw far too hard on the table, she clearly wants attention. I can feel the tapping through my table, yes she is doing it that hard. The Starbucks has a display with samples of new sandwiches, one guy wearing a gold crucifix and camper than John Inman on speed has just ate a whole one despite them being cut into small samples s

It is mid September already, the temperature today is 14c, how did that happen. I was enjoying temperatures of 35c on the Costa Brava less than 3 weeks ago and now I am under a blanket on my sofa and flirting with my thermostat who clearly hasn't been touched for a while and is need of some attention but I refuse to give EON the benefit of my cold, a blanket and a hot cup of coffee are better than huge electric bills. The drop in temperatures in England have certainly increased my need to shop. I went to Habitat last week for one thing and ended up buying lots of things for my flat. I explained to my student last Sunday that I was nesting, though there will be no eggs in Spring. I guess what I am really doing is hibernating.  This is a photo of where I was 3 weeks ago today. Warm and sunny on the Costa Brava. Calella De Parafrugell Yesterday we had another terrorist attack on the Underground  and what amazes me is the first person to check on me was my Italian friend

The BBC is awash with commemorations of the legalizing or rather he decriminalizing of gay sex and rightly so, this 50 year commemoration is coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Passchendaele a bloody battle that lasted almost 4 months and was yet another pointless battle that led to the deaths of over 400,000 men and boys fooled into fighting for leaders who cared more for the land on which the fighting took place than they did about their soldiers. I watched the BBC drama ‘Man in an Orange Shirt’ the story of two public school boys who were in the army during WW2 and fell in love.   One went on to marry his high school sweetheart (in reality his best female friend) and the other went to prison and on release went to live in France. The married one sobbed when he realized what he had thrown away.   The 2 nd part of the drama has yet to be broadcast so I cannot say what happened to them but despite the setting of the 1940s and 1950s and their class, the st

Yesterday was the last day of school for most British children until September.  For many, like one of my nephews, it was his last day in primary school and that is a significant day in a child's life.  I don't quite remember by last day in primary (junior school) but I know that my first day in secondary school was very very scary, everyone seemed so big compared to us and quite mean compared to the relative niceness of primary school. I hope my nephew's experience is a good once. So today is the first day of the school holidays aka the 6 weeks holiday. My memories of the school holidays are good ones, as most of them were spent at my grandparents house, playing out, exploring, playing with my LEGO and being spoilt rotten.  A perfect summer. Today it is raining, it rained all last night and it doesn't feel very summery to me. I want 6 weeks off to relax, get my head together and escape from the world of grown ups, deadlines, reports, meetings and irritating work situa

Today is probably the hottest day of the year so far and my skin is as pink as these flip-flops and I was only out in the sun for 45 minutes or so and I was wearing SPF30. So it is going to be a scorcher.  Yesterday was pretty close so I decided to cool my feet off by wearing flip-flops for my commute to work, not much walking really, less than 1km to my local station and then from London Bridge to my office but I didn't foresee the cobble stones of Hays Galleria, the streets between the buildings are partly cobbled.  All I can say is, flip-flops are not really designed for anything but sand, they are more instruments of torture than fashion accessory and if they are the Brazilian/Australian contribution to global fashion well Paris has not much to worry about right now. I was meant to visit a theme-park today, LegoLand Windsor but when the weather was predicted to be over 30C today, high UV, high pollen count that combined with the high screaming child count, high angr

A political blog from me. After the events of last night in London and recent events in Manchester the right wing in the UK (and USA) are blaming everyone but themselves!  Today, Jeremy Corbyn had this to say!  Y ou cannot protect the public on the cheap . The police and security services must get the resources they need, not 20,000 police cuts. Theresa May was warned by the Police Federation but she accused them of “crying wolf”.  We will recruit another 10,000 new police officers, including more armed police, as well as 1,000 more security services staff to support our communities and help keep us safe. And today our PM is campaigning and spreading the fear in order to win an election, don't let that happen!  The UK and USA also arm Saudi Arabia, it is a theocracy that supports ISIS. S audi Arabia stirs sectarian violence across the middle-east.  The UK did the same in Ireland and we moved on. It is time we stopped supporting states that support terrorists and not turn on ou

As politicians on the right make profit from the terrorism in Manchester last week (but do deals with the spreaders of hate in Saudi Arabia) I wanted to say why they don't speak for me, a British man, not a flag waving patriot but someone who likes what this country is despite its flaws (flaws which have nothing to do with migrants or religions), flaws that politicians could fix if they were not simply interested in feathering their own nests and profiting from the suffering of others. Last night I was drinking with one of my friends who was born in Spain, raised in the UK, for me that is a typical weekend. He is straight, the rest of us were gay, again a normal night out in London.  Next week I will be having dinner with my American friend married to an Indian man, his best friend and his sister, again, a normal event in modern Britain. This morning I was served coffee by Simona from Italy and later today I had my eyes tested by Sanya, a British Muslim and was served in

This is just a run of the mill e ntry , no drama etc. So May is almost over, not Theresa May , I would love her to be over, I am talking about the month, a funny month, changes galore and it is hard to believe that 4 weeks ago I was in Montreal and Quebec eating gravy and chips and not feeling guilty about it. I changed jobs in May, not because I wanted to but my contract was coming to an end and was fortunate enough to find another job with a similar title, well instead of Professional Standards Manager I became Head of Professional Standards. A big leap and as my new boss said, I've become a big fish in a small pond after being a small fish in a big pond for a long time and it is scary, I feel like I've jumped over a big wall and whilst trying to enjoy that success I am now in a big garden or rather a safari park and there are bigger beasts to deal with. I am neither a real pessimist or a Pollyanna optimist so it is too soon to measure my success or failure. All I know right

I have now been to Canada 4 times including a horribly unnecessary layover at Toronto thanks to United Airlines and their allergy to punctuality.  This is the first time I have been to Canada for more than a long weekend, the previous visits were long weekends in 2001 and 2002. The catalyst for this trip was a friend of mine from Spain, emigrating to Quebec City, a city I had not visited but was on my list of ' get there eventually ' places. The trip began with my British Airways flight from London on the new 787 Dreamliner. Most people know I am a nerd about things like ships and planes and was excited to fly on this new airliner, it was interesting and was as quiet as people had said but the BA interior already looked shabby and dark so the plane seemed 5 years old, not 2.  The BA crew were indifferent and snarky but I enjoyed the inflight movies and the meal wasn't bad, the old lady sitting next to me wanted none of hers so offered me her extras. Canadian immigratio