The Boy and The Coconut Tree

As I began typing this I have 6 days left of my forties. I am sitting in downtown San Francisco just off Market Street and very close to the famous Trolly Bus stop. I love this city and this must be by 12th visit and each time I visit experience something new and fun.  Last night I joined my friends for the Dia de los Muertos festival/parade. A very strange experience. The parade was over 1 hour long through the mainly latin Mission District but the people in the parade came from all over with a good sprinkling of hipsters and millennials.  This is my 3rd day here and I am still jet-lagged, wide awake at 4am, exhausted at 4pm but hopefully more time in the sun should resolve that. I am now sitting at my gate for my flight to Hawaii. I will write more of this when I am settled in my hotel mid week as this trip has been fun and social but not yet restful. I need sleep and sunshine and some me time! :) Hawaii was amazing.  I saw volcanoes (and stood on one), a lava beach, h

I don't really know the man I am writing to. I have spent no more than 24 hours with him since 1973 when he moved away with his new family and pretended I didn't exist.  When he swept back into my life in 1984 he acted as if he was the 2nd coming of Christ, he expected me to worship him as a long lost hero.  My first impressions of my biological father when I was 14 were not good. He was trying to be cool and he wasn't. He thought this cynical kid was going to be impressed by his guitar and cigars, I wasn't. I was of course curious, who wouldn't be!? I had loads of questions and still do. He acted as if his abandonment of me was normal yet wondered why I had forgotten he existed.  I was 3.5 when he vanished with his new wife. I am told the story how he offered me to my Dad as if I was a possession. Now my mother has never said too many bad things about him. We have talked about his strict upbringing, the bulling by his father, the smothering by his mother and the o

I will explain the title later.  I have just returned from a visit to Amsterdam to see another part of my family, my brother Andrew, his wife Laura and their little girl, Toni.  I stayed in their home in the hear of the  Jordaan district overlooking the  Brouwersgracht . This wasn't my first trip to Amsterdam but it was the first time I stayed in a family home and it made a difference to experience the city like a local, meeting the locals. I met some interesting people that I would never have met, a particular mention must be the two ladies who work in a coffee store on  Haarlemmerstraat. The two ladies who work in there were funny, not a word of English was spoken but they told me and Andrew we looked nothing alike but we did have the same wrinkles! I bought a lovely Indonesian coffee that was darker than ebony and smells divine. I had to be careful talking about coffee shops as there is a huge difference between a coffee shop and a cafe.   Coffee shops are the places p

I've tried my hardest to avoid writing about Brexit, partly in the hope it is going to go away or I'll wake up and find out I was having a bad dream about a country that decided to turn its back on its closest friends and sought refuge in the mythical paradise of Trump's USA and communist China. Sadly it is true and the days are counting down and the faux patriotic cliches continue to pour out of the mouths of our politicians and right wing journalists. Industries threat to relocate and reduce investment and the Brexiter response is either 'let them, well cope' or 'they are blackmailing us, they want more money' , no they don't want more money, they want stability and access to the EU markets.  Sure the UK doesn't make as many bits and bobs as it did 50 years ago but those bits and bobs (cars, aeroplane wings, medicines, aero engines) go to the EU in vast quantities and the EU is really good at doing trade deals with other big countries, Japan thi