The Boy and The Coconut Tree

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...

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 wo...

Scotch Eggs are, for me, the perfect picnic food; they sit alongside sausage rolls, flasks of tea, ham sandwiches and pork pies as ideal for a picnic, no matter the weather. The picnic is an English tradition that has been exported all around the world in various guises and adopted by various cultures so I was delighted to be invited along to a picnic in Hyde Park recently. April 14th was the warmest day of 2013 so far and it seems everyone was heading to the park or the beach (though 18c doesn't feel like beach weather to me). I was invited to a picnic in Hyde Park with a Catalan friend and 6 of his London based Catalan friends, in all the group was made up of 7 Catalans, 2 Englishmen and 1 French girl. It was a marvellous day, the sun shone and the rain vanished for a few hours. We all had brought something along to share. I bought Scotch Eggs (which, for the un-initiated are: a hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat, coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried ) and some o...