The Boy and The Coconut Tree

I'm trying to find a definition of 'middle-age' that best suits me.   According to wikipedia it is a noun meaning ' the period after early adulthood and before old age, about 45 to 65' So as I am 24 hours away from being 46 I definitely fall into the meaning of the noun, if not the spirit, but I refuse to admit it! As I enjoy my last day being 45 I will be doing two things, staying in a nice 4 star hotel as my birthday gift to myself, that is very middle-aged of me and I will be going out in Soho with a group of friends in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s ( and this article seems very relevant today) A badge from a birthday card received last year from my friend Roger I love being contrary and as a middle-aged man I am allowed to be. And I've chose this song as my theme song for the weekend, a song released in 2009 by one of my favourite groups, The Pet Shop Boys , a group I've liked since I was 15 after my best friend, Allison, introduced me to their ...

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...