The Boy and The Coconut Tree

I have just spent the past 6 weeks working for a major UK charity and I truly admire the work it does and I am amazed at its ability to deliver services to people as it undergoes a major change to its structure. I witnessed the complex changes, it is undergoing, first hand. I didn't stay longer than 6 weeks as my role was one of the things chopped and changed during the restructure and luckily I had another contract to go to.  What did shock me about the charity was the way some of the senior people spoke to their juniors.  During a very senior level meeting one of the trustees referred to me a a 'Nazi' and 'Dr Mengele' and this was the first time he had met me and was part of his 'getting to know me banter' .. I was shocked and if we had been alone I would have let rip on him but as he is also the Lord Lieutenant of London I thought it best to stay quiet and simply make some sarcastic comments about him forgetting to close car doors for the royals (it is ...

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...

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...

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...