The Boy and The Coconut Tree

I have watched Eurovision for as long as I can remember, I can recall sitting on a sofa at my grandparents house watching it and I certainly remember "Save All Your Kisses For me", the winner in 1976. I have probably watched it every year since but it certainly has changed. Maybe my memory has been kind to Eurovision but I don't ever recall it being so bad and so political? There was certainly a huge change once the former Soviet Union and its client states entered. Some of them, like the Baltics, are Scandinavian in their outlook and fit right in but others seem more middle eastern/asian than European, and don't get me started on Israel. The Swedes did a good job at presenting and hosting and the reviews have been good but if we want to win again, we need to send something fun, up-beat and borderline cheesy, surely we can do that? And here is one of my all time favourite, classic Eurovision songs! The lyrics are light and happy and memorable. And ...

My friend Paula told me to write these down as I usually share them every morning as I stagger into the office with yet another tale of weirdness, rudeness, smelliness or some other 'ness on my journey to work. The journey only takes 10-15 minutes but it is almost always eventful and not all of these stories are from my commute between Lewisham and London Bridge, a few are from other commutes in or out of London that I remember. Titanic in Essex I was standing next to 2 office girls one morning at the time Titanic was in the cinema and very popular. The girls were asking each other about their weekends. Girl 1 "What did you do at the weekend?" Girl 2 "I went to see a movie" Girl 1 "What did you see?" Girl 2 "Titanic innit", Girl 1 "What’s it about" Girl 2 "It’s a love story set on some big boat"... I started to laugh at this, "some boat" only the most famous boat of all time. I love the simpli...

Apart from my sneezing as if I was a competitor in the allergy Olympics, today has been a wonderful day. Woken up by my niece and nephew at 8am as they were preparing for school and breakfast I got up earlier than I had planned on a holiday but when you are in someone's house, you do their rules. My dad was taking my niece in her pram for a walk to the local shopping centre and I asked him to pick me up some things but he insisted I walk with him. I did, reluctantly, not reluctant to hang out with my dad for an hour but I wanted to be lazy and the pollen count is so high I am sneezing more often than I am breathing, or so it seems, I do exaggerate when it comes to my hayfever. Firstly, I had to prepare, my dad was still in his jeans that he wore for gardening so stained with grass and soil. I needed to wash, change and put my shades on. Dad was already standing on the drive waiting for me with my niece in her pram. And so it began. I knew a different route to the shops, a r...

The week of April 15 th 2013 will certainly be recorded as a memorable one. What should have been a memorable week for good reasons began in tragedy and ended in fear and many people feeling a lot less safe. I was looking forward to this being the week we finally sad farewell/adieu and good riddance to Mrs Thatcher who has been a hero for some a divisive and unpopular figure for many more, especially in the area I come from. The Boston marathon bombing started the week off.   My thoughts go out to my friends in Boston. I lived there in 2000-2002 and loved the city, it was a slow burner for me but work took me there and as my director said “be careful what you wish for”, it took time for me to settle but only a very strict INS forced me to return to the UK and to a promotion then redundancy. I could have easily stayed in a city that was only 1 hour from New York and 6 from London. I made friends there and worked with lovely people. The marathon bombings which were t...

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...

We are already 6 days into April, it is cold outside and my big move is only 2 months away and right now I am incredibly nervous about the whole thing. I think my recent visit to my family has given me a dose of nerves. Being with my family is lovely but it often makes me feel like a slight outsider. I left my family home 25 years ago this September to go to University. I returned for a year and that was unsettling for us all as I came out to my family in those 12 months and they say moving house or the death of a relative is stressful, try coming out to your mother the week of her birthday, now that is hard!  I don't feel as if you can ever truly go back, you are there, but you are not fully the person you were before you left, and neither are they. So my visit home was lovely, it is important that I never forget where I am from and who I am but I never feel like I fully belong and if I stayed there more than 5 days I would go crazy and so would they. It is strange but I li...

We are now in mid March and as I type this it is 3c and falling from the sky is a mix of rain and snow. It is not at all nice. Last week was cold and next week will be too. As Easter approaches I think March will be a month of coughs and sneezes and winter coats. And as all thoughts turn to Spring, in its many guises, here is a photo (and it could be photo-shopped ? ) to warm your hearts!!? March 2013 has been an interesting one, last week (March 14th) the world got a new Pope. I have never seen so much excitement over something so anachronistic.  The BBC was obsessing despite the fact Catholics in the UK are outnumbered by Anglicans, Muslims and Atheists. Maybe the fact the new Pope is an Argentinian and the Argentinians have replaced the Germans as our cultural bogeyman. We no longer poke fun at or fear the Germans, they are now our friends. We now have the Argentinians, a far away place, created by colonialism and its fight over one of our colonies. Another anachronis...