The Boy and The Coconut Tree

I am sitting in a coffee shop in the South End of Boston (Tremont Street), about 2 minutes’ walk from my old apartment on Worcester Square. I lived here for almost 2 years from November 2000 and have some good memories. I have not been back for 16 years.  A lot has changed, a lot has not. The ride to the hotel was much the same although main roads in Boston are almost all underground so you don't see daylight for quite some time and there is nothing fun about sitting in a traffic jam for 30 minutes underground.   I am staying in the Beacon Hill area of the city and it is a cute mix of Victorian era town houses and cobbled streets bookended by the government district and the massive Massachusetts General Hospital. I was supposed to be here with a friend who lives in Quebec but due to him being forgetful etc. he forgot the document he needed to enter the USA so I am now doing this 5 day, 4 night trip on my own, not a total disaster but a very different holiday dynamic....

I was so excited to be working in the USA, I had been with Orange since March 2000 and my boss had asked me if I wanted to work in the Boston office for a few weeks to help the recently acquired US team to integrate into the British team I was considered the most social etc. I accepted thinking I'd be there a month and how exciting that was. I was there most of August 2000 and it was then decided I should be based there a few more months so in November 2000 I packed up all my belongings, some went into storage and off I headed to Boston in BA Business class (another thrill for me).  It was SO cold; I remember thinking it was a lot colder than I had experienced in the Northeast of England and the snow on some days was up to my waist, but it was exciting. I stayed in a hotel a few days until my apartment was ready, a cute little studio apartment in a brownstone apartment in Boston's South End, a mix of upwardly mobile gays, yuppies and doctors from the nearby Mass General. I lo...

I had a really odd thought today, or group of thoughts. I was thinking of a song I liked and had sent it to someone I had just met and liked, for me it was just a cute pop song that had come into my head at the same time as I had met this person, so for me it was a simple reminder, for them it seemed to be a declaration of love and this made me look back and realise I had done this before, my love of pop music, my superficial love of pop music can mean something very different to the people I share those songs with. I sent a song to someone a few years ago and they we so animated and quizzed me on the lyrics and I had to shrug it off as it was 'just a song' I liked at the time. What they thought was a declaration of undying, everlasting love was nothing symbolic for me at all. Strange how we fail to see what others see, or what others feel. I hope I don't do that again or if I do, the next song I send to someone I meet will simpy be a cheesy ABBA song with no meaning but th...

Sitting in my hotel room looking at the Duomo in Florence and packing for my flight later today.  It is a wonderfully sunny warm day here and though there was a brief thunderstorm last night, it has blown through now and the city is still as stunning, and the air is a little fresher. I seriously love Florence, it isn't just a living museum with art and history everywhere, it is a living, working city and there is something interesting going on in every street and the smaller crowds of tourists this summer made it feel far more Italian and human and that was lovely, here are some pictures of Florence (River Arno, Duomo, Santa Croce, Room Mate Hotel Luca). First let us get down to Tripe, something I never liked but my grandparents and many of their generation loved. It is big in Florence; people eat it as a snack, and it can be found in the high-end restaurants as well as cheap cafes. I ended up eating it by accident last week in a lovely Osteria near th...