clinging to the wreckage

We’d woken up and sat around drinking coffee and doing nothing for hours. The weather was dreadful but I suggested we go for a walk. I gave her one of my woolly hats and she looked wonderfully beautiful with it on. We walked hand in hand, partly to steady each other, as the pavements were covered in ice. It was raining and I kept slipping, she didn’t slip at all (better balance?). Never the less, we continued to walk. It was insanity and it was wonderfully romantic. We reached Davis Square Station and she went home to see her cat whilst I went home to shower and spend some time alone. Later that night we met for dinner in an American diner and after a few beers and a cocktail, we bought some wine and went back to her apartment. She said that she wanted me to meet her cat… and I wanted to meet her cat… but, more so, I wanted to spend time with her. The apartment was relatively small but very pleasant with beautiful views of the surrounding streets and the Cambridge...

And that morning I finally found the courage to say hello and, in the absence of the ability to speak on a crowded shuttle, hand her a card that explained my intrigue and asked her to message me if she had any interest in going for a drink. A couple of torturously nervous hours later I received a message saying that she’d love to go for a drink. We met and have been inseparable ever since. It has only been a few days but they have been a few remarkable days and each time I see her walking around her house or mine I can’t help but smile in disbelief that this is the lady I admired for so many cold mornings at that unwelcoming station as we waited for the bus. Today she flies to Canada to be with her family for Christmas and I am in Boston with my punk rock records and books and there is a tremendous sense of peace and contentment. Once more I feel grateful for the life I have been fortunate enough to live and for the opportunities I have had, particularly in the last four to five years....

Through the night I did not sleep. A six-hour flight from Boston to Lisbon, a two and a half hour stop in Lisbon and then a one hour flight to Madrid. I arrived at my hotel relatively rapidly and got straight into bed. I slept for one hour and then got up to go and meet friends. Before I left Madrid, there was a lady I used to see from afar at lunch times, I referred to her as ‘The English Princess’ because she looked exactly like that. Milky white vampiric skin, raven black hair, a tiny sprinkling of freckles on her nose and cheeks, and the looks of a super model. To my surprise, she was at our gathering when I arrived, accompanied by her Spanish friend – an exceptional beauty, too. My arrival was a surprise to my friends and they all started to jump on me and hug me whilst cheering. The English Princess and her friend noticed this and looked on with smiles. A couple of hours later the Spanish friend departed and, astonishingly, the English Princess walked directly over ...

Sleep eludes me these days. I lie awake at 3am and think of ridiculous little meaningless things like the password to a portal that is completely insignificant. However, I also think of very relevant things such as my parents growing older and living alone in a country still torn by political unrest, culture clashes, racism, corruption beyond sustainability and, as a result, a constantly declining economy. I think of people with no homes, no warmth, no food. I think of people who are abused by their partners or their parents and I lie awake in a fit of exhaustion. Sometimes it seems that we get caught up in these social media and social circles in which the demographic is identical, causing us to forget that there are people in desperate need. As the temperature in Boston last night dropped to -8 degrees Celsius I could not help but feel pain at the thought of those sleeping on the streets or those with no heating and food. I read an article that socks are one of the most ...

I’d hoped to sleep-in before taking the 11:30am flight to Orange County via Denver but, as usual, I awoke around 03:30am and couldn’t get back to sleep. I started doing some work, as all of my colleagues in Europe were online and working and I had the usual plethora of emails bombarding my mailbox. The excitement that I felt made it easy to work. I was excited because I was traveling to a punk rock and beer festival on Huntington Beach and had the added adventure of a stop over in Denver along the way. I’d hoped to take the T from my house in Cambridge to South Station in Boston, where I’d get a bus to the airport, but it seemed there were severe delays and so I wrote off the idea, resigning myself to getting an Uber instead. Shortly before I ordered the uber, however, my friend messaged to say the delay had cleared and so I rushed straight out and onto the T. $2.25 and I was there in less than one hour. An Uber would have cost me $40 and would have spent a long time in traffic. I ha...

It makes me laugh now when I think of people saying to me, a guy from Wigan in the North West of England, before I moved, that I’d need to prepare myself for the cold winters of Boston. Boston, compared to England’s north west is like some form of Hollywood dream. I was lying next to the swimming pool in shorts, wearing sunglasses, reaching for the sunblock, as I was watching a football match from Wigan where people were wearing thick winter coats to keep warm. It’s like Halloween… the most terrifying costume I have ever seen is the one that businessmen and politicians wear every day. I see many people dressing up and I am happy for them but I can’t help but wonder if that is them showing their true colours and this makes me ask ‘why don’t you just dress the way you want to every single day instead of just Halloween?’ You’re hiding behind a mask, taking fun seriously. Dead Kennedys, Halloween

There was a brief flicker, here and there, where I thought I had found love… or something close to it. However, they all turned out to be false alarms and the moment passed. The spare wheel remains exactly that. At my age, the spare wheel metaphor is more appropriate than ever before simply because everyone else has a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t sit around longing for that. I am happy alone and I love to flirt with drama. I love the words that pour from pain. Even if it is not always really pain. After all, true pain is being in a relationship that is void of love. Feeling lonely and lost in love and wondering how to escape. I get to travel and do many things without complication and for that I am truly grateful.             I began to think of this tonight as I logged into my blog and discovered that my profile picture was that of me being clutched in tight embrace by a young lady ...