#15 Boston - So Bloody Not British - September 16, 2007

That is how my UK-based friend Caroline summed up her love of the city of Boston - it is "so bloody not British". I guess that means that she had a good time during her brief stint here this week. By Friday both of us were so tired that we went to bed at 9:30 PM - completely knackered, as they say on that favorite European island of mine. Caroline arrived Tuesday night, and we pretty much were out and about every evening, starting with a visit to Patrick and Ellen, Highway Flame (resident canine) and Marge (gender-ambivalent bird, also a resident) at 111 Webster Street in Watertown on Wednesday. We (that is Petra and Patrick) watched the movie "Talledega Nights" (Hakuna Matata Bitches!!) whereas both Ellen and Caroline opted to sleep through it. While I think Ellen's slump could be attributed to a Chinese-food induced diabetic coma, jet lag definitely got the better of poor Caroline, who was out like a light, and can now attest to the superb quality of Pat and Ellen's living room furniture.

Thursday night I actually had talked Caroline into volunteering with me at the Lyric Stage Company - the theater season has officially commenced and started off with a bang - "The Man of La Mancha" - a musical, which depicts the story of Miguel Cervantes, a tax collector and his servant, who get thrown into prison because they had the audacity to foreclose on a monastery. They are awaiting their call before the inquisition and while they are doing that, their fellow prisoners, lovely folk really, put them on a mock trial. Cervantes and his servant in their defense put on the play about Alonso Quijana, who pretty much is a mandman, loses his mind, decides to call himself Don Quijote and takes off to fight injustice along with his squire, Sancho Panzo. Quijote is quite delusional, which does make the play a lot of fun and Christopher Chew, my favorite Boston stage actor was just perfect in this role. http://www.mwcc.mass.edu/HTML/gmod/tam/performerProfiles/chrisChew.html . Robert Saoud as Sancho I think stole the show and the hearts of the audience - the play certainly deserved the standing ovation it got at the end.

Having experienced the Boston theater scene for some time now, I have become a big supporter of some of the local performers here - Chris Chew together with (my) favorites Kathy St George and Corey Jackson are part of the Village Theater Project based in Groton and Harvard, Mass which gives a voice to stage actors in the area http://villagetheatreproject.org/a/company/chewc.html, and with its Youth Project looks forward to the next generation of stage performers in the Greater Boston area.

No visit is complete for Caroline and myself with a quick visit to the S$S Restaurant at Inman Square (http://www.sandsrestaurant.com/), a true Cambridge Institution (it has been around since 1919), where you can go and get anything from Matzo Ball Soup (often my choice) to knishes or a good old fashioned cheeseburger. They have excellent bread, and their breakfast omelettes (which you can order for dinner as well) are first class. After dinner and one of them fancy drinks (mango colada for me, some passion fruit thingy for Ms Grace) we were done for the night, and after a half-baked attempt to get into Ryles (fruitless), we just shlepped ourselves home and called it an early night.

Caroline moved out yesterday to spend some time with other friends in Boston, and after running a couple of errands, I hopped in a car and drove down to the Cape. My friend Rob from the cycling group had organized a bike trip on Nantucket (http://nantucket.net/) for today, and had invited participants to stay over at his brother's house in Hyannis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyannis,_Massachusetts - psst - this is where the Kennedys live - in Hyannis, not in Rob's brother's house). I had decided to join them for dinner last night, since Hannah from my wine group was going to be there as well. Hyannis is a typical touristy Cape town, but now that fall is in the air and the summer season is about to end, has a bit of an abandoned feel to it. Rob and I dined on some Mexican fare on the Hyannis main drag at Gringo's and when Hannah arrived at the house we all dedicated our attention to a nice bottle of Malbec.

The bicyclists took off this morning at some ungodly time, while yours truly slept in and headed back to Boston, as I have ushering duty later this afternoon (with Boston Cares this time) - a performance by the Huntington Theatre in Boston. On tap is a play called "The 39 Steps" which is based on the 1935 Hitchcock movie, but the play has more of a slapstick-Monty-Python kind of feel to it. I will keep you posted.


Maybe you have noticed that I did not report anything about the Presidential Traverse that was planned for this week. This past Tuesday I made the decision to postpone the adventure to next year - my plantar fasciitis is just not healing as fast as I want it to, and doing this hike would have thrown the recovery process back by months. Making this decision was not easy, and I was pretty upset and saddened by it. Thanks to those of you who reminded me that the mountains will still be there next year, and that it is probably snowing up there anyway....... loved your kind words.

Signing off my friends.

Be well.

pet:)