Chatham was a curious place, very much like an American version of some of the little villages we have back home where time seems to have stood still for centuries. We found somewhere out of town to park the coach and walked back, finding ourselves arriving at the single main street on which the now familiar wooden slat houses and shops were all painted in bright colours or adorned with colourful signs. In fact, many shops seemed to have those western style saloo...

I dragged myself out of bed at 7.00 this morning and made my way down to the restaurant for breakfast, discovering to my dismay that the hotel refuses to make eggs "sunny side up" - which is a fried egg to the rest of the world. It seems that they are so paranoid that somebody might get salmonella from an egg which hasn't been cooked properly and then sue the hotel, that they will only serve eggs which have been cooked solid. Here's a novel idea - just give the c...

To be honest, I don't really know why I should find it surprising that parts of Boston have so much in common with London - after all, the "founding fathers" did originally set out from England all those years ago for Plymouth in New England, and it's probably not too much of a stretch to imagine that they immediately set about making sure everything was exactly as they liked it to be back home. Certainly, all the place names in this area remind me of home. As th...

Back in 1992, I flew out to Boston in Massachusetts for a two week tour of New England during the Autumn - or "the fall" as they insist on calling it in the US. Seems a bit unoriginal really to call it that just because the leaves are falling - they don't call the summer "the shine" or the winter "the freezing my nuts off" do they? Anyway, what follows are my journals from the time, suitably researched and updated for this volume... A cab collected me from ho...