“I’ve got eyes in the back of my head and I’m watching you with them kid,” is what my mother used to say, in an exaggerated southern accent, every time she caught me up to no good. Yesterday, I found Antimo scurrying through a bag of biscuits like a hungry mouse, and out came the words in my finest Louisiana drawl –– “Hey boy, I see you with them eyes in the back of my head.”  The apple does not fall far from the tree. At least, I hope it doesn’t. Happy Mother’s Day to my Mama, and all the wonderful mamas I know.

When I was little, my father had a chauffeur and his name was Robert. He had thick wrinkles on his face to match a thick cockney accent and he wore diamonds on at least three of his fingers. He was a geezer. Most fridays, he’d pick up my brother and I from school and take us to Wormley Wheeler to buy a bag of penny sweets. Then we’d drive around London eating cola bottles in the backseat of a navy blue Merc while Robert told us stories about killing sharks with his bare hands and stuffing them into sandwiches for lunch. We’d end up at my dad’s office, or at the restaurant where we were meeting him for dinner. Maybe this sounds all sorts of wrong –– these two young kids driving around in a Merc with this wheeling, dealing, diamond-wearing driver from the East End –– but riding with Robert rates high in cool childhood adventures. I still think of him every time I see a shark. Come to think of it, he kind of looked like one.