Cullen Skink

Last night, after I went to bed, Amtrak cancelled tomorrow’s train (Boston-Chicago, The Lakeshore Limited). I liaise with Callum in Ann Arbor and he offers to pick me up from Detroit airport. So, I make a last minute, costly airplane booking - and knock another chunk out of my flight-minimisation aspirations.

I have a few meetings this morning. Then, just as this week’s free office lunch is being delivered, I go hop a taxi to Newton to visit my friend Richard K.

I’ve been doing a ” guest lecture“ once or twice a year for his Harvard agile software development course for quite a few years now. The last time I actually met him was at the Craft conference in Budapest …. quite a few years ago now.

He’s working from home - a talk, thin house in a residential area. I meet some of his family before stepping out to the local pizza emporium. A very good veggie pizza later we walk back to his place and I get another taxi back to the airport.

Callum meets me in Detroit and whisks me back to his place. His daughter, Leila, is playing on her tablet and/or watching the telly. She doesn’t join us when he serves up his home made Cullen Skink for tea. And she’s in bed before we make inroads into the bottle of red that’s waiting.

Later, we sit in the screened porch listening to the insects couch and croak outside in the dark.