Meet Rocky Springsteen…

Just look at him, all red and sitting on his rock, claws ready to nip off the finger of any prying hand that comes a’prying just that little bit too close, invading his personal space.

I bought Mr. Lobster in Boston from the Paradies Shop (yes Paradies and not Paradise) for $16.99 back in 1998. It really was a whistle-stop tour – into Boston for the day, a single night, and out and off to Philly the next morning - back to the UK two days later.

I remember many things about Boston, but two things that stick in my mind particularly vividly are the immaculately painted clapboard houses of the suburbs and the wealth and variety of the lighthouses of the islands – Calf, Moon, Deer, Spectacle, Gallops - in the water below as we flew into Boston Harbour and on to land at the General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport.

I like Mr. Lobster surrounded by his marine mates; a pink starfish, an orange seahorse, and something yellow that could be a crab, some rare type of jellyfish, or a drowned plastic bag (I was going to write condom but changed my mind). He strikes me as a typically American lobster; a Republican, a Baptist, a gun toting, right to protect ma property (in his case a big blue rock), nuke the…well everything really, including crayfish (a distant relative), rootin-tootin, baseball watching, salute the flag with his hand (claw) over his heart (Lobsters do have hearts, but no arteries, and their blood is grey), kind of good and regular all round American shellfish, crustacean, guy.

I call him Rocky Springsteen – well it seemed to make sense at the time; but then I had drunk half a dozen bottles of Sam Adams. I had Lobster for dinner in Salem that night too; it was delicious.

Sorry Rocky.