Category: Books

Parties, Cadillacs, potatoes, Valentines ……and blogging

Yesterday was Valentines day.  They call it the day of love here for anybody or anything.  You can even say I love my cow.  I actually prefer this to the sloppy fake romantic rubbish that has been marketed to us for years in Europe.  Everybody gave me best wishes of love all day yesterday but my wonderful husband let me stay asleep in bed, made breakfast for all the children, washed up all the dishes, pans, glasses from a hastily put together slightly drunken dinner with friends the night before …….. and then he had to go off to work whilst I stayed at home, even Saskia stayed quietly watching Nemo for another 20 minutes before she came and woke me up.  How romantic is that?

In the last 3 weeks …….. I have had 2 parties in my house, done a Cadillac tour around Havana, celebrated potatoes returning on the scene, watched a few good films, begun to reupholster my living room suite (or the diminutive 79 year old who is in my living room has begun the job), met a new fun group of Wednesday lunchers, visited an eco reserve in las Terrazas, been back to Hemingway’s house, eaten in a real vegetarian restaurant in Cuba, entertained filmmaker friends from London and grandparents from the Cotwolds, had the best steak of my life, bought an amazing photo of the Malecon by a very talented young photographer, juiced a lot of sweet delicious oranges (its the season!), met a new bubbly Thai friend who is a dress designer (my new beautiful material sent from London will soon be designed into something cool, thanks Amanda!), received lots of wonderful presents and goodies from kindles to cameras, strawberry jam to my new favourite chocolate bar from Tescos, swiss, orange and almond (any Brits rush down there now, you won’t regret it, Thanks Nico!), a whole load of great music, got very frustrated with my lack of internet, repeatedly failed to post photos on my blog, met a Cuban working in occupational psychology in the Cuban social research centre and remembered what I used to do, failed to even begin to think about the English translations of the film school website, and today I made a cottage pie to celebrate the return of the potato. But absolutely failed to write any of this down.  Some of this is to do with living life to the full rather than writing about it or living on line.  But blogging for me has been a discipline, something to make me sit down and share.

So I have made some decisions: I have to write at least something once a day even if it is off line.

Invite people to guest write on my blog!  I like this one, it makes it more fun and interesting.  Not sure if they actually will write anything for me but it might stop making me feel so overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that I should be writing.

Give up on trying to post photos on my blog and upload them to a related facebook photo page.  I actual do manage to upload pictures to facebook.

Off to swim in the crystal clear sea ……………..

 

Life is surreal ……. but I like it

I sat in the auditorium of the Museo de Belles Artes last night listening to some great British actors delivering a beautiful collection of Pinter’s plays and poems finishing with his incredibly powerful acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize for literature.  The theatre was packed and the audience completely absorbed despite the ridiculously excessive aircon.  I sat next to an employee of the museum who had her translated copy of Pinter to hand.  It cost me 10 Cuban pesos (30p) for the entry and was all part of an international theatre festival taking place in Habana this week.  I had driven there alone and parked right outside the theatre.   After the performance I drove one of the actors, Roger (reluctantly famous as Trigger in Only Fools and Horses amongst his many other achievements) back to the National Hotel where we met the other actors and headed out for dinner.

I can drive right into the City centre at 7pm and not get stuck in traffic, park right outside whatever theatre, museum or restaurant that I happen to be going to.  I don’t have to worry about traffic wardens, cameras, violent attacks or aggressive people.  I can stop and chat to anybody and they don’t mind, in fact they always have time to chat.  If I get lost everybody wants to help me find where I am going.  Everybody has time ……..

As I was driving home I marvelled at how surreal and fascinating my life is here in Havana.   I was exhausted and the salt water from the Malecon had sprayed my windscreen and I could hardly see where I was going so was crawling along like a campesino in the countryside as I tried to clean the screen.  Here, in one of the most famous cities in the world, they are not big on street lights even in the centre.  When I drove out to Hemingway’s beautiful house (a museum) the other day with some friends from Guatemala, I read a billboard (not many in these parts!) that reminded me that the first world uses three quarters of the world’s energy.  That’s not fair is it!!?

The boys had half term this week and a good friend came from Guatemala with two sons so we were doing a few touristy things and keeping the children busy.  5 children in the house was quite a handful but we had 2 Cuban nannies recruited to help us keep our sanity!  After they left I packed the boys off to school on Monday only to discover that the half term holiday lasted 1 week and 2 days.  (Lost touch with reality and school holiday dates!)  2 more days to kill and I was rather tired of dragging out the Lego and jigsaw puzzles in the house as the stormy October weather kept us out of the sea.  I decided to take them for some adventures in Havana and we ambled around chatting to lots of people and discovering strange modern Chinese video installations in one gallery and wonderful prints and etchings in another workshop where Paulo chose his Birthday picture of the Orisha spirit of fire.  We stopped to buy lunch on the street and the boys splashed in the puddles in their welly boots in the little alleyways of Havana Vieja while I endeavoured to teach Nico the names of all the months in French by making up a little song.

Last week I had attended the UN day celebrations in an old palacio in Habana Vieja where I met people from the EU, the UN and the Nigerian Ambassador, who full of African charm promised to bring me one of those wonderful dresses from Nigeria when she goes at Christmas.  Come round and visit me she boomed and I will take your measurements.  I’ll take you up on that offer I thought to myself.

Anyway all these fun and surreal discoveries means that I am too tired and too stimulated to feel as though I am being a good mother or a good blogger for that matter.  Too many things to do and not enough hours in the day to do them all, and sleep, and get woken up by Saskia at 5.30.  Saskia has recently learnt the word apple just in time for apples to mysteriously completely disappear from Cuba and now every time she approaches the fruitbowl she jibbers on about apples and alas there are only bananas and pineapples.  Thankfully the boys are now back at school and we have a bit of resting time before our next visitor arrives from England on Saturday.  My dear friend and Paulo’s Godmother is trafficking Birthday Lego, Marmite, toothpaste, shampoo etc etc.  and maybe, just maybe I will get that night out dancing ……………