Stormy

A resolution after my birthday last Tuesday - put some more stuff on this old blog. Ramp it up a little. At least once every six weeks.

A specially lively day for the "Have Your Say-ers" today. It's difficult to tell which of the below are genuine, but there's an entertaining mix of the piss-takers and the simply cretinous. Anyway, they almost coaxed me out of an abject dolour, prompted by coming back to work from a week's skiing without even a peek at the Blackberry.

Some are from the BBC, some The Sun and some the Daily Mail. See if you can guess which are which.

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Added: Monday, 10 March, 2008, 15:48 GMT 15:48 UK

Storms like this are common in North West Scotland, what's all the fuss about?

Dave Griggs, Gairloch

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Added: Monday, 10 March, 2008, 15:47 GMT 15:47 UK

I went out this morning and my hair blown about and very wet. This is really intolerable. I put it all down to Global Warming - can't take any much more of this.

Martin wilson, Wirral, United Kingdom

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Added: Monday, 10 March, 2008, 15:45 GMT 15:45 UK

it is windy and it is rainy.

Phil, Milton Keynes

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Added: Monday, 10 March, 2008, 16:23 GMT 16:23 UK

Our fence has been blown down and part of the conservatory roof has been lifted! its been scary stuff!

Melanie, Crawley

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Added: Monday, 10 March, 2008, 16:20 GMT 16:20 UK

I thought that it was only the Scots and the Welsh that revelled in English discomfort - but it seems it's anyone outside of the South - WHat it is with you people? want to see someone die is that it? Why on earth you cannot just feel some concern for some people who are going through a tough time is beyond me - Southerners bleed and die just like you!!

[bigjeeze], Bournemouth, United Kingdom

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Added: Monday, 10 March, 2008, 16:18 GMT 16:18 UK

i got up the this morning and the tide down me was very high and the powder went off two and a half hours

alison, swansea

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Added: Monday, 10 March, 2008, 16:11 GMT 16:11 UK

My hat blew off this morning. It smelled awful.

Kerry, Bedford

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Added: Monday, 10 March, 2008, 15:30 GMT 15:30 UK

I dont understand all these comments from people in Scotland saying how much wind & rain they get & how it is worse than anybody else gets.

Thats why nobody with any sense wants to live there.

[Harbourside], Dorset, United Kingdom

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Added: Monday, 10 March, 2008, 14:50 GMT 14:50 UK

Hi

Today early in the morning around 6 am I have had severe wind gusts and heavy rain.

Please do extra care during this extreme weather.


regards

nadeem khan, wanstead

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Posted by: tyblonde

And what do GMTV do? The prats in charge send out one of their idiotic reporters to Brighton where he is in great danger of being blown over, and even more stupid Fiona and Ben are giggling about it? FFS, they should be taken off the air.

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Posted by: Truth_Always_Hurts

Nothing has happened in reality... every country will have to endure 'freak' weather. I'ts Just Gordon Brown coming to the 'rescue' of the nation that's all.

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For many years my late husband and myself talked about moving to Sussex or the West Country but I am glad we didn't and I feel safe here in good old North Hertfordshire.

Sorry to hear about the damage caused by the weather and may God look after the mariners.

- Angie, Herts
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We never had bad weather when Maggie T was running the show!

- Theresa Dunning, Chichester
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Like "Global Warming" - it's all "HOT AIR"!

- John Wisniowski, Melbourne-Australia

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If you want to pay more tax in the UK, just keep talking about "Climate Change" and you will be taxed accordingly.

- Msr Kev, UK

Comments (4)

Blimey, it's been a while hasn't it. And why? I'm not sure - laziness probably, although work has been intense for about 3 months, and obviously, like everyone else, I've devoted my spare time to looking for Maddy.

Time trundles on and not much changes. My last momentous blog gave me the opportunity to write something vaguely original on, say, Glastonbury, but instead it consisted in the most part of a cut and paste job from the BBC website.

I did go to the Glastonbury festival this year, and it wasn't the best. But this says more about the five previous Glastonburys I've troubled with my attendance, as I still had a good time at Pilton in 2007. But I'm not going to write about how I rose above the mud and the rain, my Blitz spirit demeanour shot through with an admirable sense of fun, because that wouldn't be true. On the Monday after the festival, Claire and I spent over two hours standing in a field, waiting to get off the site, while the wind contemptuously drove rain into our faces - but the endless mud and perpetual downfalls got to me before that. This was mainly because once the entire site was covered in mud, walking anywhere was exhausting.

On the first day, with Claire and Simon, I eagerly approached the Pyramid Stage to see Bloc Party - but huge swathes of the area in front of the stage, all the way back to the mixing desk, were under a gloopy grey soup. We eventually found a relatively hazard-free spot, but any kind of movement, even the most nonchalant of toe-tapping, was an effort, as feet immediately stuck to the ground. I wasn't up to that level of physical exertion. A few hours previously I had survived a long dark night of the soul, which was perhaps no less than I deserved, it being brought on by meeting people from the internet.

The previous afternoon I headed down to the Cider Bus to participate in a "Glastonbury meet-up" organised by users of a London website. They all seemed very pleasant people, but a nervousness that one of them was going to cut off my penis and fry it hadn't dissipated, so I hit the hit the hot cider quite hard, as well as the "spicy" cider, within which lurked the probable agent of my destruction, brandy.

Apparently I was in a bit of a state when I got back to the tent. I don't really remember much of that. What I do remember is waking with a start in the middle of the night, convinced my brain was haemorrhaging, so intense was the pain. Lying in the dark while my head slowly ate itself wasn't doing any good, so, with difficulty I pulled on some clothes and wellies, and lurched out of the tent. And lurched back onto it, snapping one of the poles. Undeterred I wandered off down into the festival site, desperate to walk off the pain. It was a grim and arduous journey, especially since I hadn't put my contact lenses in. Dull lights and figures moved around the festival's many paths. I kept moving and blundered on for about an hour, pausing only to throw up against a tree. I then wandered back up the hill to the farmhouse, and found the Christian tent. A nice man gave me a blanket and I went to lie down in their shelter marquee, and miraculously, dropped off to sleep. About an hour later I woke again with a suppressed scream. The pain was back, as bad as ever. I sat up breathing heavily, and the nice man came to ask me if I was alright. After answering in the negative I made my escape, and, ungrateful wretch that I am, disappeared around the back of the marquee and vomited all over it. By the time I staggered back to the tent, dawn was breaking.

Over the next few days I enjoyed lots of music - Bjork, Manics, Gruff Rhys, Arcade Fire, various fortuituouly found randoms in the Green Fields (Alice McLaughlin, The Bohemianists) - as well as comedy (Bill Bailey), a good mime (oxymoron though that may seem) and the infinite range of other entertainment the site had to offer. But despite all this, by Saturday afternoon, the elements were winning the battle for hearts and minds. Claire, Matt, Sally and I trudged up to the Park, a new area apparently curated by Emily Eavis. It may as well have been called The Somme, as any grass was buried under about 2 feet of a particularly viscose strain of mud. While the others queued in the driving rain for some damp Mexican food, I found refuge in a bar and skinned up, amused by an ongoing hip-hop karaoke competition.

Two things consoled me. The first was thinking back to the train journey from London. Sitting at a table in front of me was a group of fresh-faced students, exhibiting that nauseating smugness that comes naturally to those safe in the embrace of further education. Festival first-timers and foolishly clad in new trendy clobber, their incessant naïve patter and insistence on cheering whenever blue sky emerged over the passing Wiltshire plains tried my hungover patience. When one of their party excitedly remembered she had forgotten to retrieve something from her rucksack, she clambered onto the table to access the luggage rack, wiggling her tight jeans, enjoying the appreciate murmurs from some blokes further down the carriage. Four days of shit later and I wondered if they were as complacent in their youth. Did that girl still carry her petite frame so confidently - or was she crawling through the mud, crying for her mother, her mind destroyed by exposure and drugs, her gut riddled with parasitic worms? Probably not, but the thought comforted me as I struggled with the moist cigarette papers.

The second consoling thought was that we were in the Park to see Lou Rhodes. Of course, her set was incredible, the absolute highlight of the festival. It doesn't get much better than that. It even beat the one and a half hours I spent in the Hare Krishna tent the night before. That was special. And a bit odd.

I saw Lou Rhodes again the other day at the Bloomsbury theatre. Look, here's my ticket!

Comments (2)

From the BBC website today:

Scientists have discovered the first gene which appears to increase the odds of being left-handed.

The Oxford University-led team believe carrying the gene may also slightly raise the risk of developing psychotic mental illness...

Oh good.

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Havana (Part two)

Calle Opispo is the bustling, cluttered main street of old Havana. It's lined with shops, paladares, banks, and hotels, including Ambos Mundos. In the hotel, you pass through the marbled lobby, take a ride in the antique cage lift, and head down an anonymous corridor, before arriving at the room where Hemingway lived in the late 1920s and early '30s, writing For Whom the Bell Tolls. Back on ground level, Obispo will also take you past Farmacia Taquechel, an ancient apothecary, where ceramic jars line the dark wooden shelves that stretch to the ceiling and a human skeleton stares out of a glass fronted cabinet.

Other such relics of pre-Castro Cuba are to be found all over the city, but mainly as crumbling artifacts, such as in Vedado, which in Batista's time, and before, was an affluent suburb, to which the huge art-deco and neo-classical villas that sit beside the neighbourhood's streets bear witness. But now, the brickwork is falling away and the walls' bright colours are faded. All the same, our stroll down the tree-lined avenues and around the green spaces was an elegant antidote to the frantic thoroughfares of the old quarter. One such green space is John Lennon park, a patchy area of grass, where a statue of The Mouthy One relaxes on a bench. On examination, I realised that the holes just in front of his ears suggested that there once had been a pair of glasses attached to his face. Before I could mention this to Claire, an old man was at our side, brandishing a round pair of glasses, and CDs for sale, including an album of Beatles tracks, covered by Cuban artists. I bought a copy, and gave him an extra tip. In response he secured the spectacles. Then, after we had taken a couple of photos, thanked him and wandered away, he retreated with the glasses to his own bench, ready for the next tourists in search of Lennon.

Back on Opispo, the end of the street is overshadowed by the dome of the Capitol. We headed up towards it, and there the city opens up, the claustrophobic walls of Old Havana falling away to reveal large and ornate public buildings, with small landscaped parks set amongst wide roads carrying the requisite old American cars, huge truck like buses known as Camiles, and the distinctive yellow Coco-cabs, three wheeled egg-shaped taxis. On the far side, beyond the capital, a Chinese gate looms over the road, marking Chinatown. Nearby is one of the city's cigar factories. We trailed through it on a tour, and I was disappointed to find the rows of workers expertly rolling leaves not to the sound of a man reading the newspaper through a microphone, but to a blaring radio. The guide said we weren't allowed to take photos, but if the flash was off and if we did it subtly he promised to look away.

We took a cab west, up to the dusty Plaza del Revolucion. One side of its large empty expanse is dominated by the towering Jose Marti memorial, around the top of which birds constantly wheel. On the wall of one of the government buildings on the other side, Che Guevara looks out, a blackened steel freize of the famous Korda photo. Today, the space in between resembled a spacious but unused inner city car park. On busier days it trembles under the weight of marching feet and rumbling tanks and echoes with the sound of Fidel's five hour speeches.

Just further up the road, we found the vast Necropolis, where thousands of white stone tombs and memorials jostle for space. We spent a couple of hours exploring the place, finding flower covered graves of supposed miracle workers, wondering at the elaborate family vaults which I imagine provided better living quarters than offered in the city, and being asked the time by groundsmen. We were constantly being asked the time. I decided that this may have been either because many people didn't have watches, or they just wanted to practice their English. The Necropolis was still very much in use, and while we were there at least three hearses dropped off their contents. A typical funeral procession consisted of the hearse, followed by a motorbike and sidecar, then an open backed truck with a dozen mourners in the back, and finally a spluttering Lada, again packed with people.

We spent about 5 days in Havana. As a city so full of colour, noise and friendliness, but also carrying the weight of its recent history and the endless propaganda of both sides, it is of course, ultimately perplexing. Especially, when the music does stop. We looked up from yet another mojito to find the band had discarded their instruments and were eagerly crowding around the windows. We joined them to watch a couple of policemen laying into a skinny rickshaw driver. One worked his stomach, while the other caught the man's bare heels with his boot, toppling the unfortunate onto his back.

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Inexplicably, given that they're vermin seen all around the city, there's been some doubt cast upon my assertion that a family of foxes has taken up residence under the garden shed. So I thought I'd better post a picture of one of the little buggers, which is grainy and out of focus, in the tradition of the best Sasquatch photos.

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