Welcome to my perfumed garden

Matt Frei, reporting from Cuba on the BBC news - anyone watching the report on the family? People, that was my barrio!!! I lived 200 yards from that apartment, I had friends who lived in that building! We used to shop in that very agromercado!

OMG, it's like watching a home movie!

We are home! 

The sun is shining, but it's October so it's on the nippy side and we've lit the stove which means oven baked potatoes for supper! I have a mug of hot Ribena, skies are blue, the woods are looking gorgeous, life is good.

Mark has been streaming Radio Rebelde in the car, live from Cuba via the iphone which was - squeeful and exciting for about fifteen minutes; live news on parade-preps from Santiago and Santa Clara did lose novelty value rather quickly. With Cuban Radio in general (and Rebelde in particular) enough really is quite as good as a feast, rather more than enough to be entirely honest, but a happy Che-Day to you all, should you be celebrating today. *g*

Hamish update: wee doggie is still not himself but very much on the mend, though blood tests have shown a slightly reduced liver capacity. The new diet is on hold and he's condemned to eat chicken and (Tilda organic Basmati) rice for the next several days by order of the vet, poor lamb. Thanks so much for all your good wishes which I'll endeavour to answer asap.

Such a year for sloes! I picked a pound in no time at all yesterday, got scratched to pieces but there will be sloe gin again this Christmas, oh yes indeedy! It's been 3 years since we had a decent sloe harvest and I've missed my gin, deed I have.

Yesterday was my sister's birthday. Amongst other things we gave her the Help! DVD, fine wines and even finer chocs and was pleased to see her so delighted. She's a bugger of a time of it lately, she doesn't deserve it. I hope Dad gives her some peace this weekend so she can enjoy her various delights.

Also happy birthday John Lennon. You would have been 69 today, bless your heart.

And Barak Obama, WTF?!

Paul O Grady held at airport, accused of being Cuban immigrant. 

::giggling like a loon::

In other news, we are home, the results of the blood tests are in - situation apparently  AOK, I have green-cherry tea, it's two thirty eight pm and all is well.

Anyone planning on meteor watching tonight?

...heading straight for Havana. Brings back memories - none of them good. Evacuations, noisy, noisome nights in the fall-out shelters, days without gas, electricity or running water. I'm glad to be back in a sensible climate.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7589299.stm 

In happier news, Gorki and his most excellent band, Porno Para Ricardo, got let off with a fine.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7589405.stm

Yay! Links are back - still can't embed but at least they're showing up as urls now.
ETA: Oh NO! Links are gone again! Dammit!!!

and they read out what amounts to Fidel's retirement letter. There was a ton of stuff about global warming and stuff too, but the last par was a kicker.

"My basic duty is not to cling to office, much less to obstruct the rise of younger people..."

Interesting... Really clever the way they've managed this transition because it used to worry me dreadfully, what might happen if Fidel died suddenly while in office. Maybe he's come to realise, during his long sojourn, that there's more to life than being 'Fidel'. (o:

Granma
BBC

Coffee and a chocolate digestive. I'm halfway through revising chapter one; oh God, what a horrible mess that was! In the past four hours, I've deleted, re-written, re-inserted and re-deleted at least 4,000 words. But I'm getting there, with the invaluable aid of  beloved Cuba Mapa, for when I forget little details like, where in the heck is Jaruco? ::G::

OK. It's happening. Slowly, with a lot of head-shaking and despair, but progress is being made.

Coffee, then on to Santa Clara and the tren blindado... Halfway to the end, already!  ::G::

...is it, that on a morning when I have to finish painting a bathroom, work on my book and have 2 Moonridge stories barely even started (that's Moonridge 2006, btw!.)o:) that I have this plot bunny tapping away at my psyche like a demented woodpecker?

It's a beautiful day. I should go for a walk... Something else to guilt over. ::sigh::

ETA: It's now chucking it down and blowing a gale, good job I went out when I did, though the woods are a mess! Dozens of fallen trees, laying across the track - branches ripped off and strewn all over; it's a real obstacle course up there. Boggy too - I clambered over one massive, toppled pine, only to disappear down to my knees in mud and water on the other side. )o: Yuk.

In other news, Fidel called Hugo Chavez on his radio phone-in today. How sweet of him to keep in touch with his mates. ::G::

I'm just feeling pretty pleased with myself and feel the need to share. ::G::

See, I'm writing this book. It's about my time in Cuba, which spanned the time from when the USSR was still very much around, through the fall of the Berlin Wall , through the ensuing riots and unrest and thousands leaving on rafts (and floating home as bloated corpses more often than not) - and out the other side to what the Government calls 'The Special Period in Peacetime', and most Cubans call 'total economic meltdown. Help. Help. We are all going to die, most probably of boredom'. 

But, I thought all of the above might be a bit much for me  ::G::  So I narrowed it down to the events of a single journey (which is actually an amalgam of 3 journeys) across the eastern side of Cuba; very rural, very Not-Havana, and include stories that would illustrate what was going on in those weird times of the Periodo Especial. Lots happened on these trips! - so weird, wonderful and screamingly funny - the people so charming and kind - I haven't had to make a thing up.

TBH, I really did think it would write itself. It didn't. Man, I have STRUGGLED with this thing; it just refused to happen! When I was able to write at all, funny stuff wasn’t funny and sad stuff was just dull and tedious and I started to despair.

Then, a couple of days ago, after posting a bit of my latest TS fic and with the writery juices still flowing, I started writing a random bit of the book - about a hellish bus trip across the Sierra Cristal Mountains - and it flowed! - like drops of heavenly rain. :-D

So, I've stopped writing it as a continuous narrative now - ie, starting at the start and going on till the end. I'm writing each individual little story as a separate entity, whole and complete unto itself, and that's working very, very well. Later, when it's more or less finished, I'll start with the real narrative and link all the bits together. It's coming along just great - I'm churning out three stories - which amounts to around about 2 to 3 thousand words - a day; progress is being made - with any luck, I'll have the first draft finished by the time I go on my Permaculture course in July.

So I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself. Big grins all round - big gin and tonix would be better still, but it's only 3pm and I still have to pack my bag for the weekend trip to alibongo's and work on the next bit of that TS story I've almost finished.

But I expect alcohol will play some part in my evening. It usually does.