Car boots attract all-sorts, from the rogue antique-wannabes, to wheeler-dealers offloading stolen goods, from sellers of illegal boxing videos featuring gypsies, travellers, tramps and the Krays to people desperate for a bargain no matter what you’re offering. We pull up into our pitch at 6.30am to prepare for a 7am start. I open my door and early doors car-boot obsessives edge towards us like zombies armed with the intention of eating your brain. I grimace as I open the boot and paws fly in pulling at our things, I ask people to be patient. ‘You’ve obviously never been booting before,’ laughs a lady looking like Big Mo from Eastenders as she places her bandaged scabby hands on our antique puppets. ‘How much?’ she asks. Kerfuffled, still unloading, ‘How much do you want to pay for it?’ I ask. Everyone stops and looks at me. She pulls me in closer.

‘You never NEVER ask a booter that.’

Booter?

She buys my puppets for £40 and cackles as she leaves, obviously sensing an ebay opportunity. My guitar causes a minor stir as so-called experts look it up and down, examine it, ask questions about the action and fail to play a G chord properly. No one has noticed the gaping hole where the wood expanded next to a radiator and ask how much. I’m going for £50 or £40 depending on who can play it. I just want to get rid. Once they hear the price, they leave. They’re professional booters. They know they’re being mugged off. There’s a cold dip in the action between booters and punters and I explore, spying a van showing illegal boxing videos and selling porn, a comic seller trying to sell Panini Marvel comics from last year for more than their cover price. I return to find myself selling some of my favourite tat for 20p and haggling. I sell an old not-working ipod for £10, the guy immediately asks me to go down to £9. There’s a quick deliberation in the constant haggling; there’s an unnecessary hunt for bargains. One man sifts through various MIDI music wires and asks how much. I tell him they’re all £1. He asks what it’s for. I tell him it’s to connect a MIDI flyer box to a USB soundcard. He says he’ll find a use for it and leaves happy with his new pointless wire. A man approaches. I greet him cheerily despite the cold.

‘Oh, don’t worry. I don’t want anything from your stall.’

‘What are you looking for?’

‘I’ve got an eye for these things. I can decide in 30 seconds whether I want to look at your stall or not. And I decided in 30 I didn’t want anything from yours.’

‘Oh. What are you looking for?’

‘Art. Antique art.’

‘Yes, we don’t have any.’

‘I know. I told you, I’ve got an eye for the contents of stalls.’

‘Well, can I interest you in some fresh rosemary?’

‘I’ll tell you something. Rosemary is excellent for roasts.’

‘Yes, I know. Would you like some?’

‘Here’s a trick not many people know> run your fingers along the rosemary and your hand will smell like it.’

‘Yes I know.’

‘Just a little trick I picked up.’

‘Thanks.’

‘So, do you have any art?’

‘I thought you had an eye for the contents of stalls.’

‘You might be hiding some in the boot of your car. It’s common practice.’

‘To what end?’

‘Never ask a booter that.’

He disappears in a wisp of his own ridiculous mystery. Another woman buy one of our mirrors for £4. She wants it for £3 because it’s bigger than she wants. For £4 I tell her, it’s not worth haggling. She begrudgingly hands over the money and asks me to look after the mirror. She returns over the course of the day with 4 other mirrors, all the wrong size, asking me to store them all. She goes home with 5 mirrors, all the wrong size for whatever she’s looking for.

‘Ooooh, I love this. I don’t need it, I don’t know what it is but I’ll have it,’ a woman says. She keeps giving me money and picking up new things, including a purple glittery globe candle that she picks up with such certainty, you wonder whether it’s exactly what she’s been looking for her entire life to tie her bedroom together. People are ruthless, people are snobby, people are bartering for 20p vases we bought for 39p.

A man grabs my guitar and plays a G chord. Desperate to get rid of it, I allow him to barter me down to £20. He leaves looking chuffed. I’m chuffed he didn’t notice the expanded broken wood. I then notice him selling it on his stall. Opposite. I walk over and pick it up. ‘Oooh, nice guitar. How much?’

‘For you, £50,’ he grins malevolently.

‘You mugged me off.’

‘Standard practice mate.’ He answers his phone. ‘Yeah alright mate, I just mugged some guy off for his guitar, it’s worth £100.’ It’s not you dick, I bought it for £75 and it’s broken. I return to my pitch, pissed off. I watch him grin as he wheeler-dealers any interest. I get an idea and return to him.

‘Can we have a word?’

‘Yeah, what?’

‘I’m a Guardian journalist and I want to interview you about what you just did, does that happen a lot?’

‘You write for the Guardian? Whatever mate, i don’t know you. No one wants to read about booters; this is real life, people looking for bargains. This sort of stuff happens all the time.’

‘They do.’ I go into a made-up spiel about credit crunch-buying/bargain hunting for middle class Guardian readers.

‘Listen,’ he leans in. ‘If you didn’t feel mugged off I’d have punched you in the fucking face but I’m being polite. You cannot ask me questions without a lawyer.’

‘I’m not a policeman, mate. Just want to expose the seedy underbelly of booters.’

‘How boring.’

‘Well, indulge me.’

‘Look... at 6.30 booters arrive, they lock their cars, they trawl the stalls looking for part-timer mugs like you. They buy your cheap stuff and sell it for profit cos they got the patter. Happens all the time.’

‘Does anyone turn up with an empty boot.’

‘I did.’

Eventually, I walk away from the wheeler dealer, the horrid git of a man, all smiles and malevolent words, all smug and arrogant abrasiveness to buy a cup of tea from a teenage boy with a broken hand running a burger van. It’s cold and I pack up my stall, deciding to give the rest of the wares to charity rather than beg a field full of strangers and wankers to buy them off me for £20. I retun home with my £20 profit, stopping to refuel the car for £25 on the way. Booters, some mothers do ave em.

The decision to stay at an all-inclusive resort isn’t one we make. Our ambitious tour itinerary means a splash in every corner of the island and it’s easier to go with a tour operator to achieve all of this. Thinking we’ll need some luxury to wash away the beaten dusty roads, they stick us in an all-inclusive resort, which isn’t something we’ve ever done before and isn’t particularly Cuban. Trinidad feels far away from the emporium of luxury we find ourselves in, minutes from the beach, seconds from a free bar and in the lap of some natty air conditioning. Luckily, the beach is a public one so we’re not tuned out of Cuban life completely. It’s Sunday and the church is the sea in the Gulf of Mexico. Groups of friends and families swarm to the beach, standing in groups of five up to their chests in the water, each clutching a plastic cup, one holding on to and dishing out the Havana Club and occasionally another holding a mixer like Tukola (Cuban-brand coke, or lemonade). They are noisy and ferociously good-humoured. Apart from persistent begging from a few individuals who are actually just asking for sun cream for their children as it’s really hot and sun cream is really expensive and exclusively sold in hotels and resorts, it doesn’t seem like the worst request in the world. The beach is full of life, and as the soca thunders out its repetitive BOO-TA-BOO-PA beat, the sea breeze collects in our sweatiest patches and we lie back and watch Cuba party like no other.....

.. ..

Inside the resort is staid and boring. We meet American couples who bring their own flasks to these types of resorts so they’re never without beer, fill up their plates to high heaven at the buffet and never leave, either the poolside or the resort or the air conditioning. Not much fun is being had. We see English couples all complaining and queuing. And an endless stream of sophisticated and sassy French families, having the times of their lives, enjoying the land and its people and interacting with it. Why are the French so goddamn cool? After a luxurious three days of snorkelling through the reef, getting a splinter in my foot and a heavy monsoon blighting an entire afternoon, there’s too much free beer and buffet crawling around our systems and we hit the road east once more. We’re on our way to Santiago but as it’s 500 kilometres away, have a stop in Camaguey, a surprisingly large city (close to a million people) that most people use as a stopover between Havana and Santiago, a place that strands you and charges you in excess for everything because hmmm where else are you going to go? As you come in off the motorway into the centre of the city, you’re thrust into an increasingly bizarre set of narrow winding streets operating on a makeshift one way system, the road names caked in grime and impossible to decipher, the final destination seemingly near and far simultaneously. After being constantly invaded by those dastardly pirates of the Caribbean, the citizens of Camaguey moved from the coast about 200km inland and made the layout of the city labyrinthian and purposefully confusing to flummox any pillaging pirate in his steps. After asking for directions from an irate breastfeeding mum, a teenager on a bike and an old man we are no closer to where we want, the Gran Hotel, seemingly the only hotel in the city, definitely the most famous. A young man in a UK premiership football vest and baseball cap follows our car on his bike, unwilling to leave us alone, trying to thrust a laminated card advertising his casa particulares into the open car window despite our protestations that we have booked somewhere. We pull up outside a bank round the corner from the phantom hotel, on the verge of a mega-argument with the frustration of not being able to navigate the narrow streets. The man on a bike comes to a halt and patiently waits outside Katie’s window for her to emerge. I get out of the car and run to where I think the hotel is. I’m soon lost. Meanwhile, he tries to convince her he has a nice house but her argument that we have pre-booked only serves for him to amp up his sales pitch before a rickshaw driver arrives and shouts at him to leave, before asking Katie some leading questions about her marital status. Meanwhile, I’m lost in the winding roads and no one wants to tell me where Gran Hotel, the most well known hotel in the area is, and I’m wondering about, getting increasingly agitated and my limbs are crying out in relief at not being cramped in a car and finally, the hotel, tucked into a main street in a manner you’d never expect to know. A concierge and I cut through buildings, canteens and offices to get back to Katie who has forged a friendship with the rickshaw driver who bundles up to me and repeatedly protests his innocence, his honourable intentions and his good nature. I smile. We drive to the hotel.....

.. ..

Camaguey is dusty and so we head to the pool only to be greeted by insanity. Hard nose ragga destroys the speakers. Teenagers in bikinis wiggly their hips inappropriately by the water’s edge. The entire pool area is one family, made up of different sexes, generations and racial backgrounds. They all sport the blingest of bling we’ve seen on Spanish bodies, dripping with thick gold chains, big costume jewels and perfect manicured nails, buxomly spilling out of bikinis and speedos. They thrash around the pool playing a violent version of volleyball that involves submerging the losers, they shout at each other in good spirits but aggressively and loudly. Our dip in the pool lasts a frantic five minutes as we intrude on their space, their completely furious takeover of the area. As Katie and I stand in the shallow end, shivering and watching, we watch as one of the tough guys, spilling with tattoos runs up to the king, an old white Spanish dude sat in his chair with his hair slicked back and a massive cigar, a pinky ring weighing his hand down. The king whispers in the tough guy’s ear and the tough guy runs over to a shrimp guy backed into the corner by two other tough guys, one holding his wrist, a look of terror splashed across his face, tough guy one relays the message menacingly into his ear. He replies, tough guy relays the message to the king and so forth. Where would your imagination go at this point? We were there, watching Scarface unfold before our eyes in 3D.....

.. ..

Camaguey has not much to offer at night apart from a few tourist spots. Any other restaurants are tucked into the winding streets which seem to shut down completely at night, bars are etched into the walls away from prying eyes so we head to the square with a few touristy restaurants, before realising they all join into one, open air and filled with massive Camaguey water carriers, pots of exquisite size and stature. Afrobeat throbs in the background. The stop-off doesn’t allow tourists much opportunity to be with locals so after a few drinks and a simple meal, we head back to the hotel to listen to the night’s noise, the gangsters spilling in and out of the downstairs bar in good spirits and in intense moments of quiet menace. I sleep with one eye open, just in case.....

.. ..

The 300km to Santiago is torturous despite the early start but we cross fields and fields of wild dogs and red soil, banana plantations and tobacco plantations, fields of sisle and fields of emptiness. When we arrive, though, the city leaps up and grabs us by the hands and embraces us. The spirit of Cuba is here.......

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To be continued.......

 We visit a bar called La Bodeguita del Mer for dinner and a mojito. Quite arrogantly La Bodeguita and El Floridita, another bar in old town carry a handwritten sign written by Hemingway himself, declaring ‘My mojito in La Bodeguita, my daiquiri in El Floridita’. One can only hope that all the moonshine he consumed over the years hasn’t destroyed his tastebuds to the point where he doesn’t know one mojito from the other. Walking the streets at night in Old Town is perfectly safe. Windows glow auburn with television waves, seats have appeared on balconies, as hot scantily-dressed residents fan themselves and pull from flagans of rum, their rations containers. The thin streets only carry the television auburn as lighting. We wind down the streets searching for La Bodeguita before it announces itself a block away with pulsing music. The tiny downstairs bar is packed and spills on to the streets, a heady mix of dancing Cubans and Hemingway tourists bobbing along out of time with the dancers and the music, filming a tightly packed band thrash at their instruments in the corner. The walls are spattered with graffiti, announcing international visitors from over the years, espousing their own revolutionary rhetoric in their mother tongues. Despite the densely packed bar’s customers all vying for space, a chair proudly props up the corner of the bar, famously left empty in honour of world-famous bar-propper-up, Ernest Hemingway. We’re led upstairs, past oodles and doodles of more graffiti. I add my own comments to the historical walls, promising my record collection to Rob in the event of my death. Upstairs, we’re sat next to a trio of American girls who work in marketing, judging by their in-depth conversations about using Google Ads to promote businesses. It’s less frenzied up here and the band playing is calmer in an appropriate dinner-music way. Misreading the menu, thinking I’m ordering beef in Jamaican (not far-fetched, it’s the next island over) jerk sauce, however, what arrives is more like beef jerky and rice, a plate of intense saltiness. The calm band plays melodiously in the corner, our meditations distracted only by the ad-girls moaning about keyword searches. Downstairs, we decide to have our mojitos in La Bodeguita and the barkeep rustles them up for us, pre-prepared mixtures lined up in glasses under the bar, ready for the rum and ice. I order a cigar, a Montecristo. Clipped and lit, it’s placed in my hand and I take a shallow pull, not used to the heavy aroma. It tastes clean and bitter but oaky and well, tobacco-ish. It’s a sensation I’ve not experienced smoking before, it’s heavy but clean and full of taste, making the rhythmic act of smoking less about the oral obsession and more about savouring a taste. I look at Hemingway’s empty seat and try and visualise the man, haunted and driven by words, sat here drinking himself into a Cuban stupor, ready for the night’s adventures.....

.. ..

We head over to Partigas tobacco factory, the best known factory in Havana, particularly proud of its exclusive Cohiba licence. There, we watch the process from the leaf-sorters, sat in an armchair with a leaf rest in front of them, all gossiping and shouting from chair to chair, while they expertly sort the leaves into uses and brands. There are over ten brands coming out of this factory, each with its own sizes, and the quality of the leaves dictate which brand. We watch them tear out the spines of the leaves, curling them around their fingers, spines to be used in the binding, so strong is the attitude against wastage, that they ensure every part of the leaf is used.  Next we watch the rollers create the innards and set them in moulds before they have their outer casing put on and sealed with gum made from the tobacco plant’s sap. The entire process involves no chemicals and every part of the plant, making these handrolled versions of the Cuban cigar, these top-end products the absolute pinnacle of organic luxury, full of naturally ingredients and locally sourced. The rollers call girls over to watch them, earphones in their ears pumping out hard ragga and soca. There is a platform dividing the two rolling rooms, where a table with microphones sits. The guide tells us that every morning someone comes in and reads the news to the workers and in the afternoons they are read stories and books. There is an air of socialism here as workers are tied to their jobs by their abilities and despite the repetitive nature of their everyday tasks, they all work together to create the whole. It’s a wondrous conveyer belt of beauty to watch, hypnotic and fun as the workers banter with us and each other.....

.. ..

So enraptured with the cigar factory experience, we head over towards the Havana Club, the rum factory but a functional look at the distilling process sends us out on to the street where a pregnant lady demands money from me. Not having any change, I run back into the factory and get change for her as she stands watch over me, her aggressive persistence winning her the sum of 1 CUC, I feel like an uncaring skinflint. ....

.. ..

In the evening, we buy some Bucanero beers from a nearby ration shop, bemused by our inability to tell between perso and CUC shops that they overcharge us, not before ensuring we wait our turn, serving all the locals before us. We walk down towards the Malecon, the strip lining the sea, the sticky pavement slick with sunbeams, sweat bursting through our deodorant reapplications, the sun glinting off the water of the gulf of Mexico like broken fragments of television static. Walking along, we watch the boys, all retired for the evening jumping from the sea wall down into the bay below, a stretch of water we later find out is the most polluted bay in the world. It looks refreshing though. Teenagers meet for clandestine trysts, couples walk hand in hand, everyone smiles as the sea breeze eases them into the cool of the evening. No one is drinking beer though. That English necessity to drink alcohol outside the second the sun comes out hasn’t translated. Cubans splash in the water. All eyes fall on us as we walk past, the Indian and the white girl, the initial double-take- is he Hispanic, how did he land a white girl? Who are they? Cuba is largely non-racist we learn from the guidebook, the collective national identity of revolution eschewing any need for colour line divisions, but the difference between English-speaking and Spanish-speaking tourist is sometimes the defining line between touting and or not. There’s a local bar with splinter-melting soca across the road half a mile down our walk and we head over to it to have an approved beer rather than a public one. The soca is coming from the music channel, while a version of either Cuba’s Got Talent or Cuban Stars in their Eyes is attracting dancehall queens to compete. The tables that have people on them have a central decoration- a bottle of rum. Each has their own glass or plastic cup, a shot is poured into it and they drink and put the world to rights.....

.. ..

Trying to rent a car proves difficult. Waiting for two hours at one terminus with other couples and families fraught by their own bureaucratic mistakes, we find that our car is at the airport. Four hours after setting off, with all our luggage and a fear of the lack of road signs, we arrive at the airport where a stern woman tells us that while she is upgrading our car, we will forfeit our deposit if we return the car without number plates or mats or bizarrely if there is even a crumb of  food spillage. Katie opens the car door to find a cheerio on the carpet, that she points out to the woman who shrugs it off and tells us not to eat cheerios in the car. The number plate thing, we’re a bit bemused by until I recall a conversation with a tour rep on what taxis we as tourists could take. He explained what each colour-coded number plate meant, and brown means hire car. And because the police don’t really stop hire cars unless they’re desperately wrong as they provide industry, people probably want the number plates. The police, we’re told, aren’t allowed to collect the money if we incur any fines, we pay them directly to the tour company, making me wonder whether the corrupt weakest link is? The police with kickbacks or the tour operator with its cut of the fine.....

.. ..

The roads aren’t signposted and we drive around in a state of panic, desperately staring at a map we’ve bought in England that seems to only contain a third of the roads we’re coming across. We fart our way on to the ain road out of Havana. I think we’re a main road for 50 kilometres, till we realise we’re on a motorway, I’ve been following our progress on the wrong road. Luckily, looking at the sun for a position as our ancestors might have, we eventually find our way and arrive in the communist commune, Las Terrazas, ready for some remote countryside in an eco-lodge.....

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To be continued.....

Cuba is like one of those annoying friends at parties who wheels out the same laboured anecdote about how they once saw Mick Jagger on a train to impress girls, make themselves seem cool and climb social celeb-spot ladders. Yes, Cuba, we know you had a revolution, yes Cuba, it was very historically significant for the country, unifying a disparate communities and cultures into one all-important national identity and sense of self and yes it was a coup for the people giving them a voice finally, but change the record please!....

.. ..

Cuba is amazing. ....

.. ..

Flying into Havana, the first sense to be aroused by the heady mix of vibrancy and passion is sound. Your ears are bombarded with sound from the moment you land to the moment you leave. The low rumble of bass, the high dull clunk of cowbell, the middling shriek and yell and argument and friendly loud endless banter of Cuban voices, the noise, the aural assult. Havana’s international airport is frenetic. With three checks to go before you’re allowed to leave the airport, you line up in a variety of queues before being pushed out into the frenzy of people all screaming for your attention, for taxis, for cigars and hotels. When we find the bus we’re supposed to be on, a man approaches us purporting to be the driver, grabbing my ticket and inspecting it before handing it back and pulling my suitcase away from me, placing it in the luggage rack. He thrusts a ten pound note at me and babbles loudly and aggressively, imploring me to take the ten pounds. I stare at him dumbly. What does he want? Why didn’t I learn any Spanish? What is he saying? Is he trying to pay me? Another man approaches, wearing a shirt with the bus company’s logo.....

.. ..

‘Tip him,’ he says in an American slant.....

‘With what? I just got here. Why does he want to give me pounds?’....

‘He wants you to exchange it for local currency and include a tip.’....

‘Can you ask him to stop shouting at me, he’s freaking me out.’....

They talk in Spanish. The bag man grumbles and storms off. The man in the logo’d shirt shrugs and ushers me on to the bus. He starts the engine and we make the crawl into Havana’s Old Town.....

.. ..

Cars spectacularly dress the road up in a variety of delights and beauties. Horse and carts clip clop next to old 40s and 50s Dodges, Chevrolets and Cadillacs, all shining and gleaming with the love and attention of curators, Soviet block Skodas and Ladas breeze past stoically, cars we used to make fun of back home in the playgrounds of the 80s.....

.. ..

‘Well your mum drives a Skoda...’....

‘So, your mum drives a Lada.’....

.. ..

The next sense to get assaulted is your sight. You are bombarded with propaganda and graffiti proclaiming abstract victories of ideas and ideals as well heroic canonisations of Che and Fidel as heroes and martyrs. My favourite graffiti is ‘Socialism or death...’ which seems a little extreme, and ‘Todo por la revolucion’ which I hilariously translate as ‘To-do for the revolution’ like it’s a list: 1) Buy khaki 2) Overthrow government 3) Buy some medical supplies. The only non pro-Cuban revolution graffiti is either about 5 men who are currently being tried in America for trying to repatriate young Elian Gonzalez back to his motherland, and anti-American posters, dressing Bush up as a cowboy, proclaiming the twin towers tragedy as a good thing and other mish-mashes about the Yankees. There is no mention of Obama. There are many churches clattered in amongst the suburban formally white decaying concrete living blocks, and we wonder what the division between church and state is in a currently Communist, formerly Catholic country. ....

.. ..

We arrive at Hotel Sevilla, a grandiose representation of Cuba’s former glory as the decadence capital of vice it was under Batista. The soothing clink of ice and the ornate carvings and chandeliers all point to the rat pack charm that existed pre-revolution. A drink at the top of the hotel overlooking Old Town, across to the Malecon, a strip of road and path that lines the seafront where most of the Havana life decamps to in the evenings to enjoy swimming and drinking in the dying embers of the sun, confirms Havana’s former beauty, now caked in acrid black sweat and lack of upkeep. We sip our mojitos in our tower above, overlooking Havana slink into action as night falls, the bustle of cars replaced with the throb of bass.....

.. ..

We are greeted the next morning on our virgin walk in the new city with friendly banter. They say Cuba is relatively safe for tourists as tourism is its biggest industry that isn’t subsistence. Doesn’t stop the touts from approaching, wanting to sell cigars and rum and take you to their shops and giving my bride the attention a beautiful lady deserves. The heat is intense and rumbling early on. Now we’re in the city, the revolutionary graffiti is tempered with the more familiar art of hip hop tags, some even adorn the massive capitolo in the centre. The theatre of Havana is hosting the Royal Ballet and we stop outside the theatre to gaze in at ceiling frescos and crumbling balconies hosting vantage points over the main drag of Old Town. Heading down Obispa, we find a mixture between tourist shops selling you any drum you want, paper mache works of art and rum, as well as the ubiquitous Che t shirts, posters, fridge magnets, vacuum covers and whatever else you might need with his face on it and ration shops. Here, we run into our first problem. I pop into a supermarket to buy some water, a quick refreshment from the oppressive heat. I pay the man in local currency and he shakes his head. Through my pidgin Spanish and his pidgin English, we struggle to the truth.....

.. ..

A few years ago, Cuba cancelled any movement of US dollars in shops. There was a two tier currency with the national peso being used for rations and US dollars being traded for luxury items. Tourists even could pay for things in shops in dollars. To solve the problem, the government introduced the CUC, which is essentially tourist money. Tourists pay in CUCs in shops. Cubans pay in pesos. If a Cuban wants to buy a luxury item, they have to convert their pesos into CUCs. But the CUC is worth more than the peso. For example, a bottle of water may be 1 CUC but 3 pesos. We eventually get to the crux, the guy won’t accept CUCs, he points me to a shop where they do and we head over to buy water. ....

.. ..

Walking around in circles around the Old Town, we fall upon plaza des Armes, where book stalls have set up in the shade to sell books from pre-revolution (old classics), diaries from during revolution and post revolution rhetoric and analysis. Here is where all the books that amounted to Cuba’s rich culture and artistic background pre-revolution have been saved up for. That’s not to say that there is no art now. The streets are flooded with free galleries, the graffiti is inventive and funky and there is a burgeoning music and art scene. I wonder to Katie how much of this has been due to Buena Vista Social Club and the world’s fascination with old Cuban music, something that has reinvigorated the countless musicians everywhere. The book stalls also sell tens of Spanish comics, all of which I flick through in glee, despite my lack of comprehension. ....

.. ..

We head to the cathedral, a beautiful crumbling building dominating a large square. A band plays in a nearby restaurant, an old man in a blue linen suit and walking stick salsas by himself in the middle of the square. Our view over the rooftops from the belltowers reveals that behind the facade of the blocks, there seem to be microcosms of universes all existing. It’s breathtaking. If you want to see Cuban life, all you have to do is look up. The balconies exist as their own entity. Everyone hangs out on their balconies, watching the world go by, chatting to each other across the street, interacting with the world down below by shouting and laughing, or just watching.....

.. ..

At the Revolution museum, we are treated to a largely in Spanish blow-by-blow reconstruction of the revolution, from the initial Yankee pigdog invasion of Cuba to heroic Fidel’s rise through the student ranks through to the revolution itself. We see photos of fallen soldiers, their personal effects, equipment used during, some still with blood spatters. We see the guns used, a fetish-like display of the violence that the revolution involved. The celebration of the country’s single greatest triumph is played out for us, the reasons for the singular national identity and pride becoming clear, regardless of the economic sanctions since that have crippled the Cuban way of life meaning large portions of the country exist in abject poverty. Outside, the tanks and missile launchers romanticise the Bay of Pigs and the destruction of US spy planes. The Granma boat, that brought Fidel back to Cuba after his exile, sits proudly behind glass. Soldiers guard the revolution.....

.. ..

As we leave the Revolution museum, I wonder if the Cubans are happy. I know that the older generations are so proud about the revolution and can excuse a lot of the crises that have unfolded since through a sense of ownership. But the censorship on things like mobiles and internet, on certain types of music and culture, while it is all changing it does mean that these facets of Western culture are making a steady influx into the consciousness of the youth today and will they be bothered about the revolution, something that happened 50 years ago? I wonder if this is how it was meant to happen. Obviously it isn’t. Everyone was supposed to be provided for. But times have been tough. Does the post revolution mettle of the Cuban public live on? ....

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To be continued.......

.. ..

I had an idea for a money-spinner, or a money sinker depending on how nice film companies, that bastion of communist share the wealth ideology, would be in this idea’s inception with regards to image and character rights. Well, you see, it all started with a simple question: who would win in a fight between Satan in End of Days and Satan in Devil’s Advocate. Gabriel Byrne’s devil vs Al Pacino’s devil. They seem equally matched when you get past Al’s snarling, making you wonder if the bluster really does mean he’d bite your face off, or if it’s all for show. So, the game is Sate’em Up... or Satan Up Satan Slaughter. We pit all the movie Satans from over the years against each other. Their powers are only decided by the powers shown on screen, so while Al’s devil can pull your girl, Gabriel’s devil can manifest into a dragon demon thing and Harvey Keitel’s devil in Little Nicky can definitely be sarcastic, while the Omen’s Damian can wage psychological war on your family. Then we can find out just who the definitive devil is and whether you should be scared of them. I’m talking about the creepy Bowie devil from the Passion of the Christ, the homoerotic Sadaam-shagger from South Park, the slightly creepy one in the Miami Vice suit from Constantine, and the egg-flinging Louis Cypher, Bobby de Niro’s creepy Angel Heart creation. So many different versions of the devil, so many powers, so much room for gore and more more more gore. Next in the series will be the different versions of Dracula and all 27 Sherlock Holmes from Basil Rathbone’s classic to the Joe Cornish lookalike in Young Sherlock, to the death. The moral majority’d have a field day.....