Month: June 2007

I’m still adjusting to being back: as it always does after the Glastonbury weekend, it feels awfully odd being back in civilisation, where the roads are paved and it is possible to get about without having to wade through 6 inch deep mud.

This year was definitely the rainiest of my 6 Glastonburies. Perhaps there was more rain by volume in 2005, but that all fell in one big go, whereas this year it was spread out over the whole weekend, which did put something of a dampener on proceedings. I think it was Rob who described it as a slightly schizophrenic experience: one moment I was queueing in the rain for what turned out to be some very disappointing vegetarian Mexican food wondering what I was doing there; the next, I was standing in the sunshine enjoying Ed Harcourt and Lou Rhodes in The Park, thinking about how great it was to be back at my favourite festival.

We didn’t really let the rain affect our festival too much, although I probably didn’t see as many bands as I might have. It’s hard to summon up the energy to wade through the mud to see a minor indie band you’ve vaguely heard of at the best of times, but even less so when it’s pouring with rain.

On the occasions when I did brave the elements, though, I was glad I had. Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly on Sunday afternoon, for example, were a band I almost missed: We’d been sitting up at the tent trying to decide whether to trek through the mud all the way over to the Other Stage, but luckily I decided to go over in the end, and they turned out to be great. Not what I was expecting at all, but in fact I somehow knew a handful of their songs, and theirs is an album I will be getting hold of.

I also enjoyed stumbling across The View on Sunday night, and seeing them play all the songs we know at the end of their set. It was odd to have them bookending our festival, as they’d been one of the first bands on The Pyramid on the Friday morning. We hadn’t been aiming for them when we wandered off in search of food after the watching the excellent Manics/Kaisers double header from down the front of the main stage, but somehow we ended up standing at the back of the Other Stage field enjoying them from our muddy vantage point.

I should probably refrain from mentioning the two hours we spent queueing and shivering in the pouring rain on Monday morning, waiting to get on a bus to take us away from the site, as it isn’t exactly an experience that I am keen to remember.

The rest of the photos are in the usual place.

For the next couple of days, I’ll be doing this:

Actually, there was only one occasion when we had to deal with hassle that felt in any way unpleasant, and that was, of all places, inside the Capitolio Nacional, a carbon copy of the US Capitol building that sits by the Parque Central in central Havana. Whether due to an attempt to alleviate the boredom, or supplement their meagre wages, or both, the staff were extremely keen to extract money from us in whatever way they could. Having made the mistake of (a) carrying a camera, and (b) showing interest in the library, we were accosted by a steward who proceeded to rattle off some facts I’d already read in the guidebook before demanding “And now I take your picture”. The resulting snapshot, I’m sure you’ll agree, was well worth the convertible I had to pay her for it.

Elsewhere, other staff members heckled us with offers to take us to parts of the building that the other tourists couldn’t visit (“Sir, do you want to see the president’s room?”), and one lady even tried to sell us a 1 Mondea Nacional peso coin–“a souvenir of the typical Cuban money”. I didn’t hang around long enough to find out how much she wanted for it, but I’m guessing that it would have been significantly more than the CUC 0.04 that it was actually worth.

*

For the rest of our time in Havana, the weather (unlike what we are told that we can expect this weekend) was so hot that we could barely manage to walk more than a few metres without breaking out into a sweat and having to seek refuge within whatever nearby air conditioning we could find. Luckily, there are plenty of hotels and bars scattered around the city that offer just that. I suppose it was just as well that the Lonely Planet raved about the interiors of the Hotel Inglaterra, for example (“a better place to hang-out than actually stay in”, apparently), so we didn’t feel too guilty to be just sitting there trying to recover from the exertions of simply walking about.

On one occasion (on our way back from the Museo del Ron, which was sadly bereft of donkey jackets and Aston Villa memorabilia, and instead about some sugary alcoholic drink) we ducked into a hotel where all the staff were dressed as monks, which seemed an odd choice of branding strategy, but made for pleasant enough surroundings as we sat in the courtyard skimming through the guidebook.

When we ran out of hotels to sit in, we had to resort to the bars. We did our best to retrace Ernest’s steps: we sipped ludicrously overpriced mojitos in El Floridita amongst the bussed-in sunburnt tourists (our bill for two drinks was, at CUC 12, something close to the average Cuban’s monthly salary…), but I much preferred another of his haunts, La Bodeguita del Medio, which was just down the road, and where we drank beers at the bar, tried the cigars, and attempted conversation in Spanish with the amiable barman Enrique (“¿Como Sr Iglesias?” I attempted to joke) who told us how much he had enjoyed the two years he’d spent in London when he was younger, living at the Cuban embassy near Holborn. I never did establish quite what you have to do as a young Cuban to get that gig.

One of my favourite bars was the one that we stumbled into one night on the way back to our hotel: just across the other side of Prado from the Hotel Sevilla, we found a restaurant where we could sit on our own on the first floor balcony in the cool night air watching the world go by, drinking yet more cold cans of Cristal beer. We liked it so much that we went back the following night, and I did my best to take long exposure shots of the street below.

Our second trip to the bar was our last night in Havana, and we’d booked in for dinner at Paladar La Guarida, one of Havana’s most well known paladars. Or so we thought…

Emerging from the bar onto the street below, feeling slightly light-headed after all that Cristal, we hailed the first cab that passed. As with every other trip, I agreed a fare beforehand, and given that we’d caught a coco-taxi back from the place the other day when we’d been over to reserve the table, I didn’t want to pay any more than the fare for the previous trip. But for some reason the driver was very unhappy about taking us for the 5 CUC that I was offering, although eventually he reluctantly agreed.

We thought it was a bit odd when he turned the cab around and drove in the opposite direction to where we wanted to go, but I assumed that he was just taking the coast road because it was quicker than the pot-holed streets of Centro Habana. It was only when he sailed past what would have been the turn off, and continued onwards to Vedado that we began to wonder if this wasn’t, after all, a shortcut. With the Hotel Nacional looming into view, we decided it might be a good idea to check if he did, in fact, know where we wanted to go.

“¡Disculpe señor, La Guarida esta aii!” I attempted in best schoolboy Spanish, pointing back in the direction we had come. I fished around in my pocket for the business card and handed it to him as he pulled over and turned on his light.

“¿Sabe usted donde esta?” I asked as he swung the car around and set off back in the right direction, while saying that no, he did not in fact know where it was after all.

As we reached the edge of the city once again, he pulled up and jumped out, leaving us in the back while he asked a policeman for directions. After two more stops he somehow managed to produce a local who knew where it was: the chap jumped into the front passenger seat, and directed us to the restaurant, where, rather improbably, he turned out to know everyone, wandering into the kitchen to say hello to the chefs as we waited for our table.

To this day, I still have no idea where the taxi driver thought we wanted to go to, but we made it in time for our booking, and the food was the best we ate in our whole stay in Cuba…

I can’t say that that’s looking too promising:

Just as well I got some wellies last week…

So Cuba, then: I suppose I should write about it before time and Glastonbury conspire to wrench it from my memory…

As we emerged from a José Martí­ airport where power cuts had been intermittently plunging the baggage hall into darkness while we waited for our rucksack to arrive, we found a torrential tropical storm. As we hovered uncertainly under the shelter by the automatic doors, a boxy yellow and black Lada panataxi pulled up at the kerb, and the driver gestured at us to scurry across and jump in. It was the first of many taxis we would take over the next 10 days; the first of many slightly awkward attempts at communication in my long forgotten GCSE Spanish. As we pulled away, I turned instinctively to pull on a seat beat that wasn’t there. This was not to be the last time I would make that mistake.

Half way to Havana the rain stopped suddenly, giving way to the kind of glorious sunshine, deep blue skies, and sweltering heat that were to be a fixture of the rest of the trip.

As I looked out at the fields and the farm buildings with pro-Fidel propaganda scrawled on the walls, and the crazy cars and drivers also out on the roads, swerving to avoid the potholes and pools of rain water, I decided that I liked the place already.

Our hotel was on the edge of old Havana, so after quickly checking in, dumping our bags in the room and taking the lift up to the top floor restaurant for a quick peek at the city out there, we started to explore the streets. Beneath crumbling buildings, the streets were filled with locals sitting around passing the time of day, baseball-mad kids playing improvised games with whatever equipment they had to hand, and the local jineteros trying to hustle us with their offers of cheap cigars and “salsa festivals”. [It actually wasn’t until our last day in Havana that I would find out why so many locals were trying to offload their cigars–these, so we learnt from the guide at the Real Fabrica de Tabacos Partagás, were the unsaleable ones; the three cigars a day that every employee was permitted to take home from the reject pile for their own personal consumption. I’d imagine that a fair few of those rejects end up being sold to unwitting tourists for significantly more than they’re actually worth…]

But thankfully most of those who would seek to hassle us on the street were happy enough with a simple ¡No, Gracias! And you struggle to begrudge the Cubans their attempts to part you from your precious hard currency, such is the paucity of the average Cuban’s salary, and the smiling charm with which they go about it. For example, the barmaid at Ambos Mundos (the erstwhile residence of Hemingway) who accidentally “forgot” to return the other 10 CUC of my change for our mojitos, apologised so sweetly and produced the note before I’d even got half way through my quizzical “Quanto questan las m….” that you’d almost think that the mistake was genuine. And that taxi driver from the airport might have, with an innocent shrug, flicked off his meter the instant he cut the engine, wiping the price away, but even though I knew exactly how much it had got up to, I still gave him what I hoped was a decent tip anyway. And the pizzas that arrived for our first meal in Havana might not have resembled the ones we ordered, while the prices were all rounded up from the ones on the menu, but we ate them, and paid the bill, and enjoyed it anyway.

Well, ¿Es Cuba, no?

After an evening drinking cans of Cristal beer out by the water while the sun went down, and an early night, our first full day in Havana began with us fending off yet another tout.

Did we want to go to the Salsa Festival, he asked? Did we know the Buena Vista Social Club? I ended up having to tell him that no, I didn’t like salsa music just so that we could escape, but this was really a problem of my own making, because in my attempts to converse in Spanish I’d inadvertently told him that we’d arrived “hier”. It was only several hours later, after we’d visited the fascinating Museo de la Revolución, that the slow realisation dawned as to why this had made him so confused, even repeating it back to me a couple of times with a very puzzled voice. That, of course, would be the French word for “yesterday”, and what I should have said was ayer. Well thanks brain: it’s not as if I need you to expose my poor grasp of Spanish to make me look like a bumbling, idiot tourist: I have my exposed pale British legs for that.

So I’m getting ready for Glasto, and the other day I booked Sal’s train ticket online, and then yesterday went over to the station to collect it from one of those machines. But the machine wasn’t having any of that, and I had to go to the ticket office instead.

“Oh yes, I can print that for you”, said the man at the desk. And he did. But as I was walking away, tickets in hand, I noticed something rather odd. Yes, there was the return ticket to Castle Cary that I was supposed to have, but what’s this? “Value Advance Single, Birmingham New Street to Glasgow Central?” I don’t remember booking that. I’m sure I would have remembered…

Back to the window:

“Sorry, there’s been some kind of mistake. This isn’t my ticket”
“It’s on your booking”
“No it’s not: this is my booking”, I said, waving the printed confirmation at him. “London to Castle Cary. Where does it say Birmingham to Glasgow?”
“But you must have booked it: it’s on your booking”, he said, pointing out that my booking reference was also on the rogue ticket.
“No I didn’t. I mean, I don’t care, I haven’t been charged for it: I’ll just throw it away.”
“Oh you can’t do that. You have been charged for it.”
“No I haven’t: I’ve already seen the charge on my credit card statement.”
“My receipt says you’ve been charged £17 for that.”
“But I didn’t book it!”
“You must have”, he insisted.

Well, so there you go: the computer says so, so I must have accidentally booked a single ticket from Birmingham to Glasgow, with a seat reservation. And then forgotten about it, removed any reference to it from the confirmation email and the online order status. And not been charged for it. I can see how that would have happened. If the man in the station has a computer that tells him that that’s what happened, then who am I to argue?

Perhaps it’s some kind of poorly promoted “Buy One Get One Free” offer? (Buy one train ticket to Glasto, get one free single to Glasgow?)

In the meantime, would anyone like a ticket to Glasgow? You’ll have to travel on the 09:03 on July the 18th, and you can’t come back again, but it’s free. Tempted?

We continued our recent tour of the West End’s finest cinemas this evening, by heading out to yet another free film screening. This time, it was Ocean’s 13 at the Cineworld in Haymarket. I was actually rather looking forward to this one. Not, of course, because I wanted to see how they’d managed to stretch a thin premise onto a third film, but rather because we saw it being filmed when we were in Vegas last year. So I was eager to see how that scene where Al Pacino walks into a bar at the Bellagio ended up on the big screen.

Al Pacino! Now there’s a celeb spot: sadly the best one I could manage today was Marcus Brigstocke, who walked past me looking a bit lost while I was waiting for Sal at Piccadilly Circus. (Oops, sorry, I’ll come up with a haiku later…)

I wasn’t quite prepared, however, to be accosted on the way in by security who demanded to search our bags. Cue a rather nervous moment while we worried that they might confiscate our ice creams. But no, they were actually looking for film pirates. As we did have any of them hidden in our bags, we were allowed in.

A little while later, ensconced in our seats and with our magnums in hand, one of the security chaps–a slightly intimidating, beefy, old school east end gangster type–addressed the audience to warn us against attempting to record the film.

“These”, he said, brandishing what looked like a pair of binoculars, “are night vision. I’ll be watching you, so make sure your mobile phones are off. I don’t want to be hauling any of you out of the screening because you’re texting your mates.”

“We’re here as security on behalf of the film company. They don’t want this film being leaked before it’s released”, he added, by way of explanation, before heading to the back of the room to stand around looking a bit menacing.

Blimey. At the free Time Out screenings a nice American lady gets up and tells you to enjoy the film. It’s not quite the same, is it?

And I don’t know why the film industry always harps on about people videoing films in cinemas: surely most of the ones that leak onto the internet are really screeners sourced from people inside the industry. And why would I want to video the film when I can find a torrent to download just by typing “Ocean’s Thirteen torrent” into Google (look: I just did and I found one in less than 2 minutes). Oh, I’m sorry, did I say all that out loud? Of course: all leaked movies have been taped in cinemas by terrorists. And home taping is killing music.

Oh, and it was nice to see that Cineworld and Warners have their priorities right: the sound cut out on at least 6 different occasions during the film. At one point we missed at least 5 minutes of dialogue. Mr Anti-Piracy, who had only a short while earlier been ostentatiously scanning the crowd with his night vision, stood impassively, doing nothing until the sound came back.

I almost felt like going up to the manager on the way out and complaining that the poor sound quality had really messed up that pirate recording that I was trying to make. But as I hadn’t paid any money that I could demand him return, it all seemed a bit pointless.

Oh, the film? Well, I’ve cleverly circumvented their hardcore security measures by escaping from the cinema with the contents of the film in my head: if you’ve seen either of the first two, then you know what to expect. Clooney and his mates have a bit of a laugh, and the good not-really-bad guys all triumph in the end. There’s a weird bit at the beginning where Eddie Izzard pops up, acts a bit badly, and promptly disappears, not returning for the rest of the film (almost as if his later scenes all ended up on a cutting room floor somewhere). There’s some moderately funny lines towards the end, and some awful gags at the start. It’s all, you know, a bit predictable, but perfectly passable. The sort of film that would make a perfect inflight movie. (I’ll have the chicken, please, and red wine, thanks).

And it made me want to go back to Vegas. A lot.

[The “Pacino walks into a bar” bit did indeed make it into the film, about an hour in, where he goes to the Gaming Expo event to buy Bernie Mac’s funny domino game. I almost jumped up and down shouting “I saw that! In real life!” but I was a bit scared that Mr Security might mark me down as an undesirable and throw me out. So I settled for quietly tapping Sal on the shoulder and smiling.]

Much crowing in the Sindie today about their “new look”. Not that you can really tell. I picked up the paper outside the tube on the way back from the pub last night–there’s still something that gives me a childish thrill about being able to buy tomorrow’s paper today if you’ve been out in central London on a Saturday night–and I was disappointed to see that it looks very much like their old look (although it did confuse the old fella manning the paper stall, who studied the front cover intently for at least five minutes looking for the price until I pointed out the giant “£1” written in a big red circle…)

The only really noticeable change is that, in what clearly appears to be an attempt to connect with teh interwebs, a key word in each story is printed in some almost illegible grey colour and underlined. I thought this was a printing error when I first saw it, until the appearance of similar terms throughout the paper confirmed that this is indeed an attempt to introduce some kind of hyperlink: I’m sure this seemed like a great idea in the design meeting, but perhaps someone should have pointed out that you can’t actually follow a hyperlink off a printed page. And perhaps a better strategy of connecting with teh interwebs would be to sort out your piss poor website.

They’ve also gone in in a big way for the whole “have your say” approach that seems to be ubiquitous in the British media these days. I hereby predict that the hyperlinks will last for two months at the most, and I look forward to the whole thing being roundly slagged off in this week’s Private Eye.

Oh, and their new look unfortunately hasn’t seen an end to their laughable Wi-Fi health scaremongering: page six informs me that Julia Stephenson (“The Independent’s Green Goddess columnist”) has disconnected her Wi-Fi, “on the advice of her naturopath”. Elsewhere, concerned readers have apparently been removing their Wi-Fi connections in droves: “There is not enough information available on the subject. I don’t want to take any risks. You just don’t know what all this technology in the home is doing to us.”.

I’m sorry, but given that there’s no actual evidence that there’s any health danger in using a Wi-Fi connection, I find myself firmly in the Ben Goldacre camp on this one, and I might have to consider switching to The Grauniad. Actually, I’ve half a mind to write a satirical health scare article of my own about the risk of getting cancer from copies of “The Independent on Sunday”. Of course, there’s no actual scientific evidence that newsprint is carcinogenic and can be absorbed into the body by handling copies of “The Independent on Sunday”, but until those scientist boffins can prove that “The Independent on Sunday” doesn’t cause cancer, I demand that these newspapers be pulled off the shelves of newsagents across the country, where they are within the reach of–gasp!–children. You just don’t know what all these “newspapers” in the home are doing to us. Won’t somebody, somewhere, think of the children?

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UPDATE, 08-Jun-2007: I missed yesterday’s indie, but apparently Stephenson’s been at it again.

She actually uses the word “boffins”, before finishing with the following glorious rhetorical flourish:

“At one time scientists assured us the earth was flat and that mercury, asbestos, the atomic bomb and cigarettes were harmless. Today many assure us that GM crops, mobile phones and pesticides are safe. Yet history must surely advise caution before we rush headlong to embrace all that technology has to offer.”

Um. No. I don’t think so…

“At one time scientists told us… the atom bomb [was] harmless”? Come off it. This is a parody, right?