Rain, Rain, Go Away, Come Again Another Day

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…

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“¿Sabe usted donde esta?”: Cuba Pt. 2

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…

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“Do you know Buena Vista Social Club?”: Cuba Pt. 1

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…

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Computer Says No

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…

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Night Vision

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…

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“Revolutionary” New Look

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…

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