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Tues 1 June 2004Some people hate them, or say they do. But I love hotels and hotel life, and the servility with which one is treated. It appeals to the monarch in me.For the past few work-days I've had to settle for the austere Dartford Travelodge, but now I've been promoted to the rather more agreeable Hilton with its Odeon-sofa-ed bedrooms and tasteful reproduction Deco desk and bed. The sort of place that provides bathrobes, and allows elderly residents to snore gently over unopened Daily Telegaphs in the cathedral-like lobby, undisturbed and unnoticed among the rustling jungle foliage. Some of the snoozers may have been ignored for rather too long, I fear. I'm sure that one of the headlines referred to the siege of Mafeking. I could happily live here. An excellent gym and swimming pool, and a balcony with fine views of the M25 soaring across the Thames Estuary, beneath which I ran this morning at 6am, barely aware of the great airborne swarm of vehicles. At this time of day, most of them are massive wagons heading towards the estuary ports, or to one of the space-station-like freight terminals sprawled along this exposed, windblown stretch of coast. Another gentle 4 miler round the business park and its regulation lake, fluffy ducklings included. And another triumph for the crowbar of running as it prises open the door of... ...of whichever prison we must occupy on this early Summer morning. Thurs 3 June 2004I can see the appeal of the treadmill. For only the third or fourth time ever, I bounced along on one this evening for 40 minutes or so. It makes the chore easier. It gives you control over your environment. You set the speed, the incline, the time, while you gaze blankly at Eastenders with the sound turned down. A teaspoonful of imagination is all you need. "Pack it in, will yer... Leave it aht, Mate... oy, donchoo tork to me like vat...".Television is one of the few addictions I've never bothered learning to enjoy, but I'm sure the routine and the predictability must be comforting. Just like the treadmill. Setting the speed, the incline, the time once again. Which world do you want to live in this evening? In one of my sneerier moments in the gym this evening I decided that using a treadmill was a bit like watching Big Brother. A substitute for the real thing. Passive. The choice of those who shrink from reality (and this despite Big Brother being called "reality TV". Was there ever a bigger misnomer than this?) Sneery, as I admitted. But there is something slightly tragic about the idea of habitual treadmilling. Where are those fluffy ducklings? Where was the salty tang on the breeze? I even missed the impressive grumbling of the invisible juggernauts in the sky. I thawed out a little as my 40 minutes of sand trickled away. Runners need variety, and the occasional treadmill trip can only help, I decided. And as I said, it's easier. Fri 4 June 2004Read this:if URL is Levy and within his name is a full given update on an old piano lesson a wholly old law has died in the proof that could have been the new Newt under our window and the women who've known union men hit them the new you can be younger than them no one woman is the game in Vienna but may be moving lower than the women they plan to be the one new perk per floor had lifted politics in the end it was a man who had the end of the boom and he seems nowhere now This rather interesting passage appeared after I opened the Microsoft handwriting recognition utility by mistake. I didn't even know there was such a thing. It vanished into the background as I worked, but seems to have been translating my mouse movements as I lumped together ill-fitting snatches of SQL, turning the twitches into spell-checked words. When I switched back to Word, I found that the Bill Gates poetry army had produced the above. As we approach Bloomsday, how heartening to know that we can all be James Joyce these days. Though if you've managed to do better than my 365 pages of Ulysses, you'll probably say something to the effect of "close, but no cigar". Which you might want to take as a clue. But to what...? Find out next time. Sun 6 June 2004Let's have a break for a while.Next scheduled race is the Datchet Dash (10K) on July 3rd, by which time I should have had a decent holiday and started marathon training again. Please call back around then to learn more. Do stay in touch by using the forum, or drop me a line at andy@runningcommentary.co.uk. Au revoir, Andy Sat 12 June 2004A sign of growing old is that you start to notice signs of growing old. This mournful thought zimmer-framed its way across my crumbling brain this afternoon, shortly after a conversation with a tour rep in the Gatwick departure lounge. Not just any tour rep. My tour rep. Yes, it's come to this.Here's our excuse. We started to organise our Cuba holiday a few months ago. I pencilled in a cheap flight, and M began to research where we might go. We sketched out an itinerary that would take in most of the island's must-sees and must-dos, and begun the usual tortuous process of looking into candidate hotels and transport options. While doing this we came across a company offering a 14 day holiday covering pretty much the same ground that we were after. The hotels look good and the flight was the identical one we'd earmarked. All travel within the country is included of course. but what swung it was that it came out around the same price that we reckoned it would cost if we did it on our own. This is rarely the case, and is one of the reasons we usually prefer to go it alone. So we swallowed some pride and sacrificed our dignity on the altar of an organised tour. It means we lose the flexibility of staying longer (or cutting and running) in any particular place. It means we can't add a detour at the last minute on the basis of an unexpected recommendation. But we've decided that we actually quite like the prospect of not having to track down buses that don't leave from the place they're supposed to (because it's the last Monday of the month). This trip won't contain that hellish scene where the guest house proprietor shakes his head awkwardly as he leafs through the old notebook dangling from a piece of string on the back of the front door. "Sorry, we do not have reservation for you... when did you arrange this?" We've chosen to remove some of the uncertainty and the unpredictability that traditionally feature in our trips. They say it's a sign of growing old. Sun 13 June 2004 - Guardalavaca, CubaSometimes you're better off out of it. As Zidane's last minute penalty gave France their shock Euro2004 victory over England this afternoon, I drained my beer glass and left the hotel bar. The feast has been spoiled by the final mouthful. Not spaghetti but worms.The consolation is knowing that I'm not at home to witness the wailing and the breast-beating of a nation and her hysterical press. Instead, I wander down to the beach with my book, order another outlandish cocktail, and settle back to watch the Caribbean sunset. It's someone else's problem now. I managed a sort of run this morning. Up at 6 and out. The plan was a mild 40 minutes but I managed only 25. It wasn't so much a jog as a gentle orientational plod down to the sea, along the beach a bit before doubling back past the dingy tenements housing the people who work at this resort. We're out of here tomorrow to poke around the real Cuba, I hope. Tues 15 June 2004 - Santiago, CubaLast night I dreamt I went to Mississippi.No run yesterday, but instead, one of those milestone travelling moments. It made me think of Bobo once again. In the mid-90s we took a cheap flight to Orlando, picked up a car as soon as we arrived and set off. This wasn't intended to be a survey of American musical history but that's how it turned out. We didn't know what it was intended to be until it began to happen. We drove around that long, semi-tropical southern coast to New Orleans, with nights in Tallahassee, Florida and Mobile, Alabama. In New Orleans we had a couple of days of blues and trad jazz, before sinking deeper into Louisiana for some good Cajun music and dancing. And gumbo. A few days later it was up the Mississippi through Clarksdale, home of Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Bessie Smith. In Clarksdale I made the mistake of not buying the liberated Highway 61 sign at the Blues Museum. Instead we carried on driving up it to Memphis for a gawp at Elvis's Graceland and to party with the electric R'n'B bands on Beale Street. It was here that I realised I'd left my passport under the mattress of the motel in Clarksdale, so we turned round and drove all the way back. A day later, back in Clarksdale, we called into a bar to see some local blues, only to find the place empty. Everyone had gone to Big Willy's release party in Bobo, we were told.  Big Willy was a young guy, 20 years old. He'd been in the local penitentiary for a year where he'd been put "for his own good", we were later told. He was also a handy electric blues guitar player. Bobo wasn't much more than a grocery store and a few houses along a dusty unlit country road, about 10 miles from Clarksdale. You have to imagine the darkness, the smells and the chirping of the crickets. The joint was jumpin'. They'd cleared a space in the middle of the shop, enough for a drum kit and a few amps, and for a hundred or so of the locals to dance and whoop the night away. Playing alongside the beaming Willy was another guitar player called Robert "Bilbo" Walker, a well known Mississippi bluesman of the old school. It was one of the best gigs I ever went to.
Curiously, there was a third white face there, and a European too. Some kind of film-maker, Norwegian or Swedish, who spent most of the evening crouched on a shelf in the corner, filming. What wouldn't I give for a copy of the footage. I searched the web a while ago, and read a couple of snippets about other happenings there, but no mention of the film. This picture was taken at Bobo on another evening. That grocery store seemed to have claimed a small patch of blues mythology, and what a night that was. You can read books about a place and sit on tourist buses listening to the approved script, but just now and then you stumble across some kind of secret back door where the essence is revealed. I've been lucky with my travels in the US. Even the business trips have given me some great adventures. But the grocery store in Bobo was the best evening I ever had. Tragically, it burnt down the following year, so it will never be repeated. But we're in Cuba now, and our musical evening this time was at the local Casa De La Trova, a kind of folk club found in most big towns. I'd been reluctant to drag myself away from the TV and Euro 2004, but I did, and I'm glad I did. Half a dozen of us went along to watch the salsa band. This was a louder, more aggressive, perhaps more authentic sound than you usually hear. With each passing mojito (rum and lemon with a sprig of mint), the music got better and more hypnotic. At one point late in the evening, with the band reaching a kind of frenzy, M called me over to the terrace that ran alongside the upstairs room. In the street below me, something wild and amazing was taking place. The local youth was out for the night, and dozens of them were dancing in the street to the music we were watching. It was like some corny music video. You have to imagine the heat and humidity, the clouds of cigar smoke, the smell of rum, the monstrous 1950s American saloon cars parked along the road, the frenetic music, and this mass of grinning people writhing in the streets. Amd remember that most Cubans look like film stars and dress in clothes so tight they seem to be painted on. This was the real Cuba, steamy and sensual. We'd arrived at the Casa Grande hotel late in the afternoon, and spent a while relaxing on the raised terrace where Graham Greene had sat and written much of Our Man In Havana. Here, beneath the balcony where Castro had declared the success of the revolution in 1959, we enjoyed a bourgeois mojito and a great view over the small square, taking in a spectacular scrap between a hooker and a bag-lady. The bag-lady won. (See picture)  I ran this morning at 6am, throught the grid of narrow streets around the cathedral in Santiago. At this time of day the trucks are arriving in the city, emptying their human cargoes onto the streets.
Cuba is undergoing Castro’s euphemistic “Special Period”. It sounds better than “economic crisis”, which would be a truer description of what’s happened since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the ending of their $5 billion annual subsidy. Hitch-hiking has become a national pastime because there isn’t enough diesel to run the buses anymore. On the edge of towns and villages, yellow-clad officials stop every car and truck and force them to pack in as many of the waiting passengers as they can. Many workers have to be up at 3 or 4 in the morning to be sure of getting a lift to their job, though we were assured by a guide that they really don’t mind. “Hitch-hiking is a wonderful way to travel and a great education. I’ve made so many friends and learnt so much”. This may sound like the return of Comical Ali, but actually, I agree. It’s an unfashionable means of transport now, but I spent much of my late teens hitching round Britain and France, and had some of my most memorable travel experiences that way. But it’s nice to do it through choice. I wouldn’t want to have to hitch every day to get to work, especially when everyone else is in the same leaky boat. The thumbing masses did indeed seem happy enough, whether sitting patiently by the roadside or shoe-horned into the back of a bumpy truck, though I suspect this was a kind of defiant Latin “who gives a damn anyway?” attitude rather than genuine contentment. At six in the morning, the air is already hot but the humidity hasn't yet kicked in. Running is possible, and even pleasant. The pavements are uneven and full of holes, and packed with pedestrians, so I run down the middle of the road, dodging the creaking bikes and whining mopeds. Even the dogs dance here, but I don't feel threatened by their delirium. No one else pays me much attention either. The shopping streets fade into a ramshackle residentia. I make it to the top of a hill at last and turn left then left again to come back down, way past my starting point, towards the natural harbour of Santiago Bay and the shimmering, aquamarine Caribbean Sea. Eventually I'm back in the main square, trotting past the cathedral, my tee-shirt stuck with sweat to my back. A shower, a breakfast of mangoes, pineapple and good local coffee, and I'm ready for anything. Thurs 17 June 2004 - Camaguey, Cuba“The Cuban people are like dolphins”, explained the guide. “The water is up to our mouths, but still we keep smiling”.The self-deprecation seems endearing, but had he been a little more frank, he might have added that working in tourism, he was one of the lucky ones. This sector is booming, and those who work in it seem to have more in common with the shark than the dolphin. I don't really blame them for that, though. He explained to us how they created "steaks" from mashed banana skins and compacted orange pith. Mixed with spices and fried, this is apparently just preferable to starvation, though it sounds like a pretty close call to me. Blinkered tourists may mistakenly assume that burgers and beer and ice cream are the national cuisine. But such delights belong to the dollar economy only. We had a look round a ration shop today. It was a pretty dismal experience. The shelves were almost empty, while a blackboard on the wall listed the miserable menu of standard groceries available this week. Cuba is variously perceived as a socialist utopia or a third world victim of outmoded dogma, depending on where your politics lie. Or how convincingly they lie. The Cuban truth lives at neither of these outposts. The glorious revolution of 1959 did indeed sweep away illiteracy and introduce a health service as good as that of many developed nations, but there is no more free political expression now than there was in the Batista days, and the great bulk of Cubans live on a starvation diet. It was a long bus ride today, across the Sierra Madre mountains to Camaguey. I spent most of the journey reading my Holocaust book. M was reading Alan Bennett's Writing Home. According to the inscription on the flyleaf, I gave her this book 9 years ago. Since then, I have seen it in her possession on at least three continents. On different trips I've spotted it in Denmark, Norway, France, Spain (several times), Portugal, Belgium and Holland. It's been seen on dozens of weekends away in England, Wales and Ireland. It's had six weeks in the USA and a couple in Morocco. She's currently on page 56. We eventually arrive in Camaguey, and the colonial style Hotel Colon. By a stroke of good fortune we turn up at precisely 6pm, just as happy hour is kicking off at the polished wooden bar in the lobby. Beneath the creaking wooden ceiling fans we get drunk on Cuba Libres and a stonking gin punch. My only care in the world is keeping my cigar alight. Bliss. Sat 19 June 2004 - Trinidad de CubaTwo lazy days in a beach bungalow. At last we have a fridge. It gives me the chance to sit and read, and drink great quantities of rum and Coke.I got up this morning and ran for 3 gentle miles along a vast, empty beach. My only concern was not to murder too many of the thousands of bright red crabs that scuttle everywhere here. Sun 20 June 2004 - CienfuegosCienfuegos - another stunning colonial style Cuban city, this one clean and not too frantic. We could almost be in Spain. Most of the day is spent in its elegant squares and threadbare department stores, and having fun with the kids. I eventually give in and buy a box of Cohiba Esplendidos, Fidel Castro's favourite brand before he eventually gave up smoking cigars (described as "the hardest battle I ever fought"). I bought this beautiful wooden box of 25 cigars from a couple of youths on a street corner. There is a strong possibility that they are fake, apparently, but at $30, I'm prepared to take the risk. In the government shops here the same box cost nearly $500, and in the UK, probably double that. I've bought them as a present for a cigar expert friend at home, who will be able to judge their authenticity.Back at the luxurious Hotel Jagua, we bump into 21 tight-trousered Glaswegians on a salsa holiday. As M goes for a wander round the lush gardens outside the entrance, I sit in the hotel bar, where I drink cheap cocktails and continue to read Martin Gilbert's brilliant but quite devastating book on the Holocaust. I read the testimony of one Yakov Grojanowski, who worked as a gravedigger in Chelmno, burying the bodies of his neighbours in huge pits. They were herded into large transports, with the promise of a trip to a humane workcamp. But the vans were mobile gas chambers, and none emerged alive. Here is a small sample of his 14 pages.....
For breakfast, they gave us bitter coffee and bread. Immediately afterwards, Krzewacki from Klodawa, who had long contemplated suicide, put a noose around his neck. He begged Chrzatowski to remove the small packet from under his feet and shove it into his mouth, so that hs breathing should stop sooner. Chrzatowski fulfilled his request and Krzewacki died an easy death. He couldn't bear to watch the murderous deeds any longer. We cut him down and placed him against the wall.
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