(Not so) Great speeches

The Guardian have selected 20 of ‘the greatest speeches of the 20th Century’ http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatspeeches/0,,2056516,00.html and are printing one a day in a little booklet – like one of those part works on crafts or war that ‘week by week, build into an invaluable reference work that you’ll treasure forever’ (translation: week by week, will build into a large pile of magazines that will collect dust under your bed and anyway they have done all the interesting guns, ‘planes and battles by issue 15’ – but for middle class people.

The first speech was Churchill’s ‘we will fight them on the beaches’ and frankly, they should have either stopped there or had that as the last in the series because, as captain Jack Sparrow said as he shot at an undead monkey ‘top that!’.

Famous speeches are all very well, but I have an alternative proposition – what about the obscure speeches of the 20th Century? We live in an age of peer to peer networking and citizen journalism. Great speeches are made every day, why can we not nominate our suggestions?

Great Speeches of the 20th Century

Stick your pub up your arse

My mate Jeff, February 29, 1985

Foreword by Macnabbs

Foreword

Like many of the greatest speeches, this one was all about context. Delivered say, in the bath at home or in a caravan in a field in Wales, it would have lost much of its impact. Certainly, the night I witnessed its delivery, the impact was great.

Barred from the Olde Cock Inne in Droitwich after an altercation with the relief landlord (while the regular landlord was having his corns attended to in hospital), Jeff took his banishment like a man, a pissed man, but a man nonetheless.

Standing in the doorway, he turned to address the pub. The image was that of John Wayne at the end of ‘The Searchers’, the speech itself like a cross between ‘once more into the breach’ and ‘if I die, think only this of me’.

His speech on his return from exile (the now-famous ‘the usual please’ monologue) is a tale for another day.

His passing left no man unaffected – it was, after all, his round.

Stick your Pub.

Alright, alright, stop pushing.

Before I go, you’d best remember this. I’ve drunk here man and boy, I was here before you were here and I will be here after you’ve gone…I just won’t be around while you’re here…and that’s okay because during my time in exile I won’t be witness to the conflict that’s played out here every night – the battle between your rank market-stall aftershave and your BO.

Alright, alright, I’m going.

I know my way around a pub, the bar, the lounge, the bogs. I know my way around bitter, mild and lager. And I know my way around landlords, and in your case tubby it’s a long way round. I’ve seen the good the bad and the ugly, often the last two combined.

Sorry mate, did you want to get in? There you go.

So I leave now, but do so freely and willingly. Where I go the beer is not as good and the pork scratchings don’t have as much hair, but I shall bear my time in the wilderness, in the outer darkness, at the Hop Pole across the road, nobly. I could ask my friends to join me and form an Olde Cock Inn in exile, but frankly it’s pissing down out here and I can see they’ve settled between the fire and the fruiter and it’d take a miracle to shift them.

I shall return.

Oh, and you mate can shove your pub up your arse.

How his speech was reported in the local free-ad newspaper the next week:

Mystery graffiti appears on pub

The temporary landlord of the Olde Cock Inn on the high street was today appealing for witnesses after vandals wrote obscene messages about what he might do with pork scratchings in his spare time.

Tony Tossure (38) explained ‘it’s not as if I even like putting them in my mouth, let alone what is being suggested’.

Enquiries contine.

Cry God for Harry, England and St George

In London, St Patrick’s day is a big event…mostly because Guinness see it as a way to shift even more of the black stuff than usual and drinkers have another excuse to binge with the legitimate expectation that their vomit will have a white head on it. St George’s Day is less of a big deal, because lots of people wearing St George’s crosses usually means there’s an England match on or a race riot is in progress.

Not so in the provinces. I was in Gloucestershire at the weekend and things are taken a little more seriously there. Standing in the high street of a town I was charmed to hear the massed kazoos of the local scouts/cubs as they paraded down the high street, led by a brass band. Stirring stuff.

This, surely, was all that was right and proper and true about England, fine martial music, paramilitary youths, banners and so on. The cubs sported a fine selection of badges too. I’ve always thought that the first badge they should go for is the ‘sewing on badges’ badge, followed by ‘not choking when you tighten your toggle’ and then straight to ‘running faster than your pervert troop leader’ via ‘knots’.

The parade was passing through Tewkesbury, a gorgeous little market town and a stopping-off point for many a family holiday when we used to take the boat up the Avon to Stratford. It was quite a pleasure to actually see some of the town, as we’d normally arrive quite late and spend the evening on the boat itself - at that time in my life I was obviously much keener on the pleasures of pie and beans than sampling the delights of the many, many pubs that I spotted this time round.

The nostalgia of the visit extended to popping into an old-fashioned sweet shop, by which I mean they had a set of scales, a till and hundreds of jars of old-fashioned sweets! I succumbed to temptation and picked up a few of the chews of my youth but stopped short at the ‘sweet tobacco’. As a child, I thought that this delicacy was the ultimate delight - a sugar strand that came in a paper pouch with a picture of a pirate on the front of it. Tempted as I was, I knew that my palate had changed - after all, the man that now likes cauliflower cannot be expected to have the same tastes as the boy who once munched the stuff with abandon. I had a rush of common sense and realised that the reaction to gleefully stuffing a handful of the stuff into my mouth would probably be the urge to spit a mouthful of sickly sweet sugary stuff out, quickly followed by a mild heart attack as the sugar hit my system.
Better off with a pint really.

Pig Brother

You can’t make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear but you can take inspiration from the strangest of sources. ITV may have called a halt to conning the public with their premium rate ‘phone lines, but the ‘phone vote lives on in Devon.

A friend who lives down there is arranging his birthday bash, which will be a five-a-side footie match followed by a pig roast. Nothing unusual there - except that he has been raising the pigs for the roast himself.

How, you ask yourself, can anyone who has fed and nurtured piglets decide to give them the chop and stick them in a bap. Well…only one of them is getting the cop, and which one goes is up to the guests attending the party.

The choice is made via text vote - the names of the pigs in question: ‘Jade’ and ‘Shilpa’.

Where's Bob Hoskins then?

We’re counting down to an office move here and things are getting so tense you can taste it (in case you’re wondering, tension tastes slightly coppery).

Why? Well, as a species, office drones are territorial. Neurotic. Petty. Suspicious and naturally adverse to change. This is because like Hamlet, they suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, which you can also interpret as being powerless and suffering a thousand little indignities a day - but at least you still rule over your own kingdom - the square footage of your desk - and your people - in most cases a collection of those troll dolls.

The neurotics fall into three different categories. There are the obsessive compulsives, who either have no tea-ring on their desks because they clean their desk all the time, or have no tea-ring on their desk because they put their cup down on the same spot every single time. There are anal-expulsive, who have incredibly clean and tidy desks (these are the people you worry will have the hardest time getting alojng in jail when they eventually snap and attack somebody with a stapler, because they might get a messy cell-mate). Finally there are the anal retentive/lazy sods. These are the people with an Everest of crap on their desks. That’s me.

Just because I have an unread office bulletin from 1998 sitting on my desk that’s informing me of the possible problems of the Millennium Bug does not mean that I might not someday need it. Probably in 993 years’ time.

I’m not as bad as some - there are desks here that have not seen daylight since Gladstone was PM. These are usually owned by people who have unopened boxes and crates still sitting unpacked from their last move, three years ago. They are either slightly strange or, more probably, have something lurking there which still has a ‘to do’ tab on it and they just can’t throw it away.

For the ritualists, a move to another building, no matter how temporary (at least that’s what the suits say) is going to be a big deal. No druid watched the moon for the right time to do vile things to a goat more ardently than the ritualists observe the times and geography of the office, whether it be going for a fag, coffee or a visit to the loo it’s all about being in control - even if your nicotine craving, caffeine craving or bowel is actually controlling you.

To facilitate the fear and anguish the suits upstairs have deployed office Nazis. Do you recall those concentration camp guards in ‘Schindler’s List’ that whipped the campers along? That’s what these people are like, except with clipboards and less personality.

The long term plan is to move us all back to the original building, but to smaller desks - a quart and pint pot type scenario. God knows what will happen then, I suppose protesting drones will be chaining themselves to railings and wailing that they can’t leave their new home, that’ they’ve put down roots and that it’s wrong to try and move them. The situation will probably end up requiting UN peacekeepers, or at least lots of coffee. All I know is that while the people I share an office with are, of course, lovely, that perception has been greatly aided by the office I inhabit and the thick, thick door I can slam shut whenever I feel like it. I am, of course, under no illusion that it is that same office and door that makes me bearable to the people I share the floor with.

Bird's Eye View

Television, it would appear, is the medium of choice for real people to shed their inhibitions and display positively Armenian levels of grief.

These displays are usually shortly after being told that they can’t sing, have no talent, never will have any talent, are ugly and graceless and have just wasted the time of the ‘judges’ on Slop Idle or whatever. I suspect that the anguish they feel as they exit stage left, either defiant, or crying so hard that their shoes squelch, is as nothing compared to the moment they realise that their humiliation will shortly be broadcast to the nation.

This must surely lead to the sort of mortification that would leave you either rigid with fear, crying so hard you dehydrate, or turn your character from ‘prickly’ to ‘angry with the world’ - surely the default setting for teens anyway? I wonder if the rejects watch their auditions at all? Alone in their bedrooms, wrapped round a bottle of something blue and alcoholic, or in the bosom of their supportive family, hoping for a resounding boo and hiss at the judges and loving assurance that they are not tone deaf?

Imagine watching your humiliation and being greeted by total silence from your supporters watching the recording before somebody says ‘you know, he’s right - you’re shit!’. Your life options now are: to pretend to shrug it off but secretly spend the rest of your miserable adult life watching the moment on DVD over and over again while masturbating into an oven-ready chicken and sobbing (stress does strange things to people), or just running to your room, slamming the door and starting work on the home-made bombs.

Thanks to ritual humiliation, we’ve become a lot more used to seeing real people emoting. But even the shattering of the dreams of some deluded twat in stone-washed jeans singing ‘Angels’ off-key could not prepare us for the press conference of the woman who had just been told by the European Court of Human Rights that she couldn’t use the frozen embryos without the consent of her ex-fiancé, who had fertilized the embroyos but had since gone cold on the idea of parenthood.

I did wonder why she had called a press conference. She was obviously distressed - and by ‘distressed’ I mean hysterical with grief. In contrast, her ex-fiancé gave a press conference where he was calm, measured and, basically, came off like a psychopath.

Medical science is presenting us with all sorts of ethical dilemmas, many of them rather more complex than the people who created them are able to cope with. This is why it goes to wise judges, who toss a coin and break for lunch.

Parental disputes used to be simple. If the kid looked like the milkman, you gave the missus a thump but got on with it. Now things are more complex, but I’m not sure that people (men, basically), should be able to escape the consequences of their actions so easily. If the bloke in question had had a drunken knee-trembler up against a few crates of Newcastle Brown with the woman in question and she had caught pregnancy, what would he have done then?

Just how long after the act of ‘fertilization’ should one be allowed to call a halt to things? Popular milestones would probably be: when your kid comes last at some game on sports day, when he breaks your stereo, when he crashes the car or when he announces he’s gay and, worse, a ‘taker’!

Parenthood, I have observed, is all about gritting your teeth and getting through it. You might never stop being a parent but even I know when you start - and that includes being by yourself in a little room with a jazz mag and a cup.

Tuesday 20 March - Wednesday 21 March - Cuba to UK

Kick heels in lobby until picked up by coach and taken to airport. Luggage exceeds weight allowance (got rid of paper and pads but packed too many books) by a couple of kilos and so fully expect to have to pay extra but the guy saw how small our carry-on bags were and just waved us through.

I was, I have to admit, a little bit worried about getting the laptop out of the country. I wondered if they were going to make me pay 10% of its value or something but no, they just made sure it was the same one I arrived with and I was on my way.

Departure lounge and getting rid of last of our pasos on rum and cokes. Heart sank when I saw the bar-man using a measure to put the rum in the glass, then lifted again as he topped the glass up with rum anyway. Still in Cuba.

But not for long. We were just about the last to check in because of some sort of queue magic, but had seats right at the very back of the ‘plane. This is good because aeroplanes rarely reverse into mountains. Ate and drank all the way home, watching movies and reading while the rest of the ‘plane slept. You can keep bulkhead seats, we were as far from the ‘town square’ as it was possible to be - that’s okay by me.

Back to London and it’s snowing!

When I went to Cuba I had to make a cultural adjustment. The lack of advertising, of anything distracting, is like a sorbet. You quickly realise how little you miss it.

I had to make an even bigger cultural adjustment on my return. In the UK, everything is demanding your attention and hardly any of it is important. And the litter - how can we have so much that we throw it away, especially those free-sheets that are given away at London train stations and just seem to end up in the gutter. It was overwhelming, I’d lost the ability to tune out all this crap.

Now I’m not sure I want to tune it out - I want to be aware of it. You stop noticing things and before you know it, you’ve lost a little bit of liberty, liberty to think for yourself. No wonder the establishment hate revolutionaries so much.

Tuesday 15 March to Monday 19 March - Melia Cayo Coco

The resort is all inclusive and so this week’s blog entry is too. At the start of the week our rep got us all together and outlined the various activities available. Some of our group were keen to have a day on a boat here, or a day snorkling on the reef there, otherwise, they warn ‘the days just sort of run into one another’.

I am very much looking forward to the days running into one another. I’ve been running from deadline to deadline, running for trains, appointments and commitments for months and for the last week I’ve been running for the bus or the check-out. Now the only place I want to run for is the loo when I’ve drunk too much. I brought over a shedload of books with me and I’ve got a sunlounger picked out on the beach as my spot - I’m sorted.

Anyway, who says there are no activities. For Saturday night I propose a bar crawl, one drink in each of the bars in the resort, three in total but hey, that’s enough rushing around.

The beach is, mysteriously, less popular than the pool. Possibly this is because of the constant onshore breeze, or getting sand in your suntan oil or something. As soon as you step off the beach into the sheltered pool area, where a pristine but very thick hedge screens you from the breeze, you can feel the heat punishing you.

I, of course, prefer to sit in the breeze feeling cooled. Which is why at the end of the first day you can actually see the bits I couldn’t get to with my sunblock - they are an attractive shade of pillar-box red. One particularly humorous effect is that there’s a print of my hand on my chest, marking the extent to which my sunblock application reached.

At start of the week have withdrawal symptoms because have not seen a political mural in a few days. Luckily I am able to get my Che image fix at the hotel gift shop. They have almost as many Che tee-shirts as I do.

Cayo Coco is basically a long strip of land with resorts strung along the sandy beaches. We have the Melia, our resort and one that you don’t need wrist bands to get into, too posh for wrist bands I guess - their selling point and the one that clinched it as the destination for us - no kids allowed. Next door there is a sister resort, the Sol. This is where some of the people on the flight out are and they do allow kids. It’s also where some of our tour are staying and where we wandered over for a drink one evening (it’s all of thirty seconds away). Coming back we were asked where we were staying - lots of pissed English people trying to explain we were actually guests of the hotel before somebody had the bright idea of flourishing their room key. Smiles all round but there was a touch of ‘papers, papers’. No wonder the Germans love the place.

Took a push bike one day and sweated and panted my way along the coast road, a long, flat ribbon of tarmac with resorts branching off of it. Also branching off of it are roads ending in deserted beaches, or beaches with Cubans enjoying themselves. Pushed on beyond the sand to the volcanic shore. No resorts here, as having tourists dashed against rocks is a bad thing.

Then on again, ending up at a secluded bar (surprise!) knocking back cold cola (thank god for refrigeration). There was a crescent of beach here, a bar/restaurant - all you could want really. However, I had an all-inclusive cocktail list to work my way through so I peddled back, slightly soggy with effort, for a shower and something with rum in it.

It rained twice while we were there. Two ten minute downpours, really tropical stuff. Quite exciting really. The open sided nature of the lobby building meant that once it started raining, a staff sprang into action with brooms and rubber edged things to try and push the water back outside. In a situation like that there’s only one sane response - grab a rum based drink.

The second time it happened we were on the beach. We ran for shelter under one of the tiki hut, thatched umbrella type things that provide shade. Already under there were another couple. So we ask if it’s okay to share their shelter. ‘Sure’. Oh, you’re English, and are you enjoying Cuba? It’s their sixth time there. Really, you must like it - what did you think of Havana.

They’ve never been to Havana. By visiting Cuba they mean visiting resorts. My wife starts to put her hand outside the shelter more and more frequently as if willing the rain to stop so we can escape these two. They complain that the resort is dirty (it’s pristine) and that, get this, there’s seaweed on the beach! I look down and he explains that he had to ask, ask mind you, for the staff to rake the bit in front of his sunbed to get rid of seaweed.

It’s a fucking beach you idiot! The seaweed is in a narrow strip along the beach and, frankly, where do you expect to find it? I’m gobsmacked by their ignorance and for the rest of the holiday so is everyone else I tell this story too.

These idiots have been sold an image of a beach, sand devoid of anything and blue skies and sea. Here, they have all that but the seaweed means it’s not the postcard - that’s because it’s REAL LIFE you freaking morons! As we hurried away ‘oh, it’ll stop soon, see you’ my wife explained that ‘Jesus, it’s just like one of those horror films, a couple shelter from the rain and what happens to them is even worse!’.

Every day on the beach a stately pelican would glide along the shore, patrolling his stretch of beach, swooping low over the sand and the water and, occasionally, folding his wings and dropping like a javelin into the water, spearing his dinner. Also on the beach was what can best be described as an airborne accident waiting to happen - some genius had welded an inflatable dingy to a microlite and, on certain not so windy days, was giving paying passengers rides up and down the beach.

It really had to be seen to be believed, not only could you barely believe it would fly, but the landing was something to behold - the pilot would bring it in skimming the trees, then the rocks, then the sunbeds and then slam into the water. 30 pasos a ride apparently - they’d have to pay me a hell of a lot more than that to get on the thing.

Having bean-soup withdrawal, so choose a Cuban restaurant for one evening meal. Of course, this means four guys wandering up to your table and singing to you, in this case an old Beatles song in Spanish.

The Cuban restaurant is on the beach bar and, walking to the beach afterwards the sky is amazing. There is no light pollution (because of no light, watch your step because the tide is in) and the stars make me want to reach for my Junior Astronomer’s Handbook so that I can name them all in impress women.

In the lobby bar we have a pianist every evening, and very lovely she is too. Then one evening we have a Cuban duo, he on guitar, she on maracas. Asked if we would like a song my normal response is to clench and prey for a quick death, but I’m on holiday and so of course ask for ‘something Cuban’ (I bloody hate the Beatles) so that’s what we get, ‘Cuban Romantica’.

I can feel the Caribbean infecting me. As a Brit the only music I usually find stirring is a brass band or military band, but this is great stuff - sitting sipping and listening.

One couple take it further and start to fox-trot through the lobby. Looking at them you can tell that they have had lessons to get that good and, always thinking the best of people, I naturally assume that he was found with his dick in the secretary and this is this wife’s revenge - ballroom dancing lessons and a Caribbean holiday - it’s either that or lose the house mate.

Despite my growing number of mozzie bites, they do take quite active measures to keep down the insect population. I know this because I’ve seen them at it, with a leafblower that shoots a cloud of the sort of pesticide that is probably banned in the EU and a tractor that makes a cracking, banging noise and shoots out clouds of steam. I’m not sure whether they are trying to gas the little buggers or scare them to death but this was all happening at six in the morning and it’s now that I discover that my fancy suite that we’ve been upgraded to has shutters but no windows!

Wednesday 14 March – Havana to Cayo Coco.

Up at the crack of bloody dawn for an early flight to Cayo Coco. More Cuban bureaucracy the night before, when I tried to settle my bill so that I wouldn’t have to do it at 4:30 in the morning, but was told I couldn’t. So settle it now.

Incidentally - a word about Cuban wake-up calls. These either never arrived, arrived late or, in one case, arrived when we didn’t ask for it.

The flight was in an old prop ‘plane, built when air travel was a luxury, from an age of elegance, leather seats and lots and lots of legroom. It’s how flying used to be. ‘Exciting’ is one word used to describe it, which could, I guess, also be used to describe conditions over the English Channel during the Battle of Britain, but I’d rather not be a passenger in a ME109. One hour flight into the Cuban dawn. Fabulous.

Pitch up at the Melia and because it’s so early, rooms not yet ready, fair enough, we have breakfast, it’s all inclusive you know. Sit on the terrace and goggle at what I think is surely the busiest waiter I’ve ever seen, as he hurries along with coffee, plates, seeming to be in two places at once. Then I see him at two places at once. Twin brothers, working the terrace as waiters.

The first room they offer us has a view of the tennis courts. We explain that, by the sea side, we’d quite like to see the sea, rather than octogenarian Germans in speedos playing tennis. In addition, the room wasn’t ready – you know you’re in trouble when the bell boy opens the door then turns to you with a look of undisguised horror on his face and says ‘this is not good’. God knows what the last occupants were doing in there.

Back to reception. New room. It’s great. But we paid for a suite. Back to reception. Thomas Cook courier gets involved. Ten minutes later they do a deal – room for a couple of nights, then we get a superior suite on the lagoon for the rest of our stay! Yes please! Finally unpack.

The pool area has plenty of space and is full of the sound of sizzling tourists or the distinctive blue beach towels that everyone has left out to mark their sunbeds. For a mad moment I want to run along the poolside, tossing the towels into the water. Wander into the pool house to pick up my towels and discover a pretty fairly stocked library - I guess tourists leave their books rather than taking them back with them, freeing up the weight allowance for extra rum.

The sea is at the end of a boardwalk, postcard blue, crashing on a white beach.

Tuesday 13 March – Havana

Cold shower – brrrrr, aghhh! Today the rest of the tour are going on a long, long trip to Vinales valley in the West of the island, the tobacco growing area. This will involve seeing caves, the valley and visiting a tobacco factory. We have elected to spend the day in Havana instead. This involves a lie-in rather than an 8:30 start!

First up, negotiating a taxi ride to Hemmingway’s house. Our taxi guy wants to take up on an all day trip and seems upset for us when we reveal that we just want to go to Hemmingway’s house and come back to the city. But we get in and off we go.

Then we stop, pulled by the tourist police. They are not interested in us, they are interested in our driver, where has he come from and where is he going and where is his paperwork to prove it. All is well and off we go again. Ten minutes later, same thing, waved over to the side of the road and documents checked. Something tells me that it’s difficult to work ‘off the metre’ in Havana.

Half an hour and we’re at Hemmingway’s house. Our taxi guy will wait for us. He had laughed when we suggested we would be able to make our own way back. Hemmingway’s house is not exactly in the middle of nowhere, but the busses going up and down the streets we travelled on are either lorries or some strange sort of articulated carriage thing, like an artic cab pulling a bus carriage. They are all full, I mean full like those pictures you see of Japanese commuters on the Tokyo metro, but fuller.

The house is beautiful, I mean really beautiful. It’s like Churchill’s house, Chartwell, it’s been preserved and is set out as if for a dinner party. Or rather a cocktail party…Hemmingway liked booze almost as much as he liked books by the look of things. There is no route through the house, to see the rooms you lean in through the sash windows. Leaning in and snapping away (my five paso photographer’s permit safely stuck to my shirt) one of the curators sidles over and asks for my camera, saying she’ll take pictures for me. She vanishes for a few minutes and I see the flash going off in various rooms. Then she hands me my camera back. I hand her a couple of pasos.

Her photographs really are good, including one of a Picasso ceramic. Something tells me she does this a lot.

Wander the house, then the grounds, watching the carpenters at work on restoring the boat. It really is stunning here, you can see why H would love it so much, why anyone would love it. It joins my list of fantasy addresses, Chartwell is still at the top of that list…maybe with No 1 London, Wellington’s old home, surely the best address on the planet.

Back to Havana thanks to our patient taxi guy. Off to tour the Partagas cigar factory.

We only have to wait a couple of minutes for the tour to begin. Our guide, a gorgeous young woman, begins by asking our group of Brits, Canadians, Norwegans and one Israeli if anyone smokes cigars and if so what brand. I’m asked first and own up to smoking King Edward Imperials.

‘Pah.’ She gave me the sort of look you give to men hanging around school gates with their hands in their trousers. ‘You must smoke Cuban’. She asks a few others, eliciting more of less the same response, a mixture of ‘oh my god!’ and, my personal favourite, ‘yes, that is what ladies smoke’ – bringing shame on the head of the bloke who admitted smoking cheroots.

Making a cigar is bloody hard work, nine hours a day of solid graft. It’s all about craftsmanship. The men start by ripping the vein from the dried leafs that will form the outside. This on the ground floor.

Up a rickety staircase. Second floor, sorting room. Women sort the leaves. Our guide explains that there is a myth about cigars being rolled on the thighs of virgins, shrugs and tells us ‘good luck finding one’. Personally, I’d be quite happy for her to be involved whatever her virginal status.

Next floor, apprenticeship room. You do nine months and then, if you can make a shedload of perfect cigars in an hour, you get a job.

Top floor – the factory. Every cigar roller sits at a workstation, it’s about 60% women, the rest men. The cigar makers grab a leaf, then another, then another, packing leaf after leaf after leaf into their palm. Then roll and into the press. Then out of the press, outside goes on, then the tip, secured with maple gum. No wonder the bloody things cost so much, this is craftsmanship.

It’s lunchtime, and the staff are eating pint cartons of ice-cream for lunch! This, and smoking. Workers are allowed three cigars to smoke a day but most keep them to sell and smoke cigarettes instead. The cigarettes are made of the off-cuts from the cigars.

Famously, the staff are entertained by a reader, who reads from a newspaper in the morning, then from a novel in the afternoon. The Da Vinci Code is the current book, but is not a hit with everybody. The most popular are adventures such as The Count of Monte Cristo or The Three Musketeers. Good to know Dumas still holds sway over Dan Brown.

The most interesting place was the packing room. Cigars cover worktables. If there’s any symbol of wealth, it’s the cigar. To see them piled up was like visiting a mint and seeing banknotes strewn across tables, except banknotes are simply bits of paper, each of these cigars is a hand crafted masterwork, rolled with love and care while the roller listened to classic literature.

So yes, it was down to the shop and I’ll have a handful of Cohibas please. I’ve met the lady who rolls them and the lady who packs them and my god, I’m looking forward to smoking them.

The staff are aware of the value of the cigars. The Partagas factory is working on a new cigar which will be the most expensive ever made. Our guide’s opinion of the sort of people who buy this – ‘a great cigar but…more money than sense’.

Lunchtime. We find the micro-brewery, have the best burger and beer I’ve had in a long time and watch people order their tubes of beer.

Then wander over to the Museum of the Revolution for a visit. But are turned away by police type people because there is a rally in the square in front today. Somehow, getting turned away from the museum of the revolution because there’s a rally is even better than actually visiting the museum of the revolution and, frankly, it allows more time for drinking. So, how to get back to the hotel?

Two pints means a ride in a coco taxi seems like a great idea.

Coco taxis are basically a fibre-glass shell mounted onto a moped trike. They look like a cross between a scooter and a hollowed-out grapefruit, only not as safe. The riders wear helmets, the passengers simply pray to whatever gods they worship to protect them.

We are in the centre of the city, a good ten minute ride from our hotel and we fully expect the guy to say it’s too far a ride. But no, he calls our bluff and in we get…and the bloody thing rolls backwards! There is no handbreak.

Off we putter, into the traffic, then onto the road along the esplanade. Three lines of traffic, three tonnes of Detroit steel hammering along to our left, a bus to our right and, oh my Christ alive, a lorry right up our arse and tooting. The engine of the scooter is going flat out and so are my nerves. Exhilarating is the word, the actual pleasure of the ride greatly enhanced by my terror.

We get to the hotel in one piece and I sit on the terrace, drinking Cuba Libres and reading ‘the old man and the sea’. I like to think it’s what Hemmingway would have wanted.

Monday 12 March – Havana

Cold shower, cold cold cold, ahhhhh! Oooh, I’m tingling! Okay, bring on the city.

(But breakfast first. Spot tea-bags! Oh thank you sweet lord. Dunk bag, sip…ugh, choke, what, splutter! Peppermint tea. I wrestle with an explosion of foul language and manage to recover my composure by converting it into a low grumble.)

The city is amazing. We started the day by driving out of it to the fort across the bay – pirates were a real threat here, imagine if we had that today ‘if you see a suspected bomber on the tube, check for a peg leg, eye-patch and parrot before raising the alarm’. Sprang like a mountain goat across some sort of fortification (no wonder the pirates had it easy) to take photographs.

Then into Havana. Start at revolution square, where there’s a huge monument, very soviet style, a concrete finger jutting upwards to the heavens. Apparently Fidel has an office at the top - a continuation of the watchtower perhaps, the master keeping an eye on everyone? Revolution Square has a huge sculptural representation of the famous Korda photograph of Che. Less famous tourists have their photographs taken in front of it in a steady stream.

Next, the capital building, where tourists and locals get their pictures taken on the steps of the Capitol building by photographers using what look to be plate cameras from the Victorian era. Havana swirls about you as you walk through it.

Walked down Obispo street. Havana is amazing. Balconies are stuffed with plants, the Cubans love to eat and buy slices of pizza from one hole in the wall of a café, ice cream from another (in other parts of the city folk cook up snacks in their own homes and sell them from their front windows), paso carts sell crushed ice with syrup shot through it. Walked back up the street and, taking a photo of a cart hauling a double bass, bongos and the rest of the band, the double bass guy stops pushing his cart, gives a big grin and poses with the wife, asking nothing, expecting nothing and happy to be part of the holiday.

Then to the Floridita bar, where Earnest Hemmingway ‘discovered’ the daiquiri. I rediscovered it. It’s great. They have a statue of earnest there and you have your daiquiri and pose by the statue that’s leaning at the bar and the alcohol erases the touristy stuff but, who gives a damn, because you’re in Havana. Then a brief stop at Arms Square, where they have various tanks and stuff used in the revolution, including the boat that brought Fidel, Che and his mates back to Cuba to start the struggle all over again after it failed the first time. Signs say ‘do not stay in this area’, I hope that means ‘no loitering’ rather than ‘we have an old missile in the square and nobody’s ever been really sure if it’s disarmed’.

At lunch, finally cave in and buy a CD. Instead of a band we have flamenco dancers. Anyone who goes through that number of shoes in a week deserves all the support they can get. The flamenco performance is great, the food falls into the ‘interesting’ bracket.

Into the Old Town (ironically the newest looking bit of the city). Wow! Bit of a transformation. One day, the whole of the city will be like this and it will be a good thing because nobody should have to live in crumbling buildings (although they clear all the squatters out when they renovate the buildings) but the whole thing looks a bit Disneyland I suppose, possibly because the buildings are all renovated, are all pastel and when the Cubans get something new, they bloody well look after it – the Old Town is pristine.

There’s lots to see but one of the most affecting sights is a statue, a bronze statue, of a beggar. The self styled ‘Count of Paris’ was a beggar in the Old Town district who was so well regarded by the citizens that, when he died, they put up a statue to him!

In Old Town, the squares flower, the streets are cobbled. In one street, they have wooden cobbles! This is because some power-crazed monster a few hundred years ago thought that the stone cobbles were too noisy, so he had them replaced with wooden ones. On the other hand, anyone who’s ever run a repressive regime knows that you don’t cobble – the folk just rip them up and have ready-made stones to pelt the troops with. Wooden cobbles sound like a great idea. Maybe foam would be even better?

Further into the Old Town, past a micro-brewery where they not only brew their own beer, but bring it to your table in four foot high tubes, with a core of ice to keep it cool, and three taps set into the base – allowing you to pull your own pint! How cool is that – surely this has to come to England soon. The tubes hold four litres – ideal for lunch.

Old Town is very picturesque, the workmen restoring the buildings work on fitting wooden spiral staircases, inch perfect, in the buildings. Schoolchildren in smart uniforms crocodile their way through the square while a young woman sits, perfectly still, being shot for a fashion shoot, butterfly clips pulling her sweater crease free, a bloke holding a huge reflector panel hovering behind her.

In the evening we brave the streets for a walk to a nearby bar. No street lighting and in the pavement there are potholes that seem to have no bottom. If you stumble, it’s a toss up between ending up in A&E, or China. We get the bar we were aiming for and are told it’s closed for a private party, so it’s next door to the Melia Havana.

The Melia Havana is not very Cuban. It’s very, very swish. Plasma screens, two bars and I actually feel a little bit scruffy. This is good news, because our resort hotel next week is a Melia. Melia are, I think, a Spanish chain who work in partnership with the Cubans. This is Havana as it’s going to be in a few years time, when all the money arrives, takes root and flowers. Drink rum and then wander back to the hotel. Dodging potholes.

Sunday 11 March – Cienfuegos to Havana

Out of bed feeling much better than I deserve. Maybe rum is the perfect drink – great to drink all evening and no hangover. Or, maybe I’ve just sweated it all out. Or, maybe the mosquitoes in Havana only drink the alcohol in your bloodstream while you sleep, that would be appropriate, as everyone and everything drinks on the island, why should the insects be any different?

Early morning and it’s already hot - even though we lost an hour last night as the clocks went forward - I must write to my holiday company demanding a voucher for an hour of tropical time in lieu (I think I’ll use it one rainy lunchtime). Board coach and make for an Indian village. The indigenous Cubans, Indians, were wiped out by the Spanish hundreds of years ago, I guess the Spanish conquistadors were doing the whole of South America’s population as a job lot. But apparently there’s this little mock-up village that shows how they used to live.

What they didn’t say was that it’s on an island. Reached by boats. Speed boats. So we split up and board our speed boats. I sit by the engine, worrying a bit about sitting in a cloud of fumes if we put-put-putter all the slow way to the island. The instant the boat clears the boarding pontoon – the driver opens up the throttle and we shoot off. No fumes then, just a flume of spray and a ‘weeeeeeeeeeeeeee’ sensation in my stomach. We power along the river. Then we hit the lagoon and he REALLY opens up the throttle.

I barely have time to say ‘looks like the wind has stirred up a little chop’ before we hit the waves and my bollocks are batted into my backside. This is, I have to admit, great fun.

The island itself is a bit of a damp squib. You get lead along a boardwalk past recreations of what the Indians used to do. Basically they would fish, make fishing nets and cook fish. This was very much a fish based economy. There was even a little tepee where you wandered into the dark and a couple of Indian looking fellas in loincloths over their Y fronts banged on a drum before some Indian girl smeared your face with a couple of Nike swooshes on your cheeks. These were, I sincerely hope, not made from mud and crocodile shit, because that what it smelled like.

Obviously it was time for a rum cocktail. On the island the cocktail kit was a bottle of rum, a machete and a coconut. Get coconut, lop top, fill with rum, serve. It was served with a plate of crocodile meat (ordered because it gave me a chance to say ‘get me a crocodile sandwich and make it snappy!’). I assume it was crocodile meat, could have been chicken. Thinking about it, it probably was crocodile meat, maybe it was chicken-fed crocodile?

Back across the lagoon, even faster this time, racing the other boats, bouncing over their wash and then dodging the river by going back via the narrows, the boat powering along regardless of wash as we shot through the mangrove swamp, passing termite nests, passing ospreys, slowing down for long enough for the driver to swoop and scoop the lilies from the water to present to the ladies on the boat (smooth!) and then off again, blasting along, the boat almost on its side and a fair amount of squealing in terror and pleasure going on amidships.

Then we disembark for the crocodile farm. Jesus Christ! Knowing just how important health and safety is on the island, I was frankly terrified. The farm was basically a large lagoon surrounded by a perilously thin and inadequate looking fence, the sort of thing you use to keep out foxes, surrounded in turn by a boardwalk and viewing platforms.

Before we met the big crocs, there was a chance to get your photograph taken with a little one. He may have been little, but they had some thick old rope over his jaws. One of our group was first up. Ironically, it was the chap I had been calling ‘Rolf’ for the last few days because of his resemblance to Rolf Harris. I wanted him to say something about little nipper making it through the night. Next up was another guy on the tour, who was smiling right up to the point when the croc buckled and bucked like, well, like three foot of pure prehistoric muscle. I don’t know about the memory centres of crocs, but I could see it thinking ‘I will not forget this indignity! One day mate, you’re going to be sat on the loo and then SNAP!’.

The big crocs lie, submerged to the eyeballs in the water, oozing prehistoric menace. The ones that are basking on the bank just lie there, camouflaged, before they appear out of the sand and undergrowth, like one of those Magic Eye drawings, then you realise you are standing three feet from snarling death.

The fence did not look like it would put up with a concerted attempt by a three tonne monster who fancied chewing on tourists.

Lie and bask was all they did, until catfish-gut guy stepped up. This bloke appeared with a bucket of catfish and started hurling them over the fence. After stepping back smartish to make sure I was not splattered by an arc of catfish guts (and so marked as ‘lunch’ for the crocs), I stepped closer. Wow it was ugly. Those brutes went from looking dead to running like a fat kid runs past a salad bar to get at those catfish. Then the sound of those huge jaws cracking down and crunching the skulls of the catfish – that’ll stay with me for a while.

It does give you a respect for nature, and toilet facilities. They may have looked like shoes, boots and handbags in motion but they made short work of the food. The catfish gut guy obviously tosses the fish to make the crocs move about when the tourists turn up. I wonder if it’s really a good thing to start this kind of association, are the crocs not going to start associating baseball caps, cameras, shorts and sunburn with dinner-time? As long as they don’t run out of catfish I guess the tourists are okay.

This tourist got himself a Che beret from the gift-shop. Makes me feel like a revolutionary but look like a sex offender.

Lunch. More bean soup (I’m really starting to like it, I suspect they put rum in it) more music.

Hit the road in the afternoon for the long trip to Havana - so the driver sticks a cassette of western pop music on. ‘Now’ style compilation tape and the first track up is Phil Collins (hope it doesn’t encourage the driver towards the middle of the road) with ‘another day in paradise’ - I’m pretty sure this is an accident rather than a conscious attempt to direct our attention to our situation by playing a track about rich western people ignoring poor people. I love the Cuban countryside. You look out of the window and watch the green fields roll buy, the guys harvesting sugar, the burning of the stubble, the black fields. As we rolled towards Havana the traffic got heavier, less bicycles, more cars, more police. The police sit underneath bridges, in the shade, occasionally pulling people over. Then I saw my first traffic light and I knew that we had reached a metropolis.

Didn’t really have time to see Havana on the first night. Did see one interesting thing though. The Americans don’t have an embassy on the island, they have a ‘presence’. This is a big f**k off building in the middle of Havana which is basically ready to be turned into an Embassy at a moment’s notice. Outside it is a purpose-built protest square where the Cubans have organised protests about things like Guantamo Bay. This is a great idea. The American Embassy in London is a fortress these days, they’ve pulled concrete barriers across the roads and look at you funny as you wander up the street, a bit pissed, at ten in the evening. This is their own bloody fault for placing the Embassy on the route of one of my pub crawl routes.

Hotel and shower. It’s cold. Wow! Ah, I know this trick, turn on blue tap. It’s colder. Ahhhh, shit, shit, fiddle with taps! Do the little dance of the cold shower when you try to shield different parts of your body from a cold spray. Give up. Have cold shower. Debate whether to ask management to fix cold shower. Look at city out of window. Decide that they have quite a lot of stuff to fix before they get to our shower…like the rest of the city.

The majority of the hotels date from the 1950s and were all built by the mob. Rival mobs all had different hotels. When prohibition bit in the states, they went 90 miles offshore and indulged in drink, gambling and whores. This was how it stayed until Fidel booted their arses out in the 50s.

Tonight is a big night…tonight is Tropicana night! We arrive and here, at last, is some glitz and glamour. We’re standing in a marble and mirror lobby, it looks unaltered since the 1950s and looks the very height of mobster chic. Then we walk through the doors into the Tropicana…

…which is open air! Of course it is. We’re in the tropics. It’s this enormous ampetheatre, a stage surrounded by trestle tables and benches. We take our seats near the stage and discover that yes, at Club Tropicana, drinks are free! Ticket price includes a glass of champagne, a tin of coke…and a litre bottle of Havana Club between four! God almighty, it was only then that we discovered how well we had been treated by the Cuban barmen. Myself and the guy I was sharing the table with were the only people drinking in our foursome and the cocktails we were making ourselves were not as strong as the ones we had had made for us.

The show was great. Glitz, glamour, singing, music, a two hour extravaganza of fun, feathers, thongs and song. The girls were all beautiful (and, I think, fiercely competitive, when one lost a shoe, another lost a head-dress) and the blokes all had trousers so tight I can confirm none were jewish.

Between dancing and singing their were acrobats! How cool was that? The last time I saw acrobats was at the circus and my god that was great, but this time I had alcohol. There was a small gasp from the males in the audience when the acrobats arrived, this was the gasp of ‘why don’t I look like that when I take of my shirt?’ The answer is a desk job and beer.

I thought the show was fantastic. In front of us, two perverts did too. I kid you not, in the UK these guys would be bounced. Every time the dancers appeared, so did their cameras. Well, I hope they are happy with their 2,000 exposures (that’s the word) of fuzzy images of brightly coloured crotches. I suppose that they were able to afford such great camera gear because they didn’t have any girlfriends to spend their money on…ever. They got their comeuppance though. You have to buy a photo pass (£2.50, money well spent!) to snap pictures of the show and these idiots had not. But the real slam dunk was when the dancers finish the show by coming onto the floor and dancing with the audience…and studiously ignored these guys who were desperate to dance.

Two things you can always here in Cuba, no matter what the location, no matter what the hour - music playing and dogs barking.

Saturday 10 March - Trinidad to Cienfuegos

The early bird not only catches the worm, it also gets to access the full fruit juice jugs in the buffet and checks out the fried food section before the Germans have ravaged it. There’s lots of food available, lots - including ‘goat’. Well, the label said goat but it was below a picture of a sheep. The idea of mutton for breakfast did not appeal, although I quite liked the notion of goat. I settled for eggs.

Ten minutes of fun and games in the shop trying to get a tee shirt changed because it was too small ended without success and with my reading in my guide book that exchanges don’t happen in Cuba. Good thing I didn’t ask for a refund, they would probably have shot me. So I’m stuck with a tight tee shirt with ‘Cuba’ written on it. Actually it’s such a cool tee shirt that I don’t mind, it just means that I shall have to avoid third helpings of pie if I want to look good in it.

Everyone is putting on weight. Normally in hot weather I just stop eating but the places we are visiting are on the coast, cooled by sea breezes and with beer that is either cheap or free. In addition, you feel obliged to finish your dinner, as you’re acutely aware that you are accessing a luxury the locals cannot.

Off on the road again, stopping briefly at a petrol station for a drink and a pee.

Off for a pee in Cuba? Make sure you have your pee pee paso. For blokes, this is just courtesy. Normally a young woman sits outside the loo and you tip her on the way out because she keeps the loos clean and attractive in a tropical climate - not easy. This can be through placing orchids on the wash hand basins of you’re in a modern loo, or sluicing the toilets out if the facilities are a little more basic. For ladies, you need to tip the loo keepers to get your toilet paper. Either that or have a hell of a lot of handi-wipes with you. (I travel with tissues, moist wipes and lemon scented wipes…and I’m a bloke!).

The petrol station had classic cars and Russian trucks and with the hard, flat light beating down on the dust and concrete it looked like a scene straight out of an Edward Hopper painting.

Back on the road. Long, straight ribbons of concrete, a real socialist road that doesn’t bend but follows the Roman principal that the quickest way from A to B is a straight line. We pass a man on a push bike but very little else. We also pass more stubble fires, the sky punctuated by columns of black smoke. Here in the countryside every home is set back from the road and is surrounded by a kitchen garden, little farm after little farm.

The other thing they have is negative billboards, one of only three I saw in the whole country. Normally billboards or murals are pictures of Che or sayings of Fidel, extorting the benefits of being a good Cuban. This billboard was a straightforward picture of Dubya with a Hitler moustache and a pretty uncompromising message about fascism.

The Cubans have taken an interesting approach to their public transport problems. At every town and village there is what I took to be a bus stop, attended by a chap dressed in a yellow jacket and trousers (known as ‘yellows’). There’s not a lot of private car ownership in Cuba, a lot of the cars actually belong to the State and you get one because your job requires it. All these cars have blue license plates. If you are driving along in your enormous Buick, the yellow will flag you down, see if you have any spare seats and ask you where you are going. If anyone at the stop is going your way - in they get. Fail to stop and you’re in big trouble.

I thought of all of those cars I see every morning on our roads, huge cars with one driver sitting in it, all going the same way and realised that the only thing that is ever going to get people to share their cars is real need. Save the planet? Not if it means sharing my car with a stranger. So, once again, a policy of sustainability, or common sense? Maybe, but in reality it’s a policy driven by necessity.

Into Santa Clara to visit the Monument of the Armoured Train. This was a turning point in the revolution. Che derailed this armoured train carrying lots of troops and lots of guns. Once the corrupt president Batista (boo, hiss) heard that the train armoury had been captured, he knew it was all up and fled the country and the rebels won the day (hooray!). In many ways it was like blowing up the Death Star.

Santa Clara is a lovely little town. We wandered into the town square where we encountered a uniquely Cuban phenomenon, beggers who give you change! This lady asked for some pens, so we handed her some and some money too. She rooted in her bag and produced a three paso piece, but not the convertible pasos we had used, this was the local stuff that the locals use and the tourists can’t get - it had Che’s face on it. She was actually giving us money! Okay, so the convertible paso is worth 27 local pasos, but I was gobsmacked - you don’t get that sort of thing in the UK.

The square was full, it was a Saturday. We looked at the hotel, where you can still see the bullet holes from where Che rooted out the last of the soldiers he had turfed off of the train. Then we watched the goat pimp. This guy was either pimping goats, or children, or was some sort of child catcher. He had a little carriage pulled by a goat. Obviously he’s saving up for a donkey. I’m not sure if the kids pay for the ride or the tourists pay for the pictures but if a goat-drawn wagon is not a Kodak moment, I don’t know what is.

We shuffled off to lunch and shared a restaurant with a band (of course) the Cuban middle classes. In Cuba you don’t fall below a certain poverty line and you can’t rise above a certain wealth line, but there are people who go to restaurants on a Saturday and take their kids. We sat there drinking our Crystal beer, they had the Buccanaro (stronger, has a picture of a pirate on it! Or Buccanaro max! Even stronger, probably not a good driving beer).

By now, I was greatly enjoying the taste of kidney bean soup and was disappointed when the restaurant served up European fare first, then followed up with Cuban, if I’d have known there was going to be Cuban food, I wouldn’t have eaten all that pizza…which I did, a lot.

Onto the Che memorial. This was serious stuff. All bags and cameras to be left on the coach. A good idea I think, as we walked toward the Che museum and memorial. With your camera in your hand there’s a temptation that this is going to be just another photo opportunity, just another stop on the revolution heritage trail. Without this, without bags, you have time to think.

Into the museum first. This might be serious stuff but the Cubans obviously loved Che and there are loads of pictures of him laughing, eating and smiling. This are not the sort of images one associated with the grim-faced dictatorial regimes of socialism. Maybe socialism only works well in sunny countries.

Hats off, into the memorial. This is where Che and other heroes of the revolution are actually interred and you keep a respectful silence and keep moving at all times. An interesting place, low ceilings with a water feature in the corner, it’s supposed to be like the caves where the revolutionaries spent much of their time hiding. Very moving.

Out into bright, bright sunlight and back to get cameras to take pictures of Memorial Square and the huge memorial itself. A stunning piece of work, all concrete towers with a huge statue of Che himself atop it, another with the last letter from Che to Fidel reproduced on it.

In front of the statue, a huge square for rallies and so on and sweeping that square, a lone woman with a broom and her small daughter trailing along behind.

We’d brought pads, crayons and pens to give away and this is just what we did. Well, just what my wife did. I of course was paralysed by embarrassment but the little girl was pleased and her mother very gracious and, hey, who wouldn’t be pleased to get some crayons and drawing paper? I might be an idiot tourist, but I was learning fast and I didn’t drag two kilos of paper half-way round the planet to take it all home again.

Pulled into the main square at Cienfuegos and the first thing we saw was a group of tourists with cameras on tripods taking pictures of a Che billboard. Later found out they were English (they were staying at our hotel) and I guess they were on some sort of photographic tour of the island. The problem is that you’d have to stop every ten yards or so to take a picture, there really is that much to see and everything is photogenic.

A quick tour of a theatre, preserved as it was in the last century, where the patrons went there as much to be seen as to see a play and which was paid for by money from a slaver (well, it was either going to be that, rum, tobacco or sugar). Then on to our hotel - the best one we stayed in in Cuba.

The La Union is a boutique hotel and what I can’t understand is, if the State own all the hotels, how come they are not all like this? I guess it comes down to having different brands, like supermarket have value and premium ranges. This place was fantastic.

Cienfuegos itself was, er, interesting. Walked down to the harbour front, past a run down section (I mean more run down than normal) and through what I can cheerfully describe as one of the worst smells I have ever encountered. I think a sewer had gone up and, by the time I got through the cloud of miasma, my eyes were watering and it was an even chance whether my lunch was going to stay put. Still, at least action was being taken. There was a bloke with a shovel in a hole digging. I suspect that he was chosen because he has no sense of smell, or possibly no friends.

Our hotel was in a posh part of the city, across from a car rental where, in typical Cuban fashion, they had solved the problem of the car-lot not having enough space for their fleet of cars by simply knocking through to the building next door. No RSJ or prop, just a bloody big hole in the wall.

At the harbour some were fishing while others were piling into a small boat with lots of beer and puttering into the sunset. Wandered a little way into town, snapping away with the camera. This included a shot of two chaps obviously making their way home from work (via a bar I suspect) who asked us to take their photo. They seemed pleased with the click but amazed when I spun the camera and showed them the picture - this was the first time they had seen a digital camera.
I felt like some sort of explorer bringing mirrors to the New World. It was a refreshing reaction and shows us how comfortable we’ve become in seeing our own images recorded. Remember telly from years ago, before everyone had video cameras (now you have your video on your ‘phone!) and people being interviewed in the street put on posh telephone voices and spoke like they had a pole up their arse? This is what that society is like and I hope to god that care is taken with the introduction of some of the toys we use and abuse here in the pampered world.

Finished the evening with the best cocktails in the world. Previously, the best cocktails in the world were mixed in la Perla in London. The mohito there was the best I had ever tasted. Until that night in the bar at la Union. The barman was a genius. We put ourselves in his hands and asked him to mix us whatever he would like us to try. So he did, repeatedly, and we crawled off to bed rather late, more respectful of the barman’s art than ever and vowing to get ourselves a cocktail shaker.

We also vowed not to try cocktails in any bar or pub in the Uk for at least six months. It would be heartbreaking to see the UK barstaff mix in their piddling amounts if spirits. The official amount of rum you must use in a cocktail is ‘a river’.

We were ready for bed, Cienfuegos was not. From the bar across the street came singing, from the disco down the road came a thump thump thump of music. How, we thought, would we ever get to sleep? The answer is - be at least 30% rum.

Friday 9 March - Trinidad

Woken by a combination of sunshine and my body still being on UK time, so up in time to see the sun rise over the lagoon. This is the crack of dawn and there are already a couple of guys on the lagoon fishing. Hummmn, food! It’s the ‘jungle trek’ today and so it’s probably a good idea to have a hearty breakfast, but not too hearty as if we get lost I’m going to suggest eating the fattest people first. In the restaurant it’s like the United Nations - the buffet caters for all tastes, from fruit juice to those pies and cakes that the Germans love to eat for breakfast. Ugh, what sort of person has a cake for breakfast? Bacon, sausage, egg, beans and chips please!

(I was right about the tea by the way. Not a decent cuppa in days now. I was doing my best with coffee and alcohol but frankly it’s not the same).

The coach cannot handle the road to the start of the trek so we transfer to a ‘Russian limo’. This is an ex-Military soviet-era lorry. It looks as though it rolled off the production line during the defence of Stalingrad and made its way to Cuba via a dozen cold-war hot spots before being used to carry nuclear warheads and, now, tourists.

Travelling it in was very jolly and jolly terrifying. Seat belts? Forget it! Open top, rattling, engine grinding - the last time I saw one of these things was on the news, it was in Afghanistan and the rebels were firing at it. Bump bump bump along and then turn off the concrete road onto a track and BUMP BUMP BUMP. The trip was exciting to say the least but the troop carrier was still in one piece even though the USSR isn’t, so it must have been built well.

On the road to the start of the jungle trail we pass other tourists who have opted for the four-legged approach, sitting astride lean looking horses. Those horses don’t know how lucky they are, ferrying wiry French and Italian tourists along the roads - I remember the donkeys at Santorini who, on seeing the American tourists lumbering off the cruise ships, would stark shaking in terror.

We rattled and shook to the start of the jungle trail - a restaurant where, at 9:30 in the morning, we were served a fortifying rum cocktail. Some concession was given to the time of day because it tasted strongly of mint and so could be mistaken for mouthwash…maybe.

The start of the trek was a short boardwalk and a rope-bridge. Ahhhh, I thought, ‘jungle trek’ indeed. Rather, I thought this was going to be a boardwalked stroll along a carefully laid path that would gently rise and fall and have plenty of places to hold on to handles if the walk became at all challenging.

Then I stepped onto the bridge. The last time I had seen a rope-bridge sway like that, Indiana Jones was chopping through the supports. Then there were the missing boards. This was jungle adventure alright. Over I bounced, and hit the trail. This involved steep climbs, rocks, leaf litter, scrambling and my breath becoming so ragged that it occasionally masked the ‘plip’ sound that my sweat was making as it fell to the jungle floor.

The climb was fun though. The guide pointed out exotic plants (effect slightly spoiled by somebody in the group saying ‘oooh, we’ve got those in our bathroom’) and informing us that certain plants were very special.
‘Are they used to make medicine?’
‘No…rum.’
We also had birds pointed out to us. Well, I assume they were there, what I actually saw was a clump of vegetation within which, I was assured, was some sort of bird. To be fair though, those with binoculars did get excited.

Half way up the trail and wondering where the next rum is coming from, we stopped at a replica of a traditional farmhouse. At least I think it was a replica. It looked like one of those houses you see in living museums, but it had an inhabitant, who was cooking his lunch on his wooden cooker! He also had a little corner of the kitchen converted into a shrine, with the requisite plaster saints. He also had a lot of livestock. Thinking about it, this guy could well have been some bemused farmer who just has to put up with a lot of tourists tramping through his home every so often.

Back on the trail, limbo-ing under rocky overhangs and admiring the palm trees. I also admired the riverbeds very much. You could see it was dry season because the riverbeds had chuckling streams meandering through them, rather than being filled with whatever raging torrent had deposited all the boulders and branches dotted around. They were calm, peaceful and so cool I almost stopped sweating.

The end of the trek and the source of the streams was a waterfall. Everyone with a cozzie did their ‘getting changed under a towel’ routine, and headed off for a swim in the waterfall plunge pool. The water was cold, but I managed to effect entry by slipping on some rocks and going in arse-first all at once with a splash. I was so pleased not to have broken anything that I didn’t mind the shockingly cold water or the indignant screams of those whom I had splashed. Struck out over shallows, dodging submerged rocks and then into basin of waterfall. It was amazing, it was like swimming into some sort of movie scene. At any moment I expected a gorgeous young woman to appear and either eat chocolate, shampoo her hair under the waterfall, or both.

Took the ‘easy’ way back to the restaurant, though this was still treacherous underfoot (I had used up my luck for the day not getting myself killed at the waterfall and so stepped daintily). The restaurant speciality was catfish! These were swimming around in their tanks, looking like evil, inedible sods but actually they were quite tasty. Beer and music with lunch. Resisted temptation to purchase CD.

The only way to get over a morning like that is to go back to the hotel and lie on the beach looking at the Caribbean. Good god it’s blue - and warm! A warm sea! This is a revelation, that you can have a warm sea. Okay, so you still do that thing when you’re wandering out and a wave comes and hits your nethers and you flinch, but it’s not like Norfolk where you actually think your testicles have actually retracted into the top of your head. This is water to dive into and splash around in.

By now I was learning the ways of the all-inclusive. Turning up for dinner early means that the buffet is far less mauled than the later diners find it. Also, it gives you time to drink lots of cocktails afterwards and means - and this is the important part - that you have an appetite for an order of chips from the snack bar later on in the evening. The cocktails were consumed while watching the hotel entertainment staff organise salsa lessons for assorted tourists. The tourists salsa-ing were obviously not English, as they danced well and without inhibition.

Was able to make final award of the day - to the scowlingest German in the hotel. Good god could that man scowl. Maybe it was just the cast of his brown and lips, but he had the expression on his face, permanently, of a bad-tempered teacher who realises that somebody has hidden a turd in his desk and the entire class are just waiting for him to discover it. Who knows, maybe limitless booze and food, dancing, singing, young women in feathers and being on a beach in the Caribbean were just not his thing.

They bloody are mine.

Thursday 8 March - Sancti Spiritus to Trinidad

4:30am Cock-a-doodle-f**king-doo!
4:45am His mate joins in!
5:00am Hotel generator starts up.
5:30am First scooter of the day.

Then, in no particular order - more scooters, revving lorries, what sounded like - and I’m not kidding here - a military drill, then commuting, Cuban style which means horns, shouting, more revving and bicycle bells ringing like a campanologists convention.

Got up, shouted out of window and solved mystery of how to get hot water out of hotel room shower - you turn the blue tap. Of course! Hot shower - ahhhh! Open window, sausage dog on balcony across street, traffic on road and smell of cooking and pollution. Drink in the ‘atmosphere’ and take obligatory balcony photograph.

After breakfast (which included ‘pleasured eggs’), strolled around town. Lots of decaying buildings and crumbling roads. Lots of people. Also lots of dogs. Dogs in Cuba seem to just take themselves for walks. In addition there are lots of dogs on balconies. These, I think, must be a special breed, small, light and able to urinate into space rather than up a tree as most doggies do.

I had thought that the ‘classic’ American 1950s Detroit monster cars would just be in Havana but nope, they are everywhere. They don’t look ‘classic’ though, not in the sense that over in England they’d be kept in a garage, polished every weekend and only driven to meetings of enthusiasts. In Cuba they are everywhere and range from looking cherished to looking like they are held together with paint and prayer.

Took my first picture of a Che mural. In Cuba there’s no advertising, the only branding you see are the ubiquitous ‘Havana Club’ signs outside bars. There are lots of Che murals and lots of sayings of Fidel. Can you imagine what would happen if Tony Blair started putting his sayings on walls? This no advertising thing took a while to sink in but once it did, it was like a sorbet for the brain. Free of clutter and visual intrusion you really have time to think about things. What I mainly thought about was how refreshing it was not to have some product or other relentlessly being advertised.

The other thing they don’t have in Cuba is litter. This is probably because there’s bugger all to throw away, but I think there might be that Spanish sensibility of public spaces being an extension of the private house, that people spend time on squares and streets and so see no reason to dump their trash there.

I was, though I didn’t know it, entering my period of adjustment. This was proper foreign abroad and being there, away from Starbucks and media made me think not just about the Cubans but about Britain too. The advertising issue is one that I returned to frequently. Because of the socialist regime in Cuba there’s what we’d call poverty but is actually need. Nobody starves or is homeless but there are shortages of things. This is mostly because of the US embargo and while it means the people on the island are deprived of a lot of stuff, it means they are protected too. It was a bigger shock coming back to England and seeing fat children than it was going to Cuba and feeling hot in March.

When there’s no advertising you realise how much of it there is in England, and how insidious it is. It’s not just a billboard with a bra or a beer on it, it’s the whole culture of being told not that you want something, but that you need it and, what’s worse, that you deserve it and it’s making us all selfish. How much advertising is for something that has a genuine social good?

Wandered past the cinema, one of two in the town, which was showing ‘Cujo’ - dog owners beware. The town also has a radio station. I know this because, at 8:30 in the morning, the station was broadcasting from loudspeakers from its studios on the town square, while young women in bikinis danced on its balcony/terrace!

Everything’s owned by the state but there is private business. On the intersection below our hotel room two guys had little stalls and were doing a roaring trade in lighter re-gassing. In a country where everybody smokes, this is big business. You’d not get that in England where, of course, we prefer to throw our lighters away. So is re-gassing a sign of poverty or sustainability? In the UK we think that sustainability is okay as long as we do not have to compromise the lifestyle we’ve been told we deserve in any way, shape or form - that’s why we have unleaded 4x4s. Other private enterprise was a flower seller. He was doing good business too.

Other business included holding a huge shotgun and looking bloody sinister - at least the security guard guarding a delivery of cash to the bank did. Group 4 should take tips.

Back to the hotel for our briefing about Cuba. Coffee, tobacco and rum are good - drugs are very bad. Then we had time to ourselves until lunch. Leisure has been such an alien concept to me recently, as I rush from deadline to deadline, that I was genuinely at a loss. So I hit the bar, always an excellent default option.

Sitting with a cerveza and your thoughts or making conversation while drinking was wonderful. Without beer…not so sure.

Out the front of the lobby of the hotel just about to wander off for lunch and am approached by a ‘begger’. The inverted commas are there because the guy was not after money but pens! Apparently there is a national pen shortage in Cuba. Knowing this I had brought a shed-load of biros with me. Naturally these we in my suitcase but luckily the wife keeps, along with a load of other stuff, a few biros in her handbag. The chap seemed very happy with his plain bic and biro that popped out when you touched the cap of the pen.

It actually took me a while to work out what he was after. He kept making what, in England, is the universal sign for ‘can I have the bill please’ - a scribbling motion on his palm. I may be a callous bastard but I’m not about to invoice a bloke in his own country. He may not have had much money but he certainly had a load of wrinkles, he looked like a lean version of an overbred show dog.

Walked to lunch past classic cars. One of which had Che transfers on the headlights - how cool is that?

Over lunch we experienced what was going to become a feature of the week…music while you eat. You sit down in a restaurant in Cuba and barely has your starter (salad of cabbage, carrot and cucumber or bean soup) hit the table when there’s the sound of bongos, a guitar strums and somebosdy starts singing. As an English person you have to make a deal with yourself very quickly. Usually one would either feign amused tolerance or simply pretend the music was not happening. Not options here, so you have to enjoy the music but, and this is important, still make conversation. Takes a while to get used to. It was lovely though, being serenaded through lunch. Afterwards, they pass the tip basket and, as often as not, there’s a CD in it that you can buy if you want. Cottage industry has arrived in Cuba. Some bugger somewhere has a laptop churning out these things. I think that over the course of the week a few were bought by our tour group (I finally succumbed in Havana), after all you need something to play over your slide show when you get home.

Fuelled and off to Trinidad, through the Cuban countryside, dodging motorcycle-sidecar combinations (men always ride pillion, no matter how dangerous, the sidecar is only for crops or women), horses and horse and cart combinations. On the way to Trinidad we learned a little of the history of the island - which is basically one of constant exploitation right up until Fidel said ‘enough’ and the revolution happened. The Brits owned Cuba for 11 months which, apparently, the Cubans really liked, because we opened it up to free trade.

Sugar and slavery were very big business and in order to keep an eye on your slaves cutting your sugar you need to have high towers to keep watch. Stopping at a farm we saw one of these towers and had the opportunity to go up it. The ‘Tower of Terror’ as I came to call it was a slender finger of stone reaching a long way up or, to put it another way, it’s a long way down from the top. The one paso entry fee is, I think, not hypothecated to maintenance, as the wooden steps looked about one creak away from a spectacular crash. Still, the swaying and creaking added an extra dimension of raw fear to the proceedings. The view from the top was spectacular, either that or my senses were highlighted by terror. Climbing it was an exercise in the conflict between the childish need to get to the top and my instinct for self preservation but, once up there I wondered just what a plantation owner would do if they saw a slave misbehaving. By the time you came down the steps and got to the field, the miscreant would be well away.

Sitting patiently alongside the farmhouse was what I thought was a trolly-bus or tram but was in fact a Cuban train. The railways criss-cross the island, crossing the countryside, their paths punctuated by the occasional dusty halt - I don’t think a concrete canopy quite merits the term ‘station’. The rails also cross the roads without bothering with such niceties as level crossing barriers in the countryside although, to be fair, there are signs.

The road to Trinidad took us through the Valley of Tears - so called because of the onions and garlic grown there and then into Trinidad valley, UNESCO protected and rather beautiful. The other UNESCO sites I’ve been to are Stonehenge and Avebury. The turkey buzzards and the sparkling blue Caribbean made Trinidad valley rather different to Stonehenge. The Caribbean looked amazing, it really was a dazzling blue, the blue of seas in dreams.

Trinidad itself is a UNESCO site and is quite different from Avebury - no tea shoppes for a kick-off. The UNESCO bit is in the centre. Apparently it’s the cobbles that are important, if the street is cobbled then the buildings are falling apart because they have to be preserved and restored in a certain way. Across the street the very same looking buildings are on tarmac streets and are falling apart because nobody has the money to slap a coat of paint over them.

Trinidad is full of pastel painted houses that are peeling and dogs that are thin and occasionally odd-looking. The theme of the dogs is ‘which bits am I missing thanks to fights’, even the bronze dog in the church square is missing a bit.

Lots of vendors in the street, slightly pushy but, at one paso for a necklace what I should have done is filled my suitcase with them and flogged them back at home. Trinidad is small but fun to walk through. They have cannons buried in the cobbles to act as bollards and the climb to the Mirador in the centre of the town was another exercise in aerial bravery, this time a precarious climb up a narrow staircase and then a walk over a catwalk suspended over the gift shop. Thank god we’re all thin Europeans.

The gift shops were interesting. Got my first Che tee-shirts there. Did not want to go mad as thought there would be other shops. And there are, but they all sell the same tee shirts. That’s right, you can only buy about 30 types of state approved tee shirt on the island. Another thing, they don’t do refunds or exchanges, at all, so shed your inhibitions and try on before you buy one. Up the mirador and take plenty of photographs with Trinidad in background, Caribbean in background, church in background, that sort of thing.

Churches in Cuba are little used. I think that religion wasn’t suppressed exactly, but was not encouraged. There are two religions on the island, Roman Catholicism and the worship of some saint, a religion that came over from Africa with the slaves. Walking through Trinidad and peering shamelessly into open doorways and windows, I saw the occasional plaster saint and religious postcards, even one four foot model! Religion is interesting, like a seed it can survive underground for a long time and then, with the right conditions, it sprouts. I would have thought an agricultural community would be the perfect place for religion - farmers pray all the time, for rain, for the rain to stop or for their EU subsidy cheque to come through.

The worship of the saint involves giving him the first drink from your bottle of rum when you open a new one. Seriously, this is how much rum there is on the island, when the barmen span the top off of a new bottle of Havana Club, they would jerk the bottle and splash a good measure on the floor. I had to stop my natural reaction of diving to the floor, mouth open, to try and intercept the stream of alcohol on its journey to the floor.

It was rum time again, this time served with lime juice and honey and served up in a terracotta pot which was not so much ‘washed’ between uses, rather dunked in warm soapy water. Well, warm water. Easiest job in Cuba? Weights and measures department. Forget 1/8 of a gill, the appropriate measure of rum in Cuba is ‘upend the bottle, start pouring, keep pouring and, when you think you should stop, go another few seconds’. Second easiest - health and safety.

We sat in the shade and enjoyed our rum cocnktails, listening to a bloke on bongos and then watching with interest as a young Australian tourist, who had got in really close to get a photograph of him, was roped into his act. I have to say she was really good and seemed to be enjoying herself as much as her rum-soaked audience.

Meanwhile a tough-looking hombre had entered the bar wearing a two foot machete. Even in its leather sheath the thing looked sharp. Apparently you can’t wear them in cities like Havana but in rural cities like Trinidad…it’s okay. So, that’s okay then. The guy apparently is on the front cover of one of the guides and looking at him, skin turned to leather by the sun, omnipresent cigar and all, I could see why - he looked like Jack Palance…with attitude. And he was smoking a huge cigar, of course he was. Everyone here that smokes a cigar smokes one as thick as your arm. Not for them the weedy cheroots so beloved of West Midland small businessmen, nope, out here they spark up a cigar in the morning and it’s good to go all day. Keeps the flies off apparently.

Back on the coach and back on the road, out of town, past houses with gardens, including one with a set of rusting bodybuilding weights, and a bodybuilder sitting on his bench, resting between reps, his huge arms sticking out from his pumped up chest. On and on, to the hotel - and my first experience of ‘all inclusive’.

Fist things first, get your wrist band. The hotel is basically a small village dropped on the Caribbean coast, an international village full of brits, Italians, Germans - all sorts. My skills in working out who was from where were going to be polished in the next few days.

Next culture shock…everything is ‘free’. You get a drink, you don’t pay. You get another drink, you still don’t pay. Thanks to your magical wristband you have entered the kingdom of plenty. No wonder they keep this place so far from the city. You switch from beer to cocktails and it’s still free, so I switched to wine.

Hummmn. The waiter was obviously very proud of Cuban wine and stood by me while I tried it. Actually it was tight up my Strassa, rough as hell, just the way I like my reds.

The wine was rough but the poolside entertainment was smooth. As we sipped our cocktails and debated when to dine, a chap in loafers and a white jacket started crooning away, then did the ‘lounge’ thing of wandering over and singing to the ladies - lots of eye contact and so on. Great stuff and a good singer but he was up against some stiff competition, when we arrived the entertainment staff gave us a taste of their evening floor show - including a bunch of young women in thongs and feathers! Still we cut him some slack and applauded enthusiastically. I knew that if we did not, he’d start singing to the men.

A word about Germans

Shaved heads. Moustaches. Tattoos. The German males fall into two categories - the first wear a look of permanent pained constipation when fat, possibly brought about by the realisation that they’ll never fit in the turret of their Panzer tank again. The second look as if they enjoy filthy sex games (actually so do the first) - there’s a reason for this and it’s their vile tattoos, usually something over a full chest, like an eagle, with a swastika in its claws. Okay I made that last bit up but there was this bloke sat at the snack bar, shaved head, ‘tash, tattoos and a tiny speedo swimming costume. I’d imagine that underneath his photograph on MySpace is the caption ‘Hello I am Rolf and I very much like to make the Schizsserpumpen’.

Concluded the evening putting together my list of rudest nations. Germans like to rush into things (like Poland), the Italians are indistinguishable from gypsies, the French are just French…but offensively so. There’s so many national quirks on display that you have to start sub-leagues. Like the English are best at ‘speaking their mind’, which is ignorance masquerading as character. How to spot the English on holiday…look for the football shirt.