Saturday Evenings: Stay In, Sit Up and Switch On

I read one of your magazines this morning. Which one? I asked her. The one with Boris Johnson on the front. Ah, The New Statesman. What did you think? I think we should put politicians to the test before they are elected. Like a run-through or rehearsal? Yes, kind of.

My daughter and I were on our way to London’s West End. Like many families in the last few days we were trying to make sense of the outcome of the European referendum. I appreciated my daughter’s comment and her interest in an issue that will define her generation for years to come. I did explain to her, though, that society cannot work on trials and errors like science experiments. A society is made up of human beings and like it or not, we all have a stake in the way our country is governed. Better than having a dry-run whenever a politician comes up with a “brilliant” idea, we ought to ensure that the mechanisms through which that politician is elected work to their full capacity. Like hold said politician to account when they fail to produce the £350m-a-week they pledged for the NHS a few weeks before.

However, as we crossed Oxford Street en route to Tottenham Court Road, the popular Dominion Theatre on our right hand-side, I could not stop thinking about the theory put forward by my precocious fifteen-year-old. In my head I began to tweak her “experiment” a bit. Only that this time I was planning to use the arguments of the “other side”. Those who say they have no voice, that they cannot talk freely, that it is all “political correctness gone mad”. I wanted to see my adopted land through the eyes of those who hate what I represent. What if they took control of their country for a year? I sometimes feel like telling them, “Fine, go ahead, go as far as you possibly can. There will be no limits, no hurdles, and no objections. We will pave the way for you and your compadres. Go far, really far.

2016 is turning out to be an annus horribilis. I would like, then, to start 2017 with a wipe-the-slate-clean attitude. Please, any pessimistic views expressed in this post are completely intentional. Do hold the blog owner responsible for them.

First off, as of the 1^st January 2017 every single immigrant, non-British citizen, EU or non-EU, with or without a British passport will be given 24 hours to leave the country. Only for a year, mind. It is an experiment, remember? Have family here? Tough, me too. I’ll see you at the airport. What’s that you’re saying? You’ve lived here ten, fifteen years? Look me in the eyes, son, I have been for almost twenty and I packed my suitcase last night. Anyway, the experiment is only for a year, remember? We’ll be back in twelve months. Well, we will be back if they don’t build The Wall, if they don’t pull up The Drawbridge, if they don’t create an Unbreakable Barrier around the British Isles. We will be back, but only if…

And now that we’re all gone (by the 2^nd January, remember), the real work begins. For starters, get rid of all the other "undesirables": the community activists, the feminists (or Feminazis, as they are more commonly, and pejoratively, known nowadays), human rights campaigners, disability rights advocates, anti-homophobia groups, pro-ethnic-diversity supporters, etc. Banish them all to a little island on the Outer Hebrides. Those smug Scots will probably welcome them. It should be easy to achieve this because for a whole year Parliament will cease to function. Instead the world’s oldest democratic institution will outsource all executive decisions to private companies. At the end of the day it is not as if corporations are not already running the country, is it? With Parliament silenced, the path to a free-market-driven, full privatisation will be clear. First it will be the turn of the NHS. Break it all down into tiny, little pieces and put each to tender. Make sure that the company that wins the contract(s) (why stop at one? What happens if a company wins all the contracts) is not the more transparent one but the one with stronger links to members of the government (who happen to be, lest we forget, the CEOs and managing directors of the biggest corporations). In the modern world we need to wrest control from those pesky EU bureaucrats. That is why for the next year your local hospital's A&E will be run by one company, the ambulance service by another, the admin and operations department by a third one, staff recruitment, including doctors and nurses, by another company, catering by another one and so on and so forth. Best case scenario, all these departments will be run by the same business entity. Because, nothing says “long-term friendship” like a politician making sure his mate (they go back years, did you know?) is well served by the state. Oh, and the patients, I hear you ask? Well, they are the lucky ones (no, seriously, they will be). If they get left behind and forgotten in a hospital ward in pain, they can always blame the ambulance person, the doctor, the nurses (alas, no Filipino nurses. Remember, we, immigrants, are all gone now). After all, these companies may be private but it is the taxpayer coughing up for the service so the taxpayer still has the right to complain (To whom? Do not ask! Look, it's only a year!). Yes, I know that this patient is in agony and that no one has come to see them in two hours and that if they do die in the end everyone will start blaming everybody else, but, patience, please. After all, it is only a twelve-month-long experiment.

Education is the next biggie. Ensure that all schools go down the academy route, namely, privatisation by stealth. Did I say stealth? No, no need to be secret. Remember, it is an experiment. You can do whatever you like for a whole year, in the open, and if you are really pleased with the outcome, then, make it permanent. Put the contract to build new schools or refurbish existing ones out to tender, but, please, please, please, ensure that the contract goes to the company that has links with the chairman of the trust that runs the academy. It is only fair, isn’t it? After all, academies are investment and all investment has a built-in return component in it. Please, spare no opportunity to make money: brand-new uniforms, after-school activities, half-term and holiday programmes. Charge premium for everything. And when the education budget runs dry because there is no money left in the kitty, start charging parents for the lessons their children were receiving gratis before.

Regarding climate change, tear up all the agreements. There is no climate change. It is all a conspiracy. Drill, baby, drill! You only have twelve months. It is not as if our planet will suffer if you stop talking about global warming and concentrate instead on the car industry. Promise more roads, more motorways, better and bigger automobiles. Come on, dare to dream! There is no one around now to oppose you.

Where else can you make changes? Do not worry; there are myriad issues that need urgent attention. Human rights, scrap them. For these twelve months only Darwin’s theory, survival of the fittest, will rule. Same with women’s rights, race relations act, disability laws, gay rights. We do not need them. Women, especially, will learn their place. If you get raped when wearing a short skirt, it is your fault. If, on the other hand, you were wearing a neck-to-toe long dress and you still get raped, it is still your fault still for provoking lust in a man. As for abortion, do not even mention the word for a year. No abortion, under any circumstances. No exceptions. There were only exceptions before because you had to compromise with the PC brigade. Speaking of which…

No more political correctness. Now, with no immigrants and "undesirables" in the country one does not have to be careful anymore with what one says. Bring back the Jim Davidsons of this world. At last people will stop prefacing their sentences with “I’m not being racist, but…”. Now it will be fine to say “I am being racist and I am loving it and this is what I want to say and this is what I really, really mean”.

Imagine this lot or similar in charge for a year

Foreign policy will be as hawkish as possible. The word is “sell”. Sell weapons, as many as possible. Go around the globe, visit each arms fair, Flog as many weapons as you can. And start as many wars as possible. These weapons need to be tested and used. Do not worry about those annoying, hippie-looking pacifists. They can be neutralised easily now. Remember that you removed Parliament. The people running the country are a nameless, faceless corporation.

All this was on my mind recently following the conversation with my daughter. Imagine the United Kingdom like that for twelve months. Elderly people being sponsored to travel to a certain clinic in Switzerland. All expenses paid for by one of the ruling corporations. Euthanasia on the sly. After all it will still be a Christian country so morality will still be important. Black- and brown-skinned Britons being told to go home (what home? They were born here. It does not matter. Go home!). Children being brainwashed into believing that a dog-eat-dog world is the only option out there. Normal job contracts would cease to exist in their current form. Instead, there would be a zero-hour culture for everything. Voluntary work would be made compulsory to compensate for unemployment. Paul Dacre and Rupert Murdoch being asked to be in charge of the media department for that whole year with porn baron Richard Desmond their loyal deputy.

And then, on the 1^st January 2018, I would arrive in Gatwick or Heathrow airport, desperate to see my family and finding a different nation. A better or worse one? One that has finally taken control of its own destiny or one that is sinking slowly without anyone noticing it?

I will be checking your answers from now until mid-September when I will return. In the meantime, thank you for your cyber-friendship. I really appreciate it.



© 2016

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

One day last summer my wife, our two children and I were walking near St Paul's Cathedral when we decided to sit down on one of the many benches scattered across the churchyard in order to have our packed lunch. I've always liked St Paul's, the outdoor area, that is. If you want to see what the inside of the cathedra looks like, you have to cough up at the entrance. Still, the exterior is beautiful with well-looked-after lawns and shrubbery, although on the day we went there were still some scaffoldings dotted around the premises. Outside, the visitor will also find useful information about the cathedral's history and some of the pieces that populate its grounds. A triangular relief describes the conversion of the building's patron saint to Christianity. St Paul himself stands above said sculpture, sandwiched between other religious figures. A statue of Queen Anne, the reigning monarch at the time St Paul's was built sits nearby. Accompanied by a soft, gentle breeze this summer day could not have been more relaxing. And I gather that the same thought crossed the mind of the many visitors streaming through the cathedral's gates.

I suppose that neither the church's authorities nor the families parading or playing on the building grounds that day would have been able to predict that a few months thence St Paul's would become another chapter in the global protest movement.

But before I carry on, a disclaimer. I haven't yet, at the time of writing, paid a visit to the Occupy movement at St Paul's Cathedral. I would like to, but, for reasons I will explain later on in this post, I still haven't made up my mind. I have, however, followed with great interest the wave of protests, uprisings and insubordination that has engulfed the world in the last twelve months.

It's sometimes hard to believe that we're living in one of the most radical(ising) times in history. The difficulty to understand this arises perhaps from the fact that we're used to listening to older people talk about past conflicts in such a  passionate and heart-rending way that only if we're able to put on the rose-tinted lenses of nostalgia (the ones our elders are surely wearing as they tell these tales), will we able to to experience something akin to their memories. Another reason might be that our attention span has grown shorter whilst our technology has developed tenfold. The combination of these two factors has somehow eroded our ability to marvel at our own derrings-do. And yet, look at what's happened in the world in the last year socially, politically and economically and you'll come to the same conclusion as me: there's been a revolution.

I use the singular form on purpose, even if the popular unrest that has coursed through the globe in the last year has manifested itself plurally. North Africa has just seen an overhaul and overthrow of old regimes. Syria is the next stop surely. The Occupy movement which began life in Spain with "Los Indignados" (The Outraged) mushroomed instantly and took hold of other cities such as Toronto, New York and London. Online, groups like Anonymous are bent on embarrassing national governments with their pranks. Everywhere you look there's something happening or about to happen. However there's a single narrative running through these subversive acts that seem to have sprung up almost simultaneously: a fairer society where there's more respect and consideration towads our fellow humans. The question is: why now?

My answer is: people got fed up. As anyone who has a cat will tell you, if you corner your feline pet, it will defend itself, with very ugly results. That cuddly, cute kitten will morph into a panther or tiger in less time than it takes you to say "Meow!". Same with people. Over the years we've seen the rich getting richer and very little of of that wealth trickling down to us, regardless of what New Labour promised when it came to power. The clearest message I've seen in the current protests, and the most explicit and bluntest one has been: "We're the 99%!". And as it happens, 99% is far more than 1%, so, you do the maths. Just like Seattle at the end of the 90s and beginning of the noughties, gave us a strong anti-corporation message, this time the Occupy movement, combined with the uprisings in Arab countries is providing a template for how future battles between the status quo and the electorate will be fought.

First of all, social media has played a very important role in the current stand-off between state and individual/collective. It's easy to big up Facebook and Twitter and overestimate their involvement in the toppling of Gaddafi and Mubarak but according to Paul Mason in his new book, Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere, there are now nearly one billion FB users: two fifths joined since the start of the Arab spring. In about four days Paul reckons the 500 millionth Twitter account will be created; the 400 millionth one was opened four months ago. Whilst Mark Zuckerberg will find it difficult to convince people that he unseated the Egyptian dictator himself whilst wearing his PJs and slippers, it's fair to say that his creation did have an effect.

The second element that signals we're entering a new era in the relationship between government and people is the leaderless nature of the Occupy movement. Decisions are made following assemblies. Real consultations are carried out by talking to members. There's a sense of ownership that's hardly ever present when politicians turn up on the panel of Question Time or to answer questions on the Today programme. Furthermore, the roguish behaviour displayed in Seattle by some members of anarchist organisations are conspicuous by their absence at St Paul's cathedral. This lack of unlawfulness in the Occupy movement has endeared people with no political ties or motivation to the protesters' aims.

There's a third factor in the relative success of both the Occupiers and the progressive forces responsible for toppling down the dictatorships in north Africa. They haven't mentioned the "s" word as an option for governance. "S" as in "socialism", that is. The protesters taking over squares, parks or, as in London, cathedrals, want a different type of capitalism. They want a capitalism where profits do not end up in the shareholders' pockets - at least, not all of them - but benefitting society as a whole. By all means, keep capital, but do not capitalise on the human soul.

Could this new approach to politics and government triumph in the end? Not in the long term, in my humble opinion. But in the short one, what is doing very effectively is making people, politicians included, re-assess their priorities in life. In the same way Seattle '99 exposed the harsh realities of sweatshops and unethical trade, the consequence of the Arab spring has been a re-evaluation of the role of the West in propping up and knocking down dictators as and when it wishes. Not so long ago Tony Blair shook Gaddafi's hand. And lest we forget it was Mr Blair who joined George W Bush in the illegal invasion of Iraq. The less we see of that kind of attitude the better, and the Arab movement is contributing to that change of mindset. Another effect of the global protest movement is making people understand that the current state of affairs affects almost everyone: from small business owners to young people looking for work. There's a real drive towards creating a better and fairer society and it's encouraging to see the new guard partially leading the way. I wish I could join them, but having been born and lived in a country where demonstrations were ten a penny, had no real or political purpose and brought no change at all, I have sadly become inured to public displays of dissent.

I do confess, however, that leaderless movements with a loose agenda make me somewhat anxious. That way madness and anarchy lie. A hodge-podge of ideas as springboard for a more coherent and cogent arguments is very welcome. The danger is that historically out of the chaos come totalitarianism and autocracy, being led, ironically, by a charismatic demagogue. I don't think the Occupy movement is heading that way yet, but at some point, I think it should narrow down its political, social and economical demands to something we, the public, can recognise and vote for. Given the grim future facing many in the UK nowadays, even Jesus would have joined the protesters at St Paul's cathedral. Which, by the way, taking into account the church's attitude towards the Occupy movement, would have been very funny.

© 2012



Next Post: “Urban Diary”, to be published on Wednesday 22nd February at 11:59pm (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

My maternal grandmother had rough hands. She had big, calloused hands that knew all about hard labour and vicissitudes. From an early age her wrists, fingers and thumbs learnt how to tame the arid land in her native Guanajay, formerly in the Pinar del Rio province, nowadays Havana.

My grandma's hands were broad with thick fingers, that's why people used to say she had 'manos de isleña' (islander's hands), a reference to those immigrants who arrived in Cuba from the Canary Islands at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. In her case, this claim was more than justified; her own grandfather on her father's side was one of those fortune-seekers who had crossed the Atlantic looking for a better future.

My grandma's hands changed function shortly before Fidel and his troops toppled the Batista's regime in 1959. She moved to Havana with two of her daughters and began to work as a maid. No more would she be tilling the land, planting potatoes, digging her hardened hands into the soil. She would be now serving coffee in delicate china, dusting furniture brought from countries whose name she could hardly pronounce and cleaning floors until they shined.

My grandma's coarse hands' DNA was transferred to both my mother and one of my aunties. The third one would always poke fun at her sisters for having hands like a farmer. Until my mother and auntie ganged up on her. That was one of the stories my mum used to tell me when I was little. And my grandma, sitting nearby, would rub her ancient hands and give us her broad smile.

When I was five, I was diagnosed with stomach ulcer and gastritis. That was the time when my fits started. The pain would half-nelson me to the ground, and I would be kicking and screaming in agony. Not even doctors would attempt to touch me and on a few occasions I had to be restrained and anaesthesised. If I was home, my grandma would approach the bed where I was writhing in distress, and start reading me the 'Oración a Santa Bárbara' (Prayer to Santa Barbara)[1]: 'Gloriosa Santa Bárbara, a ti que puedes interceder para alcanzar la ayuda de Jesucristo, te ruego que protejas a mi nieto, y que lo ayudes para no vivir y morir separado de la gracia de Dios y de los sacramentos...' All the time, one of her chapped hands would travel around my tummy in a circular motion, smoothing the pain. With tears in my eyes, I would clasp her other hand with mine until my stomachache subsided.

My grandma was the epitome of Cuba and Cubans odd relation to religion. She had been raised a Catholic but had a shrine to the African gods in our flat. She worshipped openly except for when my auntie and her daughter, my cousin, had visitors in our house. My auntie was a member of the Communist Party whilst my cousin belonged to the Youth Communist League. One Sunday a strange man came to our house for lunch. After eating, he sat down with my auntie, my mother and my grandma to talk. Slowly he fell asleep. After a while he woke up as if he was in a trance or sleep-walking and started to speak in a weird language. My grandma, however, understood what he said and replied in his lingo. They both formed a chain with their hands and arms and since our flat was very small, the space was reduced. I got up to go to the toilet and on trying to jump over their nexus, they said that, no! no!, I had to break through it. I did so and when I returned from the bathroom the man had come out of his stupor. My grandma caressed my face with her broad hands and told me not to worry; the evil spirits would not harm me anymore. At that moment many of the reservations I had harboured for years finally found an answer: the reason for her wearing sackclothes on the 17th of each month and her disappearance from our house every 17th December[2]; the large coconut in the bottom of one of the bedside-tables in my mum and dad's bedroom - a fetish much derided by my father and located in the only dormitory in our flat - and her passion for medicinal herbs. The babalawo returned a few more times at my grandmother and later my auntie's request and he struck up a good relationship with my family.

Whenever I complained about a problem, my grandmother would say: 'Don't worry, more was lost in the war'. When I asked her to which war she was referring, her reply was short and simple: 'Any. They're all the same'.

One day my grandma happened to pass in front of our telly whilst a speech by Fidel Castro Ruz was being broadcast. She raised her two hands in fury, closing them into two tight fists: 'You're to blame', she bellowed, 'It's your bloody fault that this country is falling apart!'. My cousin admonished her severely and later that evening we all concluded that the first signs of senile dementia had appeared. Or maybe only those who are non compos mentis dare speak the truth without any fear of reprisal.

When my grandmother died in November 2000, my best friend in Cuba sent me an e-mail with the sad news. I remember printing his message off and retiring to the toilet at the far end of the corridor, away from the operations department. I recall clearly how I locked the door behind me and as I read the e-missive again, I began to slide down the wall slowly. One tear made its way across my cheeks and dampened my upper lip whilst my other eye withheld its outpouring of grief for just another second before giving in to the might of my lacrimal glands. I re-read the message many times until the language made sense no more. I cried silently first and in big sobs afterwards. I cried in the way Oliverio Girondo describes weeping in his immortal poem 'Llorar a Lagrima Viva': 'Llorar a lágrima viva. Llorar a chorros. Llorar la digestión. Llorar el sueño. Llorar ante las puertas y los puertos. Llorar de amabilidad y de amarillo. Abrir las canillas, las compuertas del llanto. Empaparnos el alma, la camiseta. Inundar las veredas y los paseos, y salvarnos, a nado, de nuestro llanto...' I cried because I had made my grandmother's life very difficult in her last years. I could not understand her illness, or rather I chose not to. And now, I could not turn back the big and unforgiving wheel of Time. I cried because I would miss her hearty laugh, the one she displayed everytime my family came to visit and asked to be served her speciality, "pollo arrebata'o"(fried chicken in a rush). But above all, I cried, because I would not be able to feel the soft touch of my grandma's rough hands again.



Copyright 2009

[1] Santa Bárbara is one of the most worshipped saints in Cuba. It is commonly found in most houses, together with its Yoruba counterpart, Shango. It is celebrated on 4th December when most followers dress in red and white or just plain red, the colours that symbolise this Catholic/Yoruba deity/orisha.

[2] St Lazarus is another saint widely worshipped in Cuba. Its Yoruba equivalent is Babalu Aye and both the Catholic deity and the African orisha are usually depicted on crutches and with one or two dogs licking his wounds. On 17th December every year, followers of this deity/orisha make a pilgrimage to its sanctuary, El Rincón, outside Havana, wearing sackclothes.

Next Post: 'What Makes a Goood Writer?', to be published on Tuesday 22nd September at 11:59pm (GMT)

Road Songs (Nocturne)

I was recently driving back home from Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, relishing a marvellous early winter sunset when I began to ponder on the joys of night-time driving. As the car headlights helped me cruise through the Ridgeway back to Enfield, nature's twilight hour brought a myriad creatures to the full beam of my front lights, thus, thrusting me into the whirpool of this lawless, carefree and unadultared animal world. Night-time driving music divests the listener of optical detours whilst ensnaring them in a type of Wild West grip.

Night-time driving music doesn't need/have to necessarily be slow, schmaltzy, ballad-type. Many a time I've caught myself humming quite loudly to a Fela Kuti's song or a track by Los Van Van. The only requirement(s) it must meet is leave you with that eerie and unearthly feeling of being part of the unknown, especially when driving in a motorway or in a countryside road.

The first clip is a testament to the wonderful world of networking. As social fora for like-minded folks, the internet and blogs, specifically, have become an essential part of the human existence and on this particular occasion I have fellow Cuban, journalist and blogger Ivan Darías Alfonso to thank for introducing me to the music of Souad Massi, an Algerian singer who has made inroads into French culture via her haunting and beautiful voice and, if the comments on youtube.com are anything to go by, the depth of her songs. Which I cannot understand as she sings in Arabic. I have just ordered her CD, 'Deb', after listening to a few tunes in the aforementioned website and I can't wait for it to arrive on my doorstep. Thanks Ivan and Merry Christmas to you and Elena.



This band should not have worked out. And the same goes for some night wildlife when you see it through the glass of your windshield. Some of it just doesn't make sense. Ditto with this group. The Doors had a guitarist rooted in flamenco music, a drummer with a jazz background and a keyboardist and pianist whose leanings were more towards Bach than The Beatles. And then they had Jim. And it worked. Beautifully. This song weighed on me in my teens and it still does. Pure musicianship.



The Cranberries took me by surprise when I first heard this album back in the mid 90s, just like night-time driving can throw up a few surprises hither and thither, sometimes not very nice ones. The opposite happens here. O' Riordan's voice is so delicate and yet so strong . Enjoy.



I've always been a Tori Amos' enthusiast. The passion with which she attacks the piano, her lyrics and the feeling of being on the edge of the unknown, or maybe the known unknown for I get a sense of comfort in being in her music's company. Just like when I'm driving at night collecting my son from Woodcraft Folk and we are both looking forward to the weekend. A known unknown which we both know will be worthwhile. And I want to set the mood for it right from Friday night.



Well, there ain't no sunshine at night, Bill. And how many times do you say 'I know' in that tune? It doesn't matter, it's the pure feeling wafting through the track, it's the guitar-playing skills, it's the heart-rending delivery, it's just pure, soulful, unadulturated music. Like night wildlife. Like night-time driving.



I was one of the lucky ones who managed to sneak into the Karl Marx Theatre in 1994 to see Manu Chao and Mano Negra in their only visit to Havana, as far as I know. And that concert has always stayed in my mind. The relentless energy, the camaraderie, the bond and the closeness of each and every musician on stage was mind-blowing. I must admit that I don't have all the songs I upload on this blog on CDs. I do have loads of CDs, but I also upload tracks which I would like to play in the car as I drive around the streets, roads and motorways of Britain and this is one of those songs.



And that's what night-time driving is about. The magnitude of the road, the smallness of the car, the infinite power of music.

This is all for this week. Have a Merry Christmas.

Copyright 2007