Meditations on Britain (Summer Camp Symphony for Crickets, Grasshoppers and Cicadas)

The first time I came to Great Britain in 1997, what made a deep impression on me immediately as my plane headed toward Gatwick Airport were the capriciously mathematical shapes of the greenery below. Hither and thither we, passengers, were regaled with a view worth a few hundred thousand pounds in today’s stock market and yet, there we were, getting it for free. In Cuba, they talk a lot about people drinking tea in the UK, however they always fail to mention the breathtaking landscape that adorns this island’s geography.

A week in Dorset has reinforced that view. Every morning we woke up to an extraordinary spectacle of emerald shrubbery. Even with the torrential rains that we had to withstand, most days the sight was a marvel to behold. I have sometimes imagined that Mother Nature at one point, tired of marking off territories and delineating borders, and feeling frustrated and despondent, threw all colours available in its palette upwards in a fit of anger without caring a jot what the aftermath would be. The result, I am pleased to confirm, was chaotic and yet beautiful. The world as we know it now. Just as mountains sweat shades of brown and green and the sea turns from a deep blue to a delicate turquoise, the verdurous scenery surrounding us in Dorset presented us each awakening day with a different viridescent hue.




Summer camp has its own rules: that is, no rules. The first convention that goes out the window is fashion, or the sense of it, rather. Not that I have ever had any; blue and black jeans for me, thank you very much. And T-shirts and jumpers to cover my upper half, that’s all I need. But even that disappears. The most important element at summer camp is how to be comfortable. Whether your socks match your top is beside the point. Do they shelter you at night from the chilly weather? The fact that a vest might or might not be from GAP or NEXT is irrelevant. Is it comfy enough to wear on the beach during the day?

The second covenant that gets broken very quickly is that of hygiene and the means to maintain it. A wash tent is usually pitched to one of side of the camp and that becomes the place de rigueur for your morning ablutions (or evening ones, whichever takes your fancy). Inside the tent there are other dwellers with you: flies, spiders, the odd mosquito and countless myriad insects hard to describe, let alone name.

The third precept that is easily forgotten is time. Except for the watch on your wrist, which you hardly ever look at anyway, time becomes an even more abstract noun that rarely materialises. Your day is divided by the meals you take and the chores you are tasked with.

There’s a fourth element that one gets used to very quickly. And that is related to one’s tent: bending. One must bend at all times when going in and coming out and suddenly Gulliver’s travels acquire a different dimension from the one we learnt when we read the book in our childhood.

These are not minuses, by the way, but merely aspects of camping. There is, though, one component that I saw throughout the whole stay and which is one of the reasons why my family and I go back every year with this local group. It was respect, manners and politeness. There were many ‘Good Mornings’ and several ‘How did you sleep last night?’. Our social interaction was great and I felt that for a whole week we encapsulated the essence of what it means to be human. And that to me was far more important than all the clean showers or fancy clothes in the world.

Copyright 2008

Meditations on Britain (Motif Sportif)

It has taken me sixty-seven days to write this column. As John Terry's foot slipped on the Moscow damp ground, Chelsea's hopes of European glory were given a deadly blow.

I have never intended this blog to be about sport. As a fellow blogger remarked recently, the mix of literary reviews, reflections on my life in Britain, more pertinently in London, music sections and recipes (with music to listen to whilst eating) form the bulk of this space. But, even the most hardened of souls would have felt for the England and Chelsea captain when his shot flew wide of the intended target.

That's why when I was at Stamford Bridge recently (for the first time in my life) I was struck by the image that presented itself in front of my eyes. A tractor was flattening the ground on the pitch. And as the vehicle moved from right to left I could not help thinking that that was a metaphor for how our season went. One by one the chances to silverware came tumbling down like the mounds of soil on the pitch. The nail on the coffin was that night in Moscow.

Although I rarely write about sport on this blog that doesn’t mean that I am indifferent to it. I am passionate about both arts and sports equally, living to the core the Greek maxim: ‘Healthy mind in healthy body’. Both disciplines carry within them the ethos of enjoyment, resilience and narcissism. Where they both differ is in the pursuit of their goals. Whereas art concerns itself more with the process of creation (or it should, at any rate), for sportspeople, the result is everything. John Terry, on the night of Wednesday 21st May, 2008, probably left aside thoughts about the long road traversed by Chelsea to arrive at its first ever European final, especially after the most successful manager in the club’s history, Jose Mourinho, had walked out in September 2007. He probably excluded the facts and statistics that pointed at a club struggling to remain within sight of the champions, Manchester United, when its main players were either injured or on international duty. He probably chose to forget about players' discontent with Mourinho’s replacement, Avram Grant, who, by the way, was sacked by the club’s hierarchy following his defeat in the European Cup Final.

Art is more forgiving, though and so are its audiences. When on a warm Sunday afternoon I was in attendance at the Grand Theatre of Havana in the mid 90s nothing could have warned me that I was about to witness history being made. The bill promised a Swan Lake performed by none other than Lorna Feijóo, my favourite ballet dancer ever. Next to me sat my then German course teacher, an Austrian woman, with her boyfriend by her side. I had been raving about Lorna for so long that they both thought I was more than just a good acquaintance of hers.

The piece went smoothly and Lorna handled the various pas de deux with aplomb and vigour. But then came the strenuous and difficult role of Odile and the unexpected happened. Halfway through a spin, Lorna slipped and fell. The audience leant forward and covered their eyes with their hands and the atmosphere felt oppressive, as if someone had sucked the air out of the building. Lorna rose up once again and in a defiant, daring and challenging manner, dusted herself off (literally) and gave us a series of fuettés, each one of them improving on the previous one. The public went mad (not unheard of in Cuba) with cries and wild applause and the critics raved about the performance for a long time after.

Two top spectacles and yet what consolation can John Terry get from a game that was almost won, but wasn’t? And that’s that the sad reality of sport, almost counts for nothing. Who knows? Maybe Terry could learn a thing or two from Lorna if they ever ran into each other.

Copyright 2008