Archive for May, 2007

Posted on May 16, 2007 - by MG

Non-Stop Solemn Salsa

I have worked out…that from now to September, I’ll be attending a salsa event OR going on holiday every single week.

Including:

• My best friend’s wedding this weekend in Brighton (with salsa party)
• My best friend’s wedding knees up in Andalucia (salsa on the beach of Conil de la Frontera)
• Buena Vista Club in Oxford with live band Soneando
• The acclaimed Havana Rakatan dance show in London (tickets still available) followed by a night on the daiquiris at Floridita
• Carnival de Cuba in London, including Sur Caribe and Pedrito Calvo
• Salsa Republic
• Afro-Cuban Salsa Weekender

That should keep me very cheerful, all summer long! I’m a firm believer in the milestones-of-happiness approach.

I’ve dropped my writing target to a manageable 500 words per day. The plan is all done, in mega detail, so barring illness or other setbacks, I am aiming to finish a draft of ‘Jaguar’s Realm’ in time for my birthday at the end of August. That way I can have a joint celebration at…where else but Floridita. Yay!

Ah, the best laid plans…

Posted on May 15, 2007 - by MG

Septeto Santiaguero

This one’s for motorpilot from Litopia.

Posted on May 15, 2007 - by MG

Pie Season

There are fresh raspberries in the shops, and they’re not bad at all. Meanwhile, in the fields around Oxford, berries are ripening. The pick-your-owns will get going in about a month.

All of which signals the start of pie season. Thank goodness I had a fresh-baked apple and raspberry pie this weekend. We had an unexpected guest, a rather senior cleric, who was rightly put out at the misunderstanding that led to him arriving to an unprepared house. The pie, however, put a smile back on his face.

Mmm, mm. Yet another excuse for socialising. Yet another excuse not to write. Especially teenagers – they love apple pie. Whenever I bake for my daughter and her friends, it’s the pie they gobble first.

Pie…inevitably triggers a Seinfeld reference or three. There’s the episode ‘The Pie’ in which Jerry’s girlfriend refuses to share Jerry’s pie, and there’s ‘The Calzone’ where Kramer bakes a huckleberry pie (and so can’t use his oven to dry his pants)…and there’s ‘The Bubble Boy’ where they drive through what Kramer describes as ‘pie country’.

R1x really has me concerned with that whole Spidey 3 thing. Yes it was daft but I was SO entertained…which I can’t discount. I’m going through the story with a fine toothcomb trying to spot hideous errors that I missed due to chuckling and eating chocolate.

God help me, this blog has finally degenerated into a full-blown displacement activity.

But you know what? I’ve decided to think of it as ‘morning pages’.

Posted on May 13, 2007 - by MG

Living Like Bloody Millionaires…

This was my mother-in-law’s favourite response when my then boyfriend and I would go off together as students, to exotic places like Spain and Italy, (other people we knew went to Tibet and Thailand, but, yanno…) or eat out more than twice a month.

We love the phrase and use it all the time now. “Going out to breakfast? Oooh…yer living like bloody millionaires…!”

Reading Fortune magazine over coffee this morning, I noticed that they had a special section which might as well have been entitled ‘How To Live Like A Bloody Millionaire.’

(I don’t know why we get Fortune magazine. Neither of us remembers subscribing, but there it is every month, along with the Speccie and Time.)

They actually called it ‘Life At The Top’. It is a guide to how you can spend eye-popping amounts of money on bags, cars, golf clubs, wine, and featured a brief interview with Cartier’s North America boss Federic de Narp, improbably handsome and sleek, giving tips about shoes, shirts, briefcase, coffee, watch (mai, bien sur…), where to have lunch, what brand of umbrella…

I notice that they didn’t ask him about his exercise regime. US businessmen have to be all about the daily workout regime (like Haim Saban, featured elsewhere in the issue) and ‘visionary futurist’ Ray Kurzweil who reckons that exercise, diet and 230 daily supplement pills has slowed his aging process. I’d like to think that the European alpha male can still put style, elegance and culture before a slavish devotion to the gym. But I doubt it. You don’t keep a figure like de Narp’s or Antonio Baravalle’s, the molto sexy head of Alfa Romeo, without some work. European businessmen probably keep that sort of thing quiet.

My poor father wouldn’t have enjoyed this brave new world of sushi and pilates. He revelled in the three-course, boozy working lunch that finished with brandy and a packet of cigarettes, where exercise meant the distance you had to walk from your chauffeur-driven car to your next meeting. Which may have contributed to his death aged 46.

I must have something of an Electra complex though, because the sight of a handsome businessman in well-tailored, dark blue pinstripe suit, white shirt and tie makes me weak at the knees…

Posted on May 12, 2007 - by MG

Pupy y Los Que Son Son