Month: July 2007

Categories
cuba salsa

@Manolito, like Casa de la Musica all over again


nic and mel
Originally uploaded by mgharris

For a little while last night at the Coronet (Elephant and Castle, London), I felt as though we were back in Casa de la Musica, Havana.

Nic and Mel were even there…if you read this blog you might remember that we first saw them in Havana’s famous dance hall on Galiano Street, grooving away with sexy male dancers Bustamente and Yoandy, when I snuck my 14-year-old daughter in to see Maikel Blanco.

Manolito Simonet y Su Trabuco are one of Cuba’s top bands, one of the world’s top salsa bands and like all these outfits, unbelievably tight and accomplished, all 16 of them. The musicianship is quite astonishing. You get used to it but when you listen to a run of the mill live jazz act you suddenly realise just how fantastic these top salsa bands are.

Manolito have a few songs which are currently club favourites, like ‘Marcando la Distancia’ (a song about divorce), ‘Control’ (a reggaeton favourite) and the crowd-pleasing, chorus rousing ‘Locos por Mi Habana’. Apart from that they also mastered cha-cha-cha (latest hit, ‘Se Rompieron los Termometros’), sophisticated latin-jazz instrumentals and even a bolero! (all the above songs titles link to Youtube videos.)

These tickets have been selling at every salsa event we’ve been to for the past six weeks, so there were many familiar faces. A really wonderful feeling, to be part of this loosely connected but joyous community of Cuban salsa fans.

And here’s a photo of me at the concert with my best friend Becs:

Really must buy a good small camera for these things…BlackBerry is not up to the job…

Thanks again to MamboCity for organising this gig!

Categories
nostalgia raves

Georgina’s, just the way it used to be


Georgina’s
Originally uploaded by mgharris

You might think of Oxford as a pretty traditional place where things don’t change that much. But that’s not how it is at all. In the twenty-odd years that I’ve lived here almost every part of the city has been altered, improved, developed. Even the colleges have cleaner stone and a modern block, sometimes even sympathetically designed, like new wings of Magdalen and Linacre.

So if you’re in a nostalgic mood, where can you go for a hang-out that hasn’t changed in 20 years?

I can name two: Georgina’s Coffee shop and Brown’s Cafe, both in the covered market.

Georgina’s serves salads, flapjacks and bagels, the ceiling is plastered with movie posters and they play non-stop indie rock music loud enough that you have to talk at a level which makes the whole place swing with youthful energy. Youthful because then as now the cafe is a favourite haunt of students.

I snapped two such youngsters, Matt and Beth, sitting in what used to be one of my favourite tables.

23 years since I arrived here! That’s brilliant (cos I always dreamed of living here) as well as a bit sad (cos I could never bear to leave).

A pal of mine, the Aristotelophile Peter Simpson, once told me that I would only leave Oxford in a box…

Hell no! They can bury me here!

Emailed from my BlackBerry®

Categories
writing

Harry Potter 7 got me reading again

Well it’s true and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

Here’s my big confession – before reading Harry Potter 7 I hadn’t read a book since March. And that was nonfiction – my agent Peter Cox’s book “You Don’t Need Meat”.

I find it hard to read when there’s a lot going on in my life, especially if the ‘life’ stuff needs a lot of thought. Some years back, when we were setting up our business, I sometimes read fewer than 5 books a year. A YEAR! This is how come I’ve developed a short attention span and impatience with reading anything that doesn’t grab from page 1. In such times I have had to fall back on re-reading my old favourites like Borges, Calvino, Garcia Marquez and Murakami.

It took a lot of determination to read Harry Potter 7 in a day-and-a-bit – not because it was anything but enjoyable, but because with two girls at home, one pre-reader and one teenager from the Harry-Potter-negative segment of humanity (those curious people!), it was hard to get twenty minutes’ peace in one go. I read in chunks punctuated with ‘Leave me alone’, ‘Get your own dinner’ and ‘It’s not my problem that all your friends are too busy reading Harry Potter to hang out with you’.

But having recaptured the discipline of batting the kids away and concentrating long enough to actually follow a fictional thread, I rapidly picked up two more books and read them quick (“Of Love and Demons” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – amazing and “The Chase” by Alejo Carpentier – good but a bit tough-going to be truthful).

Reading is really the best entertainment, once you can submit to a book’s demands.

Next I am going to re-read two old favourites by Mario Vargas Llosa. “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter” and “The City and the Dogs”. The latter is one of the vague influences of my current work-in-progress so it’s time I revisited…

Current desire-to-write is running around 60%…when I hit 80% I think I can try to get back on the horse re Project Jaguar.

Oh and I loved the way JK wrapped up the saga. Especially the stuff re Snape. Excelente!

Categories
nostalgia

Things I Miss About Being A Kid

Sitting here, waiting to go out to buy Harry Potter 7, is enough to make me understand – if ever there was a mystery about it which for me there isn’t – why Harry Potter is SO great.

For adults I mean. Simply put – it makes us feel like kids again. Like Disneyland, swimming in the sea and…in my case, almost nothing else. (If you’re very good at things like surfing and skiing you probably get this feeling from that too, but last time I skied I was trembling with fear and then I snapped my leg across the top of my boot – and heard it crack.)

I miss being a kid, even though you’re relatively disempowered and have homework and exams, and you can get teased and bullied, I mean, there’s no doubt it can be tough, BUT:

What a great feeling it used to be to wake on a Saturday morning and know that beyond the hour or two of chores that you might have to put in, the day was yours. I used to lie awake in bed making plans which would go something like this:

1. Call for Eoin across the road.
2. Mooch into the village to buy sweets and comics.
3. Go to Eoin’s house to read comics (Roy of the Rovers and 2000 AD), eat sweets and watch TV.
4. Get ready to go watch Man United (if we were playing at home)
5. Drop by the sweet shop on the way to the bus to get supplies for the match.
6. Leave for Old Trafford around midday.
7. Get to the match early to get a good standing position, usually on the railings at the front of the Stretford End Junior Paddock.
8. Amuse each other with silly stories and voices (mainly Eoin’s)
9. Go home (hopefully triumphant but if not then full of mock-bitterness and disappointment)
10. Watch “Doctor Who”
11. Hopefully have a teenage babysitter of an evening, and persuade them to read to us from their totally inappropriate book of horror tales, or if a girl, to tell us about their dates with boys.

(A close second for a Saturday when United played away, was scoring some new William, Mallory Towers, Tintin or Hardy Boys books at the library, or trespassing in the garden of the nearby grand house.)

Ah. Days where you don’t count the minutes of time wasted, responsibilities ignored, calories and the effect of sugar on your teeth.

Well, I’m having one of those days today and the housework can sit there and my kids can Make Their Own Entertainment.

Categories
raves

It’s 8.30pm…are you queuing for Harry Potter?


It’s 8.30pm…are you queuing for Harry Potter?
Originally uploaded by mgharris

Chucked out of the house by our teenage daughter who wants to partay with her disreputable friends…we ventured into Oxford’s still clogged highways in search of a Friday night salsa. But stopped in town to grab food..honestly the traffic to Cumnor is SO bad.

Snapped the Harry Potter queue. Brave souls enduring the cold and rain! Waterstones had the biggest queue. Even though The Works opposite was offering it for the same price and had a MUCH shorter queue…everyone’s heading for the Waterstones. They could be warm and toasty at Borders opposite, which is open from now till the book goes on sale.

Don’t get me wrong, like. I’m keen too. But sometime after breakfast tomorrow will do me fine.

Emailed from my BlackBerry®