Cuba in the morning

I fly to Havana tomorrow morning. Can’t wait. And yet I’m also apprehensive. Plane trips always make me nervous. Will I oversleep? Miss the taxi, the Gatwick Express, forget my passport etc – the whole getting there thing, (and that’s just to the check-out counter), makes me antsy. Then, I’ll be teaching, and also co-leading a group. Will I fall in love with Cuba? Yes. What if I hate it? What if….I get lost, mugged, arrested? Can you buy Tampax in Cuba? 

I’m not sure why I’m feeling so strange about this trip. I’ve had many this year. This is the last. Maybe that’s it – I’ve been  away a lot. Soon it will be Christmas, then another year. I’m feeling end of year blue. It’s ten years since the millenium New Year – it’s the end of a decade.  End of decade blues?

Either way, it’s Cuba in the morning. I’ll fit in one last adventure.  Back in ten days.

Furs and feathers

Busy weekend. Friday night I attended the memorial evening for John Fairfax, co-founder of Arvon, at the Free Word Centre on Farringdon Road. The Free Word Centre, (opposite the old Guardian building)  is where several literature development organisations are housed, including English PEN, The Literery Consultancy, The Arvon Foundation and Index on Censorship. It’s a very modern building with a cafe, theatre and large open plan meeting room, and feels very much like a new age co-op. Lots of good people attended the event, including many Old Arvon-ites. The entire Fairfax clan showed up, also the poet Kit Wright,  ex Arvon CD Louise Hudson,  writer James Long, poet Lawrence Sail, John and Antoinette Moat and others. We all went to The Betsy Trotwood afterwards and talked about – er – old Arvon.

On Saturday, I attended Katy Lynton’s private view in The Perfume Factory in North Acton. If  could, I’d buy some of Katy’s work, especially her small eroctic pictures. I also love her huge Buddist Tree of Life. Katy’s work is modern and sexy and feminine, also currently influenced by her trip to China last year. While there, I got a chance to gossip with Donna Maclean and  a lovely up and coming writer called Ella, (Donna’s muse) who is finishing her first novel. Me, Emma Wallace and BBC journalist Paul Moss, then had dinner on Goldbourne Road and talked mostly about sex and the Bible.

Sunday, I attended a workshop with tantrika, Leora Lightwoman near Archway.  Ommmmm.

Today I’m doing a reading in Plymouth, at University College, Plymouth (Marjon). I have been invited by my old friend from Arvon and fellow author Hayden Gabriel. A workshop and then a reading, followed by dinner in a county pub on Dartmoor. Oh, a writer’s life.  Must find suitbable clothes to wear.  Grass green suede Clarks’ desert boots and a rabbit fur coat may be a little too Ladbroke Grove.  Silver trainers? Sheet….it’s quite a formal event. No clothes, no clothes. Only tattyold furs an feathers and a bunch of silly shoes.

Biking from Williams to Manning

Trinidad has a new online newspaper. Please read it; its very lively. Its called the tnttimes.com

The lovely Cedriann J. Martin interviewed me in September in Trinidad for The Express newspaper.  But she interviewed me again before I left - for the tnttimes, (at that point not yet up and running). Her interview appears in the online newspaper’s launch issue. It’s called Biking from Williams to Manning. In it, I talk frankly about some of the bold decisions I made in writing this book.

You can read the interview here.

Comments most welcome.

Bum on a shutter

I’m reading two good books at the moment. The Genesis Secret, by Tom Knox, who is really my old friend of 20 years, Sean Thomas. Sean, a literary author, made the swap to the Dan Brown thriller market last year- a move to be appluaded. He’s much richer now – and plans to take me to dine at The Groucho next week. (I’ve some relic hunting stories of my own to impress him with). I’ve only just started his book, but have already come across a brutal murder where man is found dead and clutching a human tongue in one hand…

I’m also devouring Breakfast with Socrates by Robert-Rowland-Smith, a philosopher dude and new friend.  I met Robert in June when he taught a course on Love at The School of Life in Bloomsbury.  I attended his book launch last night – in the very modern and New York loft type offiices of Profile Books, just off Exmouth Market. Some nice people there from the School of Life, and I chatted briefly to a burly American-sounding journalist called Cosmo, who of course was Cosmo Landeseman. While I know little (cept the obvious) about him, I have heard  that his mother, Fran, is an amazing poet.

Robert’s new book is a guide from breakfast to bedtime through the ideas and thoughts of Socrates and many other great thinkers. Of course, I immediately turned to the chapter on sex – and then to the chapter on parties. Both were – er – illuminating. I usually find these ‘accessible’ modern philosophy books anything but – usually they are still too stiffly highbow, moribund or just plain weird. But Robert’s book is clever and witty and personal and has a whiff of magic about it. The dude can write.

Having spent the past four years with my head down – writing two books (my erotic memoir will be published in the spring of 2011), I have stopped reading for pleasure. Instead, I have read the entire post-colonial Caribbean canon of literature and contemporary politics, followed by - many books on sex and love.

While these have been interesting bodies of work to pursue (currently under my bed, The Karma Sutra, The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail), I’m gagging to relaxe again – and just read anything I like.

And so, I’m planning to do nothing but read next year. Just read and feed. Like the late John Osborne, I will not write  the word BUM on a shutter unless its for lots of cash. (Okay for cash, any cash, I’d write BUM on anything). But – ah yes – next year will be my year of books. 

I will live on books, rum and Carrs water biscuits and move into a caravan if need be.

Mutoid Waste and Missy Eliot

Ahhhh, it’s been one of those London days. The ever joyous and future Olympian Andre Williams woke me at 7am to remind me of our session at the gym at 8am. So I hauled my arse up to the gymn. The day before, he made me run three and a half miles! Yes, dear readers, yes. My legs are jelley. Ughh…..so today we ‘did arms’. I tried to distract him by sniggering at the bad gymn fashion on display – but young Andre is a serious man, and doesn’t let me bunk off. In fact, for making him laugh, he doubled my reps and sets.

I later met John Harris for breakfast at Gabbi’s Deli at 30 Charing Cross Road. It’s a kosher deli all writers should know about (cheap and excellent grub) and since 2006,  I have been using it as my central London ‘office’ and meeting place. (I used to use the Pollo Bar, but now its become Bistro-fied I no longer go there).  Gabbi’s hot salt beef sandwiches are legendary: I had one with a cappuciono and fresh orange juice. So – John and I are going to Cuba next month and our meeting was to chat about the trip. I’m beside myself with excitement. We will be staying in the Havana Libre Hotel, Built in 1950-something and once the poshest hotel on earth, Castro used it as his headquarters for two years post-revolution. I will be teaching creative writing to students by day, and dancing salsa an awful lot by night.

The boiler man came at 2pm and serviced the boiler for the first time in three years. It was about to explode. We found mouse droppings behind the boiler guard. The boiler man said that mice like to sleep in boilers cos its so warm in them. Glad he came. The poet in residence upstairs, Rollinson, and I have been trying to figure out how to work the timer heater thing on the boiler and have been waking up to boiling rooms the past few days.

At four-ish, I headed for Goldbourne Road to have coffee and custard pies with Donna Maclean, an artist friend whose show I missed last night. We gossiped at Oporto. Then, as a treat, she took me to the Mutoid Waste exhibition under the Westway – a quid to get in. We both loved Jo Rush’s sculptures, all made from scrap metal. I saw a fabuous (real) black pug wiggling around – wearing a glittery collar. Her name was Missy Eliot and we became friends instantly. (Pugs rock).

I walked back home from The Westway – a couple of miles. Passed a mass of police vehicles near Kensal Rise Cemetary (where my great grandfather is buried)  - big drugs bust, apparently.  

Legs are aching.

Missy Eliot made me happy. A creature, rotund, curious – wiggly.

WWOGB – the movie

Ahhhh, it’s lovely hearing from readers around the world. Gratifying to know that people in South Africa, the USA and Australia, even Dublin are buying and reading this book. Bless you all. It makes me happy. One person has brought up the subject of a movie deal….oh….you know it’s such a non-reality that I haven’t even fantasised about this happening.

So today I allowed myself to sit and think, if I could choose any actress, who would play Sabine, who would it be? And who would play George, who would play some of the other characters…and as for Manning, Sparrow, Lara…would they have cameo walk on parts as in the book? Wouldn’t that be great?  Who would play Eric Williams….and would it be shot in Trinidad? Yes, I’d insist on that. Who would direct?

oh, gawd…..

Old George – would have to be Michael Caine

Young George – Jude Law?

Old Sabine – Laren Bacal

Young Sabine – Scarlett Johanssen

 All the other actors would be played by actors from the Caribbean.  (Getting the accent right would be important).

Horace Ove would direct. Him or Sam Mendes.

Fantasies, fantasies.