MG Harris - the untitled blog of an author

MGHarris.net is almost ready and I'm moving the blog...

2007-11-06T23:07:00.001Z

Thanks to all you lovely readers for reading this blog. I have been working on a new site which will be hosted at MGHarris.net

All the old blog posts are there, and also your kind comments.

(Lucas has beaten most of you to it and discovered it all on his own...)

To those of you who have subscribed to this blog via email, you'll hopefully be pleased to know that I've set up the same facility on the new site.

So that's it for my Blogger blog. My next post will be on MGHarris.net and only there. I've spent the evening learning how to use the Wordpress CMS and I think I'm good-to-go. Not an expert user yet but then you don't want the site crowded by too many widgets...

Meanwhile, Gareth Stranks, where are you? We need to talk about designing me a new Website header...

Hope to see you all at MGHarris.net! And thanks to my wonderful agent Peter for all his help setting me up with Wordpress when I was in Mexico.

Extras by BlackBerry

2007-11-05T16:30:00.000Z

I believe I have already mentioned my adddiction to my BlackBerry Pearl. Not since the luscious Palm Vx have I been so taken by a gadget. The iPhone looks very pretty but it will take a while to convince me to part with my CrackBerry.

Meeting a group of independent, London-based booksellers last week I realise that the anecdote which they seemed to enjoy most during the after-dinner conversation was the one which followed a throaway comment of mine about how most of the 'extras' in the book 'Invisible City' had in fact been written abroad and on a BlackBerry. By sheer coincidence I kept receiving emails from the desk editor at Scholastic asking for urgent additions to the book, and was always away from home at the time.

For example: the text of the integral code which readers can track throughout the book, solve and win an iPod, was written late one evening in a bar in a hotel in Nimes, France. Not because I was drinking, but I needed peace and quiet and the hotel was very quiet at night.

For example: the Q&As (if they include them) were received very early in the morning whilst we were on the isolated, corally beach near Tulum, Mexico. I had jet lag and there was no internet access in the hotel so wound up typing out the whole reply on the BlackBerry, under the bedcovers whilst the rest of my family slept. Then I went out and finished it as the sun was coming up.

What would I do without my BlackBerry? I would miss deadlines, that's what.

Day of the Dead

2007-11-03T16:15:00.000Z

Calaveras de dulce - sugar skulls on sale in Cancun's Market 23

Well, I'm back. I was going to post a very jolly thing about Day of the Dead and the party we had last night to celebrate the Mexican festival of Dia de los Muertos, but it seems rather crass given that for thousands of Mexicans in Tabasco state, yesterday was one major disaster - the awful floods.

Earlier this year, photos of Oxford flooded made it onto international news and resulted in my Mexican relatives sending me anxious emails. A bit of a turn-around - normally we're the ones calling about earthquakes or volcanic eruptions (part of my family comes from a small town near the active volcano Popocatepetl).

Anyway, from the looks of it Tabasco state has got it pretty bad indeed, but so far not many people dead, thank God. Either it's a miracle or Mexico isn't so third-world as the outside world likes to portray it.

It's been a busy, busy week and I started it by being ill with some virus. Had to go to London to do stuff with the publishers and only started to feel better yesterday. Then I set myself up as the cocktail mixer for the party, making margaritas and daiquiris, sampling all batches of course. Feeling a bit delicate again to be honest...

"Invisible City" has been selected by the trade magazine "Publishing News" as one of its February Picks with a very nice review that head of publicity at Scholastic passed on to me:

"Conspiracy and intrigue, complemented by non-stop action and excellent characterisation make this an exciting debut. Think Young Bond/CHERUB levels of potential. Plus the cover is really cool."

The publishers and I are all pretty chuffed by that...

Shopping in a Mexican market

2007-10-26T00:15:00.000Z

In the artesanias market, Tulum

I love shopping in Mexican markets. In fact a visit to Mexico isn't complete without one. They smell of tropical fruit but even stronger of fish and meat; they're colourful and messy.

This morning we went to Cancun's non-glitzy downtown, were the locals live and shop, to Market 23, where my sister had advised me that I could shop for Day of the Dead decorations and sweets - the typical decorated sugar skulls. I'll post photos around the time of 2nd November...

The photo above shows the Tulum shop where I shopped for Mayan souvenirs to show to readers. Yanno, one day, if anyone ever invites me to talk at a school or anything. This guy gave me some great deals.

Yeah right. He first offered me a price based on the marketing law of pricing: wherever possible, charge offensive minus a penny. But for me, there was a deal. I was offered the goods at a price of offensive minus tuppence.

There's a lot of this in Mexico now. What with the Big Tourism and everything, prices in tourist traps such as Tulum, Cancun and Playa del Carmen are pretty steep. Things were much cheaper at the deserted huts outside Becan, Chicanna and Calakmul.

There just wasn't much for sale.

Tourists don't visit Cancun's Market 23 though. It's strictly for locals. Bargain city.

Been taking photos of Joshua-related things. I'll be adding them to my site sometime soon...

Bugged Out in Calakmul

2007-10-22T17:58:00.000Z

Our daughter on top of Structure VI at Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico

If you've never heard of the ancient Mayan city of Calakmul, don't worry. Neither have most Mexicans. That includes people in the tourist industry and work just a few hours away. It also includes the people who set up the otherwise excellent Mayan museum at Chetumal, the state capital of Quintana Roo and at 3.5 hours away, the nearest large town to Calakmul.

But back in the day, Calakmul was the local city-state; 'the day' being roughly in the middle of the seventh century. Calakmul was the Snake Kingdom, vying for power with the huge city-state of Tikal (now in Guatemala).

The ruins of Calakmul are not what you'd call particularly accessible - even now when there's a paved road which takes you all through the 50km of surrounding bioreserve . Until quite recently though it really was lost in the jungle. Archaeologists are only starting to uncover the history of the region. A major breakthrough came with the decipherment by Mayanist David Stuart of an inscription on a staircase at Dos Pilas. (See Maya Hieroglyphs Recount "Giant War" in National Geographic).

(There's a recent issue of National Geographic with several great articles about recent findings in Mayan archaeology.)

Visiting the ruins at Calakmul, as well as those at nearby Chicanna and Becan, gave me the biggest 'discovery' buzz I've ever had at an archaeological site. Unlike other sites such as Chichen Itza, Palenque, Uxmal, El Tajin, Teotihuacan and Tula, the ruins at these three Campeche sites have been left relatively uncleared. The trees have been left growing between the main excavated structures, and in many cases, left growing out of the actual temples, as in the photo above.

There are howler monkeys and spider monkeys in the woods. They swing through the trees watching you progress along the trail.

That, plus the fact that in all these places we were practically the only people visiting the sites, gave us the feeling of what it must have been to discover these places...kind of like John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, the latter was the artist who produced such evocative pictures as the one shown below.

The downside is the mosquitoes, and the heat. The ruins of Calakmul and Chicanna are accessed by walking down a jungle trail, during which a cloud of vicious mosquitoes surround you and munch on every scrap of exposed flesh. Insect repellent may cut your bites down to twenty or so. Stop moving and they'll settle for a good, steady drink of your blood.

But heck. It's worth it.

At Last, Becan

2007-10-19T12:56:00.001Z

becan ix
Originally uploaded by mgharris

We visited Becan yesterday, a ruined Mayan city in the state of Campeche. Readers of The Joshua Files will know the significance of this place - no spoilers please!!!

After the carnival of Tulum, Becan was a wonderful experience. Can you believe that we were the only people visiting this amazing monument? Yes, for the two hours we were there we had the whole place to ourselves. No other tourists, no tour guides, no vendors hassling us. Just the sounds of the surrounding jungle. And the racket we made - two children can't be silent after all.

You catch a glimpse the summit of the tallest pyramid, Structure IX, over the tops of surroundings trees as you approach from the main road, Highway 186.

Closer though everything is shrouded in dense jungle, so you walk through trees and then notice stones and steps from the base of the temples, cool grey in the midst of green; leaves, creepers and a mossy ground. At Becan the temples really do appear to rise up out of the jungle.

Becan has four really huge structures which are quite well restored; Structures II, VIII, IX and X. There are a large number of other buildings too, but many are still swallowed by the jungle. I wonder why the place isn't more well-known. I suspect it's only recently been restored to this level. I saw photos of Structure IX years ago and the staircase was a pile of rubble. Now though, as you can see, this side of the temple is quite well restored, with the staircase good and sharp all the way to the top.

We didn't climb this one - there was a helpful rope but also a note saying 'please don't climb the pyramid'.

We did however climb Structure VIII, from where we took this photo. And my cousin Oscar and daughter couldn't resist crawling into a tunnel on Structure X, where they found a chamber with bats...

My valiant husband tried again to take some non-hideous photos of me for the publishers. About 90% were gruesome, but we do have some usable candidates now, especially if Photoshop can help out. The sun was beating down on us most of the time, and I was the only one allowed to use the brow-mopping cloth, so this 'photo shoot' was none too comfortable.

Lake Bacalar

2007-10-18T01:35:00.001Z

Lake Bacalar
Originally uploaded by mgharris

Finally a chance to swim in the biggest and bluest freshwater lake I've ever seen. In southern Quintana Roo state, this lake was known by the Maya, apparently, as the Lake of Seven Hues. The aqua coloured parts are where the base is shallow and sandy.

We ate fish fajitas, ceviche and Mexican beer in a lovely little garden restaurant on the edge of the vast lake, which stretches for miles. Hardly anyone around and nortenos playing on the loud stereo. It felt really nice and properly Mexican. I thought of my uncles in Mexico City and felt a bit guilty that we weren't sharing this with any of them.

Still - cousin Oscar Raul arrives tomorrow! And then it's off down Highway 186 to Becan.

There have been a lot of blue Nissan Tsurus around, ooer. Readers of Joshua Files will know what I mean...

Tulum - my how you've changed!

2007-10-17T13:04:00.001Z

No Internet access here, but my BlackBerry is working so I've been sitting on the beach outside our room (about 30 meters from the sea) exchanging emails with my agent and the desk editor at Scholastic re some final touches for the book.

Tulum has changed a lot since I was here with my husband and fellow biochemistry student, Becs, almost 20 years ago. Back then we hired a taxi for $80 US dollars and the taxi guy drove us down from Cancun, hung around the makeshift car park while we traipsed around the ruins, carefree as you like. On the tiny but gorgeous beach by the ruins we met some people from Didsbury, Manchester of all places (where I grew up). The sea was rough that day. The whole area was experiencing the beginning of what would become a tropical storm. We drove back along the coastal road with the windows down - no aircon and stopped en route for a swim at the blue, blue lagoon of Xel-Ha. (pronounced shell-ha)

Around 3 weeks later the storm became Hurricane Gilbert and devastated Tulum.

These days Tulum is a BIG tourist trap, Xel-Ha too. Big car park, coach loads arriving all day long, massive arts and crafts shops and restaurants. Official tourist guides take you round and give you a terrific spiel, all the latest findings. No more free wandering around the ruins, no more clambering over the pyramids.

Ernie, our Mayan guide explained how all 52 structures in Tulum played their part in a ceremonial centre which also functioned as an astronomical and weather calculator. He showed us the place where at around 5am on 13 November the light from the rising sun passes though a small window in one temple and lights up the door in the surrounding wall - to the west. This would be the signal to harvest the last of the crops before winter. Another portal would trap light to signal the time to sow. And by an amazing feat of engineering,the Temple of the Wind God uses a pole and a temple window to raise the alarm of an approaching hurricane, whistling like a flute when the wind speeds start to get dangerous.

Tulum is a city with natural protection from invaders - mangrove swamps to the west, the Caribbean to the east and offshore, a long reef which prevented Spanish from landing anywhere close. So why did they need to build a 6ft high wall all the way around the ceremonial centre? It's the only example of such a wall in a Mayan city.

Ernie gave us the latest explanation - and it's ingenious. "Tulum's biggest danger was always the hurricane" he said. "Where do you put 2000 people in a place like this, to protect them from the hurricane?" The buildings held at most 600 people - and they were in danger of having their palm rooftops ripped away. The answer was this: the wall. It was long enough for all 2000 people to line up behind the wall as a shelter.

Ernie is a bona fide Mayan - comes from a tiny place deep in the interior of the Yucatan peninsula. "If you want to see the real Mayan people," he chuckled, "get a guide to take you in a 4x4, and tell him you want to go where the tourists don't go. He'll take you where you won't hear a word of Spanish - only Maya."

Well maybe next time. Our kids are way too whingey for that right now. The heat and crowds of Tulum got to them. Chances are that Becan and Calakmul - in the Campeche jungle to the south - is going to be too much.

All the way down from Playa del Carmen, the highway cuts through the jungle. I peered into the trees. Poor Josh Garcia - in "Invisible City" he spends hours lost in there. Me - I wouldn't dare to step 20 meters into that place.

Tomorrow, Chetumal, the state capital of Quintana Roo and the place where Josh's Mayan adventure begins...

Reasons to visit Mexico #1 Breakfast

2007-10-15T15:51:00.001Z

mexican breakfast
Originally uploaded by mgharris

Here’s one of the things I really miss about Mexico; food!

Yesterday cousin Rodrigo explained how come he left Manchester so suddenly last year.

“I missed my Mexican food, and my mum. I’d had enough of sandwiches, pizzas and kebabs. So I bought a ticket and surprised everyone.”

The photo shows chilaquiles (fried corn tortillas cooked in stock and green tomato and chili sauce, with onions and optional sour cream), refried beans and fried potatoes and peppers.

The relief of eating this after 3 years…

Cancun - is this really Mexico?

2007-10-15T13:21:00.000Z

The beach at Cancun's Hilton hotel

Cancun was a fairly newish resort with about fifteen (big) hotels when I first visited in 1981. The airport was one small terminal and a strip cut into the forest of coconut palms.

It doesn't feel much like the rest of Mexico. Everything is charged in dollars and pesos also. It all feels a bit too organised and tidy to be real Mexico. I'm not wild about Cancun, but it this hotel is very comfortable.

It’s my fourth visit since then. Much has changed. We arrived to a Cancun airport that looks as big as Mexico City’s. At the car rental office a blue-eyed guy in a white cap began to chat with me in typical friendly Mexican fashion. My daughter growled at me for telling our life story to the first person who asked. But that’s how Cancun is. We want to know your life story, thanks very much. How else can we know which of the various services we have on offer to sell you? And my daughter is right, I’m probably way too friendly.

This guy and I had discussed: 1) the lack of a Mexican community in the UK, 2) the shocking state of our native Mexico City (I’m from Coyoacan, he’s from nearby neighbourhood Colonia del Valle), 3) the lamentable record of Mexico’s most corrupt former presidents and their responsibility for the disintegration of Mexican society, 4) the growing influence of Columbian drug lords on Mexico (he reckons plane after plane lands in Cancun loaded with Colombian cocaine, with airport air officials bribed/threatened into turning a blind eye); all this before he finally tried in a very relaxed fashion to sell us a tour or a time share apartment. “I can’t exactly buy a time-share from you, not when my sister sells time-shares, “ I told him. He blinked and nodded in agreement. “But come and have a day at the resort, drinks, watersports, as my guest anyway, no pressure, any time you like.”

This morning the sea is rough but already looks turquoise, the sky is filled with bunched clouds, the pools at this hotel seem infinite (and there’s a huge infinity pool), people are out training.

My lovely cousin Rodrigo just happens to work at the hotel we booked into. He’s studying International Tourism at Uni. Classes from 7am, and works reception in the evenings. A tough life, he admitted, but he loves it. He upgraded our rooms and breakfasts, and left us a delicious chocolate truffle cake in the room…

Yay Smithies et al, the Nobel prize is yours...!

2007-10-11T15:55:00.001Z

And the prize goes to...the gene targeting guys!

There'll be a few more scientists I used to know gnashing their teeth this week as more of their friends win the Nobel prize and they don't.

(I once heard of one guy who would get wildly depressed with jealousy every year that one of his friends and not him joined the Nobel prize-winners club. I wrote a short story about it...which shall remain unpublished or because I named actual real scientists I know, to make it funnier... This story is handwritten in a drawer and I show it to me special science friends once in a while, for a giggle. The coda to this tale is that the guy in question finally did win. Obviously I can't name any names...)

This year the Nobel Prize for Medicine went to the Sir Martin Evans, Mario Capecchi and Oliver Smithies, the guys who developed the technologies for creating a mouse with a gene 'knocked out'. This means that you could look at the effect, in theory, of a single gene in a mouse, by creating a mouse that was normal in every way except that it lacked, say, the haemoglobin gene.
The early days of any new technique are always fraught with difficulties. I came into the gene targeting game in 1993, early-ish, but quite a few mouse knockouts had already been done. It still wasn't easy though. Nowadays I bet rich labs just order a knockout mouse via the Web...

I was put on a project to knockout a gene called the FGFR3 - fibroblast growth factor receptor 3. It's an interesting gene because a single mutation - one tiny change in the DNA code - results in the condition known as achondroplasia - aka dwarfism.

The first thing I had to do was to 'restriction map' the DNA in the chromosome - i.e. make a map of all the sites where 'restriction' enzymes could specifically cut into the DNA. Since DNA is too tiny to cut with scissors, molecular biologists use these naturally occuring enzymes to snip DNA into pieces. It's just a matter of knowing which enzymes cut where and then picking your tools; the enzymes which will cut you out a nice chunk of precisely tailored DNA.

The mouse FGFR3 gene was spread over quite a large region of DNA so I used this delish and elegant new method that I'd read about. It worked like you wouldn't believe, first time too!

I'd just mapped the FGFR3 gene and got partway into making the 'knockout construct' - the DNA molecule that you use to inject into mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells - a first stage towards the knockout mouse (the stage that Smithies contributed to the whole process).

And then a Big Hot Lab in the USA published the FGFR3 knockout mouse in a Damn Hot Journal.

Bah. So that was several months of my work down the drain! I went to see my boss. Did he know that Big Hot Lab had a couple of postdocs and a techie or two on the same project as little me?Hmmm, he said and peered hard at his computer screen, as if something rather canny had just occurred to him. "I may have heard a rumour or two..."

And that's why I didn't develop the FGFR3 knockout mouse and get a Cell paper and why I ultimately gave up science and had to do other things. Yes, but for that I might never have written a single novel.

Meanwhile, Oliver Smithies. I heard him talk once. What a character! He's a Brit - a Yorkshireman I think (I may have remembered that wrong). but lives in North Carolina now. He flew in to talk at the Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford when I was a grad student. I mean that quite literally - Smithies has a pilot's license and like John Travolta, flies himself to all his engagements.

This is rare for a scientist.

Smithies gave a fascinating talk, one of the best I ever saw in my whole time as a scientist. It featured lots of photos of his lab and his makeshift equipment. This guy is one of those rare, rare things - a scientist who is also a natural engineer.

Check out Smithies' homemade electroporator - known by scientists as a 'zapper' for hitting cells with an electric current so that DNA goes in.

Years before Perkin-Elmer had patented the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and made a machine which allowed people to amplify DNA molecules by basically just sticking some DNA and Taq polymerase enzyme in a test tube and putting it into a Perkin-Elmer thermal cycler, Smithies was doing early ground-breaking PCR using bits of washing machine timers to do the thermal cycling. He showed us photos of stuff that you wouldn't believe could be used to do proper science, equipment literally cobbled together from bits and bobs and stuck together with sticky tape. He was an elderly man even then but brimming with enthusiasm. I remember being quite inspired.

I'm chuffed he's won. Best Nobel Prize news since Paul Nurse won for the yeast cell cycle genes.

A Night with Imps

2007-10-09T13:20:00.000Z

My good pal DB yesterday dragged us out blinking to discover that the world has more to offer by way of entertainment than salsa music and dancing, a fact that we've neglected for ooh, years.

"Maybe you'll finally mention me on your blog" DB remarked. I pointed out that I recently devoted an entire post to her, with a photo and everything, that her comment showed just how little she reads it. "Well I'm very busy," DB said carefully. But her tone said: I have responsibilities, people to see, places to go, millions of pounds to raise for Keble College, and I can't be sitting on the Web all day fiffing and faffing.

Quite right too...

So on DB's insistence we saw the University's improvisational comedy troupe, known as the Oxford Imps. They play every Monday night in term-time, at the Wheatsheaf pub in Oxford. They improvise sketches and songs based on daft and random audience shout-outs.

For example, yesterday featured a rap set in the underworld of the Bodleian library stacks, a musical about ghostbusters (ending in a harmonised quartet), a musical about hats (including a murderous milliner who rhymed 'milliner' with 'killin' 'er'), a really impressive feat of memory in which dialogue is improvised and then delivered forwards, backwards, inside out...and more; two hours worth of entertainment for £3! Bargain!

The troupe are amazingly professional, they know how to get laughs and impress the audience, how to get the whole room joining in, willing them along to succeed. The show is like the TV show "Whose Line Is It Anyway" with three times the energy and goodwill.

Improvisation comedy is a real test of acting and wit, in my opinion. The Oxford Imps are natural born entertainers and comedians.

Kids are AMAZING: Part One

2007-10-08T08:27:00.000Z

Young family band "Bound By Time" last Saturday in Oxford's Cornmarket Street

This post is a tribute to the inventiveness of today's kids. Equipped with musical instruments, video cameras, editing software and the Web these guys are doing such amazing stuff that frankly, it's a wonder that they still need adult musicians, writers and film-makers to entertain them. Maybe they don't. Maybe all they need is a bit of inspiration.

Today I'm featuring young band 'Bound By Time' and my friend Alice, young cartoonist, artist and stop-motion movie proto-genius.

I've seen Bound By Time twice now, on one of their visits to the streets of Oxford. My little daughter aged 5 really loves them and won't leave until we've heard several songs. Last Saturday we heard them play "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", "Don't Look back in Anger" among several others, plus a couple of their own compositions (I liked 'Easy Does It'). They play and sing rather well, with good vocal harmonies. Big brother Alex has a lovely tenor voice and the girls all look fabulously cool, grungy and unbothered by everything. I asked Alex if he wanted to be a pop singer and he answered "I just want to keep doing this, making our music with the band..."

Crumbs, what a professional answer...

My friend Alice (aged 15) has a collection of the funniest mobile phone films I've ever seen. I keep on at her to put them on Youtube but there's some formatting or editing issue... They are stop motion animations of some cuddly toys, starting with a murder mystery solved by the walrus 'Dr. Glen' and then finally being more or less the (mis)adventures of Dr. Glen, whose entire dialogue (interpreted by Alice and my teenage daughter in voice-over) consists of the word WUH.

(As in WUH-WUH-WUH WUH, WUH!: What's that Dr. Glen? You've just reached the check-in desk and realised that your passport has expired? Trust me it's funny when you see it...)

I can't show you Dr. Glen, shame, but I can show you this lovely song-vid which Alice put on her Facebook. It'll make you ache for the long summers of your teens. Unless you are still a youngster, and then it will make you look forward to them.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=17827723360

(My daughter is the one eating sugared jelly Iberia lollies on the airplane with Alice...)

You need a FaceBook account to see it. I'm assuming we're all living in the 21st century here.

Daiquiri en La Floridita

2007-10-07T16:45:00.001Z

MG with a classic Daiquiri
Originally uploaded by mgharris

Finally, I get to have my daiquiri en La Floridita*.

In honour of...oh who needs a reason...we went to celebrate, dinner & dancing with friends at London's La Floridita.

It's a fancy restaurant/bar/dance club that features the finest examples of Cuban music, and a big variety of rum-based cocktails, including my favourite, the delicious daiquiri. I tried three different ones and they were pretty, pretty, pretty good.

The band was El Guayabero, an excellent son group from Holguin on the eastern side of the island. They played 30-min sets of up-tempo son numbers with some boleros and cha-cha-chas mixed in. No one danced for the first two sets - maybe the people at the bar were shy? Others like us were scoffing down food yummier and more luxurious than you'll find anywhere but in the very fanciest restaurants in Cuba.

The first time we ever went to Floridita was in January, for my friend Becs's birthday. That was before we'd been to Cuba (Becs had been many times), before we realised that Floridita is like an idealised, fantasy version of Cuba. In reality I didn't see anywhere in Cuba that looked anything like this. It's the levels of consumption - no-where we went in Cuba looked this fancy, certainly not the type of places bands like this play (excluding Varadero - the tourist-only enclave, which I didn't visit.) In our experience bands like Guayabero play to sweltering, smoky rooms with ineffective celing fans, and the dance floor heaves with expert Cuba couples and salsa tourists being taken for a spin by their Cuban insrtuctors.

During the third set, when we were moved off the table (you only get a 2-hour sitting on busy nights) and back to the bar, we decided to go for it on the dance floor. One couple had just taken the floor. Within seconds of us joining them the dance floor filled. The musicians looked utterly delighted. It must be a drag for a dance band to play to a motionless audience.

However, salseros, whilst the music and atmosphere are romantic and evocative (if not authentic), the drinks are wonderful and the food delish, it is not a cheap night out... And like us, you will probably still need to factor in a visit to a salsa club for a proper dance fix.

We went on to Salsa Republic@Club Colosseum, where the music of Maikel Blanco, Manolito, Issac Delgado, Adalberto and Los Van Van was as ever, wall-to-wall and sizzling hot.

P.S. Inexplicably, a photo of Becs and I dancing at the Manolito concert has rapidly risen to become one of my most viewed photos on Flickr. Is this blog to blame?

Let's do the experiment. Here's another MG & Becs dancing salsa photo - better quality, taken last night at Club Colosseum.

* the reference is to Hemingway's habit of drinking "my daiquiri in La Floridita and my moijto in La Bodeguita" - two of Havana's most famous bars. The line is quoted in one of Los Van Van's most popular songs, "Tim Pop con Birdland", a timba riff on the 1970s jazz classic "Birdland". For those who are interested in such things, I reckon "Tim Pop con Birdland" may well be my keeper on a Desert island Disc selection...

To Mexico - in one week!

2007-10-06T09:23:00.000Z

This time next week I will in at Healthrow airport waiting for a flight to Toronto, Canada and then to Cancun, Mexico!!!!

Gosh I'm looking forward to it. The family are taking a break to do a Joshua Files Roadtrip. We had planned to follow in Josh's footsteps from Chetumal all the way to Catemaco but honestly the driving would just be too tiring.

So we're doing a cut down version. I will be posting much more about this, so stay tuned.

Meanwhile, especially for Lucas, I dug out this TV ad for Josh's favourite cupcakes, which he eats on his bus journey through Yucatan in 'Invisible City'.

The are called 'Pinguinos' and are like Hostess cupcakes - white vanilla cream inside a chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting and a squiggle of white icing on top. And a childhood favourite of mine.

Mmmm, additives.

Sneak a peek at "Invisible City"

2007-10-05T19:23:00.000Z

Almost-final version of "The Joshua Files: Invisible City", snapped by BlackBerry during a visit to the Scholastic offices...

Heck, I'm pretty sure it's okay to let you see this now. After all there's an image on Amazon.co.uk now, and when the lovely people at Scholastic videoed a promotional clip of me talking about the book, they had a whole bunch of the book mockups in the background.

I can't take any credit for this amazing package so I don't feel AT ALL bashful about praising it.

Itssosososocool!!!!!

See how it glows at the edges? See how there's lots of lovely edges? See how you slip the book right into a splashproof jacket so that you can take the book to the pool, to the beach? See how the actual cover (under the dayglo-orange plastic) is mostly white, black and orange?

I dreamed of having a book design that was minimalist, graphic and mainly white and black but I didn't even dream of asking for that, cos I assumed they'd say - "A kids' book? White? It'd get grubby...and hey that's a bit dull..."

I want one. I can't wait to see what they look like when lots of them are stacked up, that orange glow reinforced in every copy.

How much would you pay for a book like this? Would you pay £6.99?

Sold! (In fact you can get it quite a bit cheaper, I found one online retailer selling it at less than a fiver. No, I'm not saying where!)

Never let anyone say I'm not a huckster for my books. Buy one! Buy them for your sons and daughters and nephews and nieces.

Go on, make me happy. Pre-order, why don't you?

Forgive the giddiness. I'm still happy about finishing my latest manuscript. I just asked my husband to nip out to buy a box of chocolates to eat while watching TV. Tomorrow we'll celebrate properly with un daiquiri en La Floridita.

(It's not counting my chickens. Milestone celebrations are important, esp for scientists and writers who can work on one thing for years. If you've finished a ms recently, good onyer. It's no small achievement, for anyone.)

Weekend in Cornwall

2007-10-04T07:14:00.001Z

Prussia Cove, Porth-en-Alls

taken with my BlackBerry

Some dear friends of ours from my days in the Nuffield Department of Medicine were over from Melbourne. (That's where the UK bioscience brain drain has been for the past ten years, or so it seems to me; if I count up all my best friends from doctorate and post-doc years about half have ended up in Oz. Okay, most of those were originally Australian, but hey...)

They'd always talked about taking us to their favourite haunt in Cornwall, where they'd rent a cottage almost every year when they lived in the UK. We hadn't seen them for years, so this it was wonderful that this time, we could join them there.

I've been to Cornwall once before, North Cornwall, which is gorgeous but this place was even better! It has the Lizard on one side and Lands End on the other (both far in the distance); old smugglers caves, gorgeous little coves as well as wide, sandy beaches with all the stuff kids like (e.g. rock pools, pebbles, shells), amazing clifftop walks with views out to St Michael's Mount.

So after a gorgeous weekend eating Cornish pasties (veggie and yummy!), visiting ice-cream parlours and eating cake, I've probably gained a pound or three, despite the exercise of walking.

My friend Magda gave me a lovely scientist flashback moment when she went through the slides for a talk she gave last week at a conference in London; a fantastically effective new way to use nano-particles as part of a new vaccine for diseases like malaria. My very first research job was with a team developing one of the UK's earliest candidates for an AIDS vaccine, so it was vaguely familiar territory. I'm so proud of Magda, of all my scientist friends she's the first to be made a full Professor. Professor Magda!

In other news, someone is selling a bound proof of The Joshua Files: Invisible City on ebay. There are only a few hundred in circulation, I believe...

Only!

It should go for a very, very reasonable sum, i.e. cheap-as-chips, given that at this point in time i) almost no-one has heard of the title and ii) almost no-one has heard of the author...

Finished "Jaguar's Realm"...

2007-10-02T21:46:00.001Z

Jibacoa Beach at Night
Originally uploaded by heyjohngreen

Well, the first draft at least...typed the final sentence.

The polishing comes next but compared to the original act of writing, that's easy.

The final scene is set on Jibacoa beach, east of Havana, at sundown as our hero struggles for his last chance to escape...

And that's all I'm going to say about 'Jaguar's Realm' for quite a while. It's taken over a year to write, what with one thing and another. I feel quite drained now, actually. Need a good break to get the creative juices going again.

Now to read the ms aloud to my teenage daughter and see if it's hitting all the right buttons. (I can't recommend this enough for polishing a ms. You get an immediate audience reaction, and when something doesn't work you get that puzzled look...Huhhhh?)

Google Books - How cool is this...?

2007-09-27T09:09:00.000Z

Putting together a presentation for the Scholastic sales reps I am meeting tomorrow, I stumbled across the most fabulously useful thing - Google Book Search.

Google, as you may know if you're an online information nerd like me (hey I did work in the area for five years so I'm allowed...), are planning to digitize all the books in the world. Well, as many as they can get their mitts on. There was a hoo-hah about this for a while. Quelle horreur, authors and publishers all going to lose out; that sort of thing.

Well today I had planned to do the following - for just one of my presentation slides:

1. Go downstairs and find my copy of 'Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan' by the original Mayanist, John Lloyd Stephens.
2. Find the page where he mentions the rumours of a 'living city' of the Maya
3. Go down to our garden office and scan the page.
4. Manipulate the image file on my computer at my desk, back in the house.
5. Pop it into the Powerpoint slide.

Not so difficult, aye, but remember I actually own this book.

But with Google Books, here's how that scenario played out:

1. Search on Google, find the book.
2. Search for the string 'living city' - find the right page.
3. Use the inbuilt screenshot clipping tool to clip an image of the page, the bit where he mentions the mysterious city
4. Pop it into the Powerpoint slide.

5 mins in total.

Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan By John Lloyd Stephens
Now is that not awesome?

(If you read 'Invisible City' you'll find that this section of the 'Incidents of Travel' book is referenced. I'm not saying why...that's all a bit of a mystery, to be unraveled in later books...)

SPOILER ALERT IN THE COMMENTS!

I have one lovely comment from a guy who read the book for the waterstones competition, but you should be warned that there are spoilers for INVISIBLE CITY therein...

SPOILER AHOY!

Nostalgia for...Beny More

2007-09-25T09:00:00.000Z

I wasn't alive in the days of Beny More (pronounced More-ray), the Cuban singer and band leader who went to live in Mexico and became a massive influence on all the Cuban salsa bands.

So why do I get these gorgeous pangs of nostalgia when I listen to Beny More? Why does it make me think of a Cuba and a Mexico I never even knew?

My theory is that as a tiny child I was exposed to this music. I do know that after my mother left my father, I spend a great deal of time with my two grandmothers. One, Abuelita Josefina (known to her old friends as 'Pepa') had a wonderful memory for lyrics and knew many of the songs of Beny More. Beny More often appeared in popular Mexican films, which went through a golden age in the 40s and 50s.

So maybe that's it; maybe I was sat for hours in front of the TV while my grandmother knitted (she was mad for knitting). Maybe that's where I acquired this overwhelming craving for gorgeous night clubs where Cuban bands play for beautiful people, sipping daiquiris between dancing the son, mambo and cha-cha-cha.

This Cuba does not exist anymore - I've been to look for it. It's all timba and reggaeton now. That's great, but, ah nostalgia. I once spent a whole afternoon lying next to a pool in Santiago de Cuba, listening to the piped music of Beny More. That's as close as I got.

Ah, the things I wish I could tell you...

2007-09-24T17:44:00.000Z

Well blog readers, I've had a fun few days. I wish I could tell you everything but because we want to keep some things as a cool surprise I can't.

I popped by the Scholastic offices on Friday to meet up before going to a fancy dinner-n-awards evening with the publishers and some of their guests. Spying some mock-ups of "Invisible City" sitting on a pile of new books, I snapped some photos with my BlackBerry. It's not the final version yet but it was soooooo cool to see it. This book package truly is totally innovative! And splashproof too - perfect for taking the book down to the beach or pool.

But I don't think I'm allowed to post these photos on my blog, sorry...

I was an hour late to another meeting today, because of what the bus driver from Oxford referred to as an 'RTA'. What's wrong with the word 'accident'? Why must we always be decoding TLAs? (three letter acronyms) But my agent coped without me and successfully pitched our proposal to the publishers, leaving me to walk in on the good atmosphere.

The way "The Joshua Files" will be promoted online should now be pretty innovative too. Something new for the world of books, borrowing from something they use to promote some...

But soft! Ere I say too much...

Okay now. How many times have you seen High School Musical 2?

2007-09-22T17:04:00.001Z

Not High School Musical; High School Musical 2. It premiered yesterday on Disney Channel.

On it's third viewing in our household now. There can be no escape.

Sharpay and Ryan and sooo cool and FUNNY. They are the Team Rocket of High School Musical.

Troy and Gabriela, however, are just so saccharine sweet.
By tomorrow I'll be expected to harmonise on the best numbers so that my daughter can feel suitably fabulous when she sings along.

If you don't watch HSM then clearly, you have a deficit in the tween/teen girls in your household. Them as don't, like me, don't get much choice in this. High School Musical rules!

Day in the Life of a Writer Close To Finishing A First Draft

2007-09-19T09:51:00.000Z

1. Woken up wayyyy too early by BlackBerry flashing with the message "Write 1000 words of Jaguar - NOW!" Lie awake for ages, unable to stir from bed.

2. Oldest daughter invades to fleece me of what little shrapnel I have. "I haven't got my PIN yet!" is the usual excuse for the ongoing cash drain. Youngest daughter is sleepy and wants cuddles. How can I resist? Husband prepares packed lunch and breakfast for little 'un, then takes her to school, all to leave me free to write. But I just stare in fascination at FaceBook. There's a MyFlickr app! Cool; install it. Apparently apps could be the death of Facebook - people are getting cross with all the zombies and jedi vs sith silliness. I say: if you don't want the app, Dile que no.

3. Check out all my friends blogs and post comments. Email a dear friend who's back in touch via LinkedIn. Check my favourite writer's websites. Read short stories on fiction website. Finally shower, dress and look at the chunk of writing I have to do today. It's a foot chase through Old Havana. Rooftops will feature, because hey, it's Havana! So will the Malecon, because, well, IT'S HAVANA.

4. Read some of Alejo Carpentier's 'The Chase' to get in the mood. Browse my photos from Cuba, to get in the mood. (There aren't enough of rooftops. I looked down over rootops every day in Havana - what was wrong with me - why didn't I take more of rooftops?) Watch the rooftop party scene from Habana Blues, to get in the mood.

5. Finally in the mood, write the Old Havana chase scene; 800 words. That'll do - half a chapter and I left at a good place - the rooftop chase begins.

6. Pick up littlest daughter from school, acquire 3-year old neighbour boy on the way. Pick apples from our tree. Bake a pie together. Make pesto for tea. Experiment with a new daiquiri that uses fresh pink grapefruit juice and just a hint of coriander. (gently, gently bruise about five coriander leaves in the glass part of a shaker, add 1/2 shot freshly squeezed lime juice, 1/2 shot of gomme, 1 shot freshly squeezed pink grapefruit juice, 2 shots light rum, shake in Boston shaker with plenty ice, fine strain into a chilled martini glass.)

7. Discuss my teenager's complex love life with her and reluctantly help her to plan a strategy with latest love interest. (It was that or talk all night long.)

8. Laundry. Who doesn't love laundry? NOT! I read in some newspaper article that Mrs Thatcher admitted that getting the fluff out of the dryer was one of the small pleasures of her life. I try it. It's surprisingly satisfying - comes off in three nice clean layers.

7. Eat pie whilst reading today's 800 words. Polish. Write this blog entry.

5000 words to go, by my estimate, until I finish the first draft of 'Jaguar's Realm'. I planned this ending ONE YEAR ago, but last week I thought of a major tweak that has allowed me to keep the pace and drama going strong all the way through Act 3. At least that's the plan, and that's why I plan. Things can only get better from a strong plan.

Writing the first draft, truly, is so much fun. I even enjoyed first drafts when I had no agent and no publisher. The story is all yours then and you're the first one to read it.

And look...only 8pm. Still time to go salsa dancing at Freuds...

But I'm too tired.

Laying Down Some Intertextual Licks

2007-09-18T07:53:00.000Z

Oh, but I'm a big old sucker for intertextuality. Which probably shows that deep down I'm a bit of a postmodern poseur.

I've mentioned this to my agent a few times - he seems to think it's quite charming that I've buried references to the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino, Borges and Haruki Murakami in my children's adventure stories. Some of it happened quite unconsciously - I wrote the first draft so quickly that apart from the plot, which I constructed carefully, much of the writing came straight out of my subconscious without much modification. Some of it, however, is there quite intentionally, even structurally. I won't say what.

Months later I looked back and thought - crumbs, what have I done? I've given away A LOT of personal information here - that anyone who knows me well will be able to deconstruct. (N.B. I removed quite a bit of this in the editing process). And what the heck is the point of all this intertextuality?

Why do we do this? My agent thinks it's like a secret message to readers in the know.

Which begs the question - who do we write for?

A friend of mine knows the children's author Philip Pullman, whose 'His Dark Materials' books are (in my opinion) the best children's books ever written, along with The Chronicles of Narnia and the William books. Pullman allegedly told my friend once that in 'His Dark Materials' he'd written a book for adults that people as young as eleven also could read.

I guess I've written a book for teenagers that I hope they'll re-read as adults and go ah...now I see where you got that. My books aren't remotely similar to those written by my literary heroes, so it's possibly too much to hope the people who read my books will go on to read Gabo, Calvino, Murakami and Borges.

But if they did, it would be so, so, so cool.

Oh, I've started keeping score of people I've persuaded (mainly by badgering) to start reading Murakami and now they really like him too:

In chronological order: David (my husband), Nathan (close friend), Steve (a writer friend), Martin (close friend), Rich (writer friend), Peter (agent). Hmm, all blokes. I have tried to persuade a few women friends but they haven't gone for him in quite the same way.

I have one Murakami book left to read - After Dark. I am saving it up as a treat when I finish the current manuscript. And then it's back to re-reading him, scouring the Web for rare short stories of his and generally being a sad fangirl.

Project Jaguar - Winding Up A First Draft

2007-09-17T08:11:00.000Z

A few items I keep on my desk to inspire me: a little statue of La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, patron saint of Cuba, some Cuban moneda nacional (local money; I'm not supposed to have it) and on the right, thirty crisp Cuban Convertible Pesos (tourist money; I'm not supposed to take it out of the country) - my cab fare from Jose Marti airport to Old Havana, for next time I go, to save queuing at the money exchange.

I'm about 8,000 words away from finishing the first draft of Project Jaguar. And I don't revise much until The Editor has a say, so for me a first draft - with a polish - is what I submit.

Which means that I am close to handing over to my agent a project that I've been working on, on-and-off, for a little over a year. It's the longest I've taken so far to complete a first draft. And all those feelings I get at this stage are kicking in.

Firstly there's the desire to finish and have done. That can get overshadowed with a premonition of loss. It's fun to inhabit an imaginary world. The author gets to experience that more intensely than any reader and for longer. When the first draft is finished, the world ceases to be your own. Other people get a say. That's exciting too, sharing it. It's different though.

But then again, the desire to finish, already!

Oh and then there's the post-ms finishing elation ("It's the best thing I've ever written"), shortly followed by the depression; "Hang on...actually it's not, is it? Or is it? I can't tell. Help!"

From here until the end I resent every interruption. I'd happily shut myself up now in my bedroom until it's done. That can't happen, of course. Life continues to make its demands. I have to take my daughter swimming in about a hour. And I should probably have something for lunch other than M&S Extremely Chocolatey Caramels.

This manuscript is unsold, btw. Very exciting. Will there be any takers? It's like last year all over again.

Introspective, moi?

2007-09-16T12:49:00.001Z

I don't usually turn to introspection on this blog because well, basically, it's not very fun is it? It gets awfully close to that writer's angst I try to avoid.

But today, just now in fact I had a moment of clarity in which I realised that being a published author is going to make me not more interesting as my teenage daughter imagines, but less.

(My teenage daughter observed recently, "I'm looking forward to your book being published. Then maybe your life will finally become interesting. And you'll have things to tell me. Instead of it being the other way round.")

I read an article about something, can't remember what, and was just starting to form a theory, synthesize a thought, who knows it might even have been interesting...when a very strict part of my brain cut in and said NO.

NO. You can't think about that. It might be interesting but NO. It's not relevant to the books you write. It's potentially too interesting to think about as a leisure activity. It's not comforting enough to justify as a daydream. So: simply NO.

That strict part of my brain has a propensity to let me think all I like about the stuff that it deems relevant to my job and hardly at all about anything else. There were times when I was a scientist that I literally turned up at parties unable to speak. I forgot how to make small talk. I didn't want to talk about anything but molecular biology, and no-one at the party wanted to hear about that so...I said nothing.

So I can imagine that what will happen in the next few years is that I will think more and more about my books. At the moment I can count on the fingers of a hand the number of people who have ever wanted to have any discussion with me about my books that goes beyond "You're writing a book, really, what's it about?"...my reply and then, end of discussion.

What if it were lots of people, though? What if that becomes all people ever want to talk to me about?

Then I'll be back where I was in the old days, when I was mad keen to talk about subcloning DNA or whatever part of my research I was up to...and good for little else. Except now the only thing I'll be capable of talking about is a bunch of stuff I made up once.

I'll be back to being a nerd.

Actually I'm being daft. I could right now make a list of 10 friends who will NEVER want to hear about my books. They should help to save me from becoming a total bore.

Forever Mexican - Chiiidoooo

2007-09-15T18:10:00.001Z

Mexico's President Felipe Calderon recently said "Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico."

Well hurray for that! Because apparently the cost of being naturalized as a British citizen has roughly tripled since last year, when I last filled in the forms and didn't get round to sending them, and at around £655 I'm not quite sure it's in my range anymore. Priced out of the market! It's probably a quite sensible ploy to avoid undesirables like me becoming British. Quite right too. What Groucho Marx said.

So I'm to be forever Mexican and only Mexican. Which means that there's a little bit of Mexico right here in Oxford.

PUES ME PARECE BIEN CHIDO.

Joshua 1 all finished...I hope!

2007-09-12T17:44:00.000Z

Well, I think I've finally done my bit and now it's all over to the publishers. I sent the corrected proofs back last week. Much relief. Now I'm looking forward to seeing the final product, complete with secretly embedded code of a puzzle wot I wrote, which readers can solve to win a prize (an iPod, I believe...)...and the much-awaited, totally innovative jacket.

About which I'm going to say only this - you will be able to see the book all the way across the store! And, no, I'll say another thing. You know how they say 'don't judge a book by it's cover' and such-like? Well, in this case, couldja?

Now Agent Pete and I are working on a cunning plan; an online treat for readers of the book. Top secret!

MG and DB

2007-09-05T10:02:00.001Z

Here's my good friend DB, who I inherited from the one time in my life that I was ever in a Clique. It was at St Cross College, Oxford and for some reason the cool American grad students welcomed me into their urbane little set, who would always sit at the same table for lunch and watch as the Goddess Hoku opened her mail (often actually addressed to her as that...), and have cool nicknames for some of the more distinctive dons (we had a Panzer Fuhrer, a Yoda, Obi-Wan, and a Dingleberry). I'd always kind of admired the group from afar; when I eavesdropped their conversation it sounded like the Algonquin Round Table meets the Star Wars Fan Club.

I first got an 'in' with them when I overheard Hoku talking about my beloved PJ O'Rourke, whose book "Republican Party Reptile" I owned and loved, and whose new book "Holidays in Hell" was just out. Hoku and I became life-long friends following our walk to the bookstore to each buy a copy of HIH.

The group would meet in someone's college room for video evenings to watch shows like "Sledge Hammer!" and "Rocky and Bullwinkle", which were all new to me. We'd eat pizza and play with Legos. These were the type of people I'd never come across before at Oxford - right-leaning, funny, educated, witty and cosmopolitan American liberal-arts students. I was totally smitten.

This was back when there was still an Evil Empire and we had a gazillion Soviet nukes aimed at our heads, when the GDR was still cool in a grimly-socialist-black-and-white-movie sort of way - it wasn't like being a neocon or anything. One of the group, Peter Schweizer, had spent time with Washington bigshots and had published a book entitled "Grinning with the Gipper: The Wit, Wisdom, and Wisecracks of Ronald Reagan"

But as people invariably do in Oxford, they left. Eventually only two local hangers-on were left: me and DB.

We didn't really know each other at first. The group was big enough that we'd only chatted at the periphery. When we exchanged phone numbers at the farewell party of the last of the group to leave, I wondered vaguely if we'd ever meet again.

We did though, and I'm glad because DB has been one of my best friends for years, through thick and thin. She wrote weekly limericks to cheer me up through one gloomy bit of my life, I stripped wall-paper with her when she bought a cottage that needed EVERYTHING doing. I introduced DB to the concept of Murder Mystery parties and then DB expanded and improved upon the concept until they were a thing of minor legend, at least in Hertford College MCR.

DB tempted me out for tapas, cocktails and a movie last night. We saw "The Lives Of Others", the winner of last year's Best Foreign Film Oscar. I haven't seen such a touching, beautifully constructed and performed film for a long time. Everything about the film is just brilliant.

Fundamentally it's a story of unrequited love and how a dutiful state security official metamorphoses into a Good Man when he falls in love with someone who he can never have, but who through her plight opens his eyes to the wrongdoing in his own occupation. It's a film which sticks rigidly to Robert McKee's stern advice to screenwriters that MEANING produces EMOTION. (As opposed to loud explosions and car chases...)

Great movie - thanks DB!

19th Century Tradition Rules OK

2007-09-02T21:13:00.000Z

The St Giles' Fair is an old Oxford tradition that goes back to the 19th century, whereby a group of local fairground companies have use of one of the main streets of Oxford for the first two days in September, after St Giles Day. And the schoolchildren of Oxford can spend the last days of their school holiday being entertained in top carnie fashion.

My two daughters and I took the usual reccie this evening. Looking at the mixture of horrific sick-inducing machines and charming old kiddie fairground rides, my older daughter, 15, remarked sourly that she felt none of the usual excitement. She said the same thing at Disneyland Paris a couple of weeks ago. Yep, it happens; you grow up. But she hasn't yet discovered how much fun St Giles' Fair is when you visit in the evening and slightly tipsy. with a crowd of student pals...

Meanwhile our five-year old was cooing with delight. She wants to throw hoops around stuff and win cuddly toys, (she only has about 40 and there are places in her bedroom where you can still see the floor, so I guess that's her rationale there...); to ride on the Waltzer under the influence of travel sickness pills, to eat huge fluffy balls of freshly spun cotton candy, hot doughnuts straight out of the oil, corn-on-the-cob roasted on a grill, to dip fudge, marshmallows and strawberries in a chocolate fountain, and then to ride the magnificent Carousel. You don't actually get any younger, like with the one in Ray Bradbury's novel 'Something Wicked This way Comes', but riding it, you might feel, for just a few moments, that you've turned into a little kid again.

It's one of the great things about being a parent, living vicariously through all your children's joyous discoveries in life. But tomorrow, after all those fairground treats and being whipped around on rides, I may need to swing by the vomitarium...

Cocktail Memories

2007-08-30T08:29:00.000Z

Tired of the substandard cocktails on sale at most of the bars we frequent - which are admittedly not known for their cocktails, but are in walking distance of the house and have a happy hour - I asked my husband to do something about it.

So for my recent birthday I received a collection of professional cocktail-making equipment; proper Boston Shakers, ice strainers, muddler, ice-crusher, shot measure, fine strainer and most of the main spirits and some of the syrups necessary for a nice repertoire and most importantly, a copy of the latest Diffords. (Diffords is the definitive guide to cocktails. Every recipe will make the BEST version of that cocktail that you've ever had.)

My baby brother lives in a tiny village in the mountains Switzerland, not far from fancy-schmancy Gstaad, but not within walking distance. When he moved out there, he decided that the posh cocktails of his native London would be too hard to miss, so he decided to learn the art himself. And boy does he make a mean cocktail! (But don't help yourself to the pineapple juice from his fridge or you'll get yelled at for using a cocktail ingredient!). He acted as the authoritative consultant on what to buy, strictly advising the proper equipment, even if it takes a bit of practice to use a Boston Shaker.

For my birthday party we invited a select group of four people (I didn't want to spend the entire evening mixing cocktails after all), I made a menu of about 20 cocktails I was prepared to make, and we went for it.

And Diffords came up with the goods! Simply by exactly following the instructions I was able to make amazing, yummy cocktails including Daiquiri, Pina Colada, Ron Collins, Cosmopolitan, Maple Leaf (bourbon, triple sec, maple syrup), Dry Martini, Coolman Martini (vodka, triple sec, lime juice, apple juice).

It turns out not to be so hard. Like all cooking, the secret is to use top notch, fresh ingredients, have great recipes and follow them.

One of my friends offered to hire me for her birthday party. Yay! A backup career!

Anyway...I was swapping cocktail reminisences with my agent recently and thought it would be a fun thing to blog.

Here are my top five cocktails ever tasted (not counting the ones I made t'other day...) Please let me know yours!

1. Daiquiri in Floridita London.
Straight-up, not frozen. Dizzyingly strong and refreshing. I made a mistake on the second and went for the Hemingway. Stick to the Classic.

2. Margarita in San Angel Inn, Mexico City
Straight-up, not frozen. We visited this restaurant, once one of Mexico City's most elegant and expensive, during a big local recession which made it very cheap for us. The place was almost empty. The margaritas were served inside metal cups containing dry ice to keep the glasses cold. Ahhh...

3. Dry Martini in Japp's Martini & Cigar Bar in Cincinnati, Ohio.
I was there on a business trip and I SWEAR the guys from that software company were trying to see how drunk they could get me! But what a martini. Later we went dancing to a swing club. Dancing the Lindy Hop, a guy tried to do an air-step with me and I ended up flat on my back. I DON'T DO AIR-STEPS AND YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO ASK! Luckily I was so drunk that I was very relaxed.

4. Frozen Daiquiri in Sancti Spiritus, Cuba
Like smooth, lime+rum flavoured, cool silk.

5. Pina Colada at the poolside bar of the Acapulco Princess, Mexico
Made with fresh pineapples and fresh coconut cream, the fruit all piled up at the bar. I read "The Da Vinci Code" whilst addled by a long afternoon drinking these.

Professor Pete

2007-08-22T11:00:00.000Z

One of the best things about staying in Oxford years after you've failed to escape the gravitational pull of the University is the fact that once in a while you get surprise phone calls out of the blue from friends who used to study or work here, wanting to drop by for dinner while they are in town giving a seminar/visiting a library or a lab.

In the next two months we're due a number of these visits, but yesterday we were thrilled by a pop-in from our old friend Professor Peter Simpson, who I believe I have mentioned at least once on this blog.

Pete teaches philosophy at the City University of New York and is self-confessed Aristotelophile. We became friends many years ago, in fact Pete is one of the many dear friends I inherited from my mother. Back when he was a young graduate student trying to impress my mother, he took my sister and I to movies and introduced us to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Nowadays Pete is high on my list of the cleverest people in the universe. He wrote a book about Pope John Paul the Great in which it was clear to any reader that he actually understood all that continental philosophy stuff...! (Not me; I'm more comfortable with the writings of the current Pope Benedict, whose work is at least couched in language and concepts I can follow...)

I told Pete how I'd fallen under the influence of his beloved Aristotle when writing the second of the Joshua Files books. (Fellow writers, if you haven't read the Poetics yet, I can't recommend it enough.) I mused aloud how it was possible for one guy to be so incredibly prolific as Aristotle apparently was, dominating his contemporaries across both natural sciences and political philosophy, as well as knocking out a 42 page masterpiece in which he explained and laid down the principles of western drama, principles which stand to this day.

Pete's answer was very interesting. "It's because he was such an empiricist. He used exactly the same technique as when he analysed the world of animals - he first collected data, looked for patterns and governing principles. He collected all the Greek plays he could get hold of, especially the award-winning ones. He had his students help him complete the analysis."

So Poetics wasn't just the work of a guy who sat musing and philosophizing about what he'd seen down the Greek theatre - it was a scientific approach to the understanding of dramatic structure.

The benefits of a scientific education, hey? I can't say enough good things about one. (Although I also wish I'd been trained to think with the razor-sharp logical clarity on philosophical matters as Professor Pete. He could argue the hind legs off a snake! First he'd argue the case for the legs...)

Mi Swing Es Tropical

2007-08-20T12:26:00.000Z

Watching the latest Jason Bourne movie last night, I was delighted to see the new ad for iTunes+iPod. It's a little salsa song, with terrific dancing.

Re the Bourne: I enjoyed it but later realised that I'd never once really felt as though Jason was in any real peril. He's just so ruthlessly efficient that instead of worrying about him I was admiringly thinking...no problem, Jason can handle anything.

There's a lesson there...

Gabo vs Haruki Part 1: The Genius of Gabriel Garcia Marquez

2007-08-18T18:10:00.000Z

I don't see why one has to have a favourite writer. If I'm ever asked, how could I choose between Haruki Murakami and Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Nope, it's not a fair question. I cannot choose.

However, I can differentiate. Haruki moves me and Gabo astounds me.

(And Haruki also astounds and Gabo also moves, but each marginally less than the other...)

Garcia Marquez has these unforgettable openings, like the famous one in "One Hundred Years of Solitude":

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

The power of that ending can only be appreciated much later in the book, when the reader realises (in my case with a shout of joy) that the Colonel, presumed dead (by the reader), only takes his full place in the story later on...And the way that the novel's ending resolves the opening section with the gypsy's manuscript is beyond genius, one of the few times in my life I remember being left literally breathless with admiration for a writer as I read him.

And that's not the only time he uses the 'Many years later' formula. In his novels, linear time and cyclical time coexist; the stories are often simultaneously related at two levels.

I read recently probably the most influential Mexican novel of the last century, Juan Rulfo's 'Pedro Paramo', a book allegedly adored by Gabo. Not only is Pedro Paramo an early example in Latin American literature of a novel told in two different time streams (the narrative alternates between a first-person narrator who visits the town where his father had lived, and a first-person narrator from the town's past), but it includes this passage, which strikes a chord with any aficionado of Garcia Marquez:

"Years later Father Renteria would remember the night his hard bed had kept him awake and driven him outside. It was the night Miguel Paramo died."

Rulfo's 'Pedro Paramo' is brief yet dazzling. I myself have written whilst under its spell and can attest to its mesmeric hold.

I am reading the first volume of Gabo's autobiography, 'Living To Tell The Tale'. The opening, as ever, is delicious:

"My mother asked me to go with her to sell the house. She had come that morning from the distant town where the family lived and she had no idea how to find me."

What follows is an account, related with the characteristic shifting time streams, of young Gabriel's visit to the old house of his grandparents in the distant town of Aracataca, from where his early childhood experiences were to inform the creation of his fictional town of Macondo and all its inhabitants. And the older Gabo now recognises with the trained eyes of the writer he has become (not yet a successful novelist, but definitely on the path), the material which has lain dormant within him all these years. It's a moment of thunderous import and it shakes him to the core. The past, present and future collide during that visit. When finally he returns (some 100 pages later) to his cosy literary hangouts in Baranquilla with Colombia's literati, he knows, even at 23, where this can take him.

I just read this great passage where Gabo relates showing a rough draft of his manuscript to a man highly respected within his writers' circle: Don Ramon. Don Ramon reads two pages without change of expression, then makes one or two incisive technical comments. But as Gabo leaves him that day, Don Ramon adds:

"I thank you for your courtesy and I'm going to reciprocate with a piece of advice: never show anybody the rough draft of anything you're writing."

So, so, SO true. And Gabo followed that advice TO THE LETTER.

Bound proof in Lugano

2007-08-17T12:18:00.001Z

Bound proof in Lugano
Originally uploaded by mgharris

Well blog readers, all five of you, I'm back. Two weeks of driving across Europe close to the Swiss/Italian border in the canton of Ticino, where it's all Swiss, but Italian style.

For example - they speak Italian but serve fresh Swiss muesli for breakfast. For example, where you can hire a motorboat without a licence and drive across the lake but the minute you moor it, a taxi-boat driver comes beetling across the lake, brow all furrowed and tells you off for going too near the rocks which might damage the engine. Yeah, we noticed that too...were taking care and everything... For example, where you get Swiss efficiency but instead of cheese fondue and raclette they serve yummy Italian food with pasta al dente and everything. See how it works?

The publishers of 'The Joshua Files' kindly sent out a couple of bound proofs of the book for me to peruse. Here I am holding my first copy of 'Invisible City'. Bit of a thrill, actually. I was so excited at breakfast that I forgot to eat and the waiters were clucking at me, trying to get me to hurry up and finish that croissant and just go, already...

@Manolito, like Casa de la Musica all over again

2007-07-30T10:50:00.001Z

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!

Georgina's, just the way it used to be

2007-07-28T14:00:00.001Z

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®

Harry Potter 7 got me reading again

2007-07-26T15:59:00.000Z

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!

Things I Miss About Being A Kid

2007-07-21T08:01:00.000Z

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.

It's 8.30pm...are you queuing for Harry Potter?

2007-07-20T20:04:00.001Z

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®

Oxford traffic locks down

2007-07-20T18:34:00.001Z

Oxford traffic locks down
Originally uploaded by mgharris

Why did my rare, one day away from my desk have to turn into a battle with the elements? From aquaplaning all over country roads this morning to being stuck in one of Oxford's legendary total gridlocks...I'm 2 minutes from home but doubt I'm going to be there for 30.

On the bright side, it brings back happy memories of rainy summer afternoons stuck for hours on Mexico City's Periferico.

I wish I'd gone to the loo. How true it is that ladies should never miss an opportunity to pop into the ladies.

Yes I'm driving as I blog this. It's okay...it's an automatic.

Crumbs.

Emailed from my BlackBerry®

Dropped by the office...

2007-07-20T14:04:00.001Z

Dropped by the office...
Originally uploaded by mgharris

Decided to spend the day out of the house so that I don't have to find excuses not to write. I even dropped by the office to see how the guys are doing. This is a photo of me with our senior technology consultant, Matt Banks, a guy so good-looking that when we had our company photos done, the photographer reckoned that he could get Matt work as a model. Matt is making a rude gesture with his fingers, in the general direction of the MD, Mark Salisbury.

I am going to look at a snazzy new, freebie content management system. Woo.

More photos on Flickr...

Emailed from my BlackBerry®

Der Echt Nutella

2007-07-20T07:40:00.000Z

It's okay, I wondered too. Der Nutella, die Nutella, das Nutella? I didn't want to get it wrong after all. Luckily, the InterWeb provides answers to these questions and more.

http://www.wer-weiss-was.de/theme143/article1542260.html#1542260

According to a Nutella FAQ, it can be any one of the three articles.

So...Der Echt Nutella.

Nutella is actually made by an Italian family company, Ferrero, whose skills with hazelnut and chocolate know no bounds. They also make the Ambassador's favourite sweets, those exclusive Ferrero Rocher.

But the Germans embraced Nutella with a passion back in the 1970s (or even earlier), which is where I first encountered the yummy treat, living there for 6 months as a four year old. When we left to live in Manchester, England, Nutella was the pain thing I missed, for years and years, until it started to be available in the UK, sometime in the late 1980s.

I remember going with school to Germany and coming back laden with 8 bottles of Nutella.

I wasn't being greedy. You couldn't get it in England then!

I remember staying with my German exchange penfriend, the lovely Erik, and being super impressed when one morning at breakfast the Nutella ran out. And his Mum simply went to the larder and pulled out another! Who stores more than one jar of Nutella at a time??? The Germans, that's who. They love it.

I have always strongly suspected that Ferrero make a special formulation for the German market. Their Nutella is the echt Nutella as far as I am concerned. It is more chocolately and nougaty.

My good friend DB bought me a jar from the German deli in London, to help me with my writer's block. I ate a few spoons before going to bed last night. God it's good.

I couldn't be sure this early, but I think I sensed a flicker in the old story brain. Maybe it was the combined effect of the Nutella and having seen Harry Potter 5. I'll have to eat some more, to see if it really works...

Wheels begin to turn...

2007-07-19T11:50:00.000Z

Well my dear blog readers, it's all kicking off round our way!

My publisher - Scholastic Children's Books - announced the aquisition of "THE JOSHUA FILES" series title on Tuesday. And the news is that it seems to have grabbed some attention, which is great, which is wonderful, because it will hopefully help build awareness of the book.

My agent called me on Tuesday morning and told me that the Arts Editor of the Evening Standard wanted to interview me, which she did...and sure enough, they ran a little story in the late edition - on the same page as a big article about Harry Potter, next to one about the Arctic Monkeys.

It's not my first time in the press. But before it tended to be things like "Information World Review", on a page about Knowledge Management software and the like...

This is different and pretty, pretty, pretty cool.

I'm really looking forward to Harry Potter 7. And the huge bar of chocolate I plan to eat while reading it. The day will be sandwiched between two salsa events (Friday night and a Sunday matinee performance of the terrific UK-based son band, Soneando), so I should be able to burn the calories off...

It's my turn to see the latest Harry Potter movie tonight...

Oh...I am currently hugely enjoying watching "The New Adventures of Old Christine" a new sitcom starring my favourite of the Seinfeld four, Julie Louis-Dreyfus. So much that I think I'll give it it's own blog entry...more soon.

Still got writer's block, by the way. I have put a Recovery Plan in place. Luckily for me, it calls for things like going to the movies and reading.

"Too Much Salsa and You Could Die"

2007-07-16T14:46:00.000Z

That's what Cuban salsa dance teacher Osbanis Tejedo said at breakfast on Sunday morning to the DJ. He was asking him to stir up the music a bit, some bachata, some merengue, some reggaeton.

Well, despite those words, I remember last night being mostly salsa...and the night before and the night before. I think I may in fact be dying from too much salsa. I feel as though I've been out on a drinking bender, absolutely shattered. And in the past three days I've had no more than one glass of wine.

It must be dehydration. Let me weigh myself...nope, no change there.

Salsa is definitely like a drug. It makes you feel amazing, you forget all your troubles while it lasts. Then you come back down to earth and realise that your problems haven't gone away, for goodness sakes. They're right there waiting to be dealt with, how dare they! And what do you turn to for a solution...?

More salsa.

It was great to be with a hundred or so like-minded addicts. How we sweated to get our rumba moves right, to move like the African spirits, the Orishas, how we strove to follow the tiny-but-fiery Damarys in her energetic and outrageously sexy reggaeton routine, how we concentrated on Kerry Ribchester's wonderful body-movement techniques to move ribcages for Cuban son, and laughed at Leo and Osbanis's flirty rueda moves.

Last night, you saw it all pouring out on the dance floor. Salsa with rumba, orishas, reggaeton, son, all mixed up. Okay, most people there were Northern European (and I was raised here, so I too started off stiff-as-a-board), but we were beginning to get there.

But man, am I exhausted.

Now, when's the next salsa thing...?

Fiesta de Los Rumberos

2007-07-14T07:32:00.001Z

Fiesta de Los Rumberos
Originally uploaded by mgharris

Rafael del Busto (in the cap) takes everyone through some moves in a warm-up Rueda de casino.

I felt sorry for non-salsa guests at the Arora hotel, Crawley. The music from the party went on until 2am at least and was easily audible in our room on the 2nd floor - enough to sing along with the lyrics.

MG - why were you trying to sleep when there was Cuban salsa? Well for one thing, 3 consecutive very late nights is beyond me. We wanted to be fresh for a long day of workshops beginning with Ariel teaching Cuban son.

Tonight though, we'll stay until the end. Some friends are kindly taking care of our little daughter so it's that VERY rare event for parents- a night off!

Just as well. I bet the hotel will get complaints from other guests. But tonight...I want that salsa played LOUD.

Emailed from my BlackBerry®

Chichen Itza at the Equinox

2007-07-13T08:47:00.000Z

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned the spectacle of the equinox at the Mayan site of Chichen Itza (one of the New 7 Wonders of the Ancient World).

I had a look on Youtube and indeed there are some videos of the event. Nice, saves us all having to join the madding crowds.

Here's my pick of the crop:
Paco, a Mayan guide at Chichen Itza, explains the whole thing to a TV reporter.

Atmospheric little Chichen-equinox movie, with Pink Floyd music.

Buena Vista Night - July

2007-07-09T16:30:00.000Z

What a pity I'm going to miss the next Buena Vista Night in Oxford. It's quite become the highlight of the month, although with all the festivities in London lately at Carnival de Cuba and next week's Afro-Cuban Weekender, Habanaloko party the following week and the Manolito Concert at the Coronet at the end of the month, July looks like the best month this year for us UK-bound Cuba-loving salseros.

D and I arrived to watch Habanero Leo Henriquez from Brighton teaching the raunchiest rueda moves I've ever seen. Mangos, castiga-la ("she's been naughty - slap her, you know you want to..."). I was kind of glad I wasn't in the class. Hey - there are some salsa moves that I'll only do with David.

(Well...maybe...until some Cuban guy comes along and tempts me into it...)

Over at the bar we had one of those brilliant reunions you sometimes get if you've been dancing for years and years - someone who's dropped off the planet for a while will swoop back into Oxford and of course, they'll visit the latest salsa joint. On Saturday it was Nick St Clair. Nick; blond Nick with the flowing blond mane and the tight white jeans, sexy Nick with the flashy Merc, Nick who once had his own salsa band. Yes, that Nick? You don't know him? Ahhh. Before your time then?

I didn't recognise Nick at first because he's gone all Andaluz. Living in Granada, Spain will do that for you. His hair is darker, tied back in a gitano-style pony tail. He was dressed all in black. Nick has two kids now; gorgeous, he showed us pictures. I had a brilliant dance with Nick - he hasn't lost his touch at all. My favourite Nick story is about an early dance experience of his. A sultry Spanish woman was dancing with him in a club, when he'd had just one or two lessons. She mistook his flamboyant clothes and hair for the att-it-tude of a guy who can dance. (Beginner need to watch out for that!) When she found out that he was a beginner she just left him there, walked away from him on the dance floor. Lo deje planta'o!

As Nick told me this story, it began to sound familiar. "I think I know that woman," I told him. "In fact, I think she's a good friend of mine - Ana." So devastated was Nick by this treatment that he resolved to become a terrific dancer. And he did. So Ana did him a favour really, didn't she?

We really enjoyed the set by DJ Shorty. She's a very pretty girl. And she loves the music of Adalberto Alvarez!

So...next week...Crawley! For three nights and two days of all-salsa-all-the-time!

Mayan site of Chichen Itza One of the New 7 Wonders!

2007-07-08T12:50:00.001Z

Chichen Itza
Originally uploaded by Aleksu

The results are in - it was the final days of lobbying wot done it!

The Mayan city of Chichen Itza has been named as one of the official 'New' 7 Wonders of the World.

The photo is one of Aleksu's - a contact of mine from Flickr who takes gorgeous photos. He's been urging people to hit the 7 Wonders Website voting for Chichen.

Chichen Itza was the first Mayan ruin I ever visited, aged 15, on a hugely memorable trip to Yucatan with my father, stepmother and three sisters. We were driven there on the slow dusty road from Cancun. Not by my father - who stayed in Cancun to play golf - but his chauffeur. This was before cars routinely had aircon. It was a sweltering August day - at least 45 degrees Celsius and close to 100% humidity. and the site was crowded - even in 1981 it was Mexico's most popular archaeological site after Teotihuacan. My sister Pili passed out from heat stroke in the ladies' bathroom.

We walked around the site in stunned, exhausted silence. I was nursing my usual sunburn and was in agony most of the time. (Sunblock didn't work in those days; I always forgot to wear a T-shirt for a critical hour or so, for which I always paid in tears of pain). I tried climbing the main staircase of tht Temple of Kukulcan aka El Castillo (pictured above) and got about twenty stairs up before I turned around and had an attack of vertigo. I knew without a shadow of doubt that if I climbed to the top with my sisters I would have to be helicoptered down. I managed to climb back down those 20 stairs but my legs were shaking all the way down, even though I used the trick of descending on a diagonal.

I went into the tunnel in El Castillo to try to climb the Temple of the Jaguar that sits under the newer, flashier Toltec-influenced pyramid. There was a crowd of tired, hot, breathless tourists waiting patiently to ascend a tight staircase just wide enough to permit a line of people going up and a line of people going down. It was like a steam oven in there; everyone was being slowly poached. The skin on my shoulders felt like it was on fire. I took one look up that staircase and felt like I'd got as close to hell as I ever wanted to be. A wave of claustrophobia gripped me; I almost shoved people out of my way on the way out.

Chichen isn't my personal favourite of the Mayan sites. I prefer something more Classic Mayan, with the Puuc or Rio Bec architecture, ideally in a more jungle-setting, like Palenque. However Chichen has two sites, including an older, Classic Mayan site which is Puuc style.

Chichen's buildings are spectacularly preserved - by now all four faces of El Castillo are restored, when I first visited it was just two. This pyramid is precisely aligned to capture the sun on the sides so that it lights up triangles on the main staircase and the serpents head at the base. This happens only on the Spring and Winter equinoxes and it has the effect of creating an undulating serpent-of-light on the staircase. I've never visited then because the crowds at that time of year are insane. (There must be a Youtube video of it...I'll check).

Despite the constant pain of my sunburn I was impressed beyond anything I'd ever experienced. I'd never visited any Mexican pyramids before, for some reason I'd never been taken to Teotihuacan (near Mexico City). I'd had a fascination with the Maya since aged 11 my father took us to stay at the Acapulco Princess, fashionable in the late 1970s/early 80s, and - I was told - built in the style of a modern Mayan pyramid (although the website says Aztec but still...) But to see the real thing, to experience something of that atmosphere, to imagine the citadel filled with warriors and priests, ball-players and sacrificial victims...was quite, quite amazing.

We returned late that evening to the hotel in Cancun. I went into the hotel bookshop and bought the shortest book I could find about the Maya. It turned out to be one of those Erich-Von-Daniken type books about ancient astronauts and their supposed influence on early civilisation. I lapped it up. I hardly slept that night.

If any of you read 'Invisible City' next February you will see just how far that day left its indelible mark on me.

God help me I've got writer's block again...

2007-07-06T11:29:00.001Z

Actually yes, I DO think that three days running of not being able to write clocks in as an Officially Recognised Bout Of WB.

Things I have done in the past three days rather than write the next, challenging chapter of Jaguar's Realm.

(I mean, things I'm prepared to admit to in a blog)

1. Read emails about and from staff at the school where I'm a governor. Read them again, and again and again.

2. Phone people about the school where I'm a governor.
(yes I HAD to do those things but believe me, I lingered)

3. Browse for, choose and buy salsa dancing clothes and shoes from ebay.

4. Try on said salsa dancing clothes and shoes, gloat and marvel at how finally I've found an outfit that works for me and how light-as-a-feather the shoes are and wonder why I haven't invested in specialist kit for my main hobby before.

5. Jump on any email from my editor about the ms for Joshua book 1.

6. Join Facebook and spend an entire day mooching around on it, looking people up, customising my content.

7. Shop at Primark to make myself feel frugal.

8. Drag my husband out for breakfast, lunch, coffee, long walks.

9. Pester my neighbour Gabby to gossip with me; he was only trying to watch the tennis but would I let him, no.

10. Practice my reggaeton moves until my insides hurt from excess abdominal wiggling.

Don't even think that I'm running out of stuff to do. There's still Litopia, browsing salsa music on iTunes, reading Caitlin Moran's column in The Times (today I found out that there's a Facebook group called 'I Want To Be/Have Sex With Caitlin Moran When I Grow Up', which I won't join because she's actually on it herself and as you'll know if you read this blog regular-like, Caitlin is trying to exert pressure, by remote, on Big Brother quitters like me who've gone cold turkey and are trying to pretend BB isn't on this year), baking chocolate cake.

I wish I could put movies, books or TV on that list but in truth they take just too much concentration. Don't you think that if I could concentrate that hard I'd actually tackle this chapter head-on???

That said, here's a list of movies I'm looking forward to failing to get in to see:

Tell No One (still haven't managed to catch it)
Harry Potter 5
Transformers
Buy It Now
The Simpsons Movie
The Bourne Ultimatum (LOVE the Bourne!)

Le Petit Dejeuner des CrackBerries#3

2007-07-06T10:01:00.001Z

Le Petit Dejeuner des CrackBerries#3
Originally uploaded by mgharris

All right luv, stop taking photos of me...

Seriously though, have you ever been out with another BlackBerry addict?

There's little call for conversation.

What a world. It's not just that my attention span will barely make it through a TV show these days but I've taken about 40% of my social life online too.

A friend on Jaiku told me that she and her hubby were going to a Café Rouge for breakfast this morning and because I'm such a sheep I thought David and I could do the same. By crikey it's nice. Ersatz France, with French pop music and all... Reminded me how much I'm looking forward to spending time in France next month as we drive through to visit my baby brother in Switzerland.

Emailed from my BlackBerry®

Dotcom daftness again? Or is it real?

2007-07-04T16:06:00.001Z

It's the sort of idea that we used to talk about breathlessly in innovation centre coffee meetings with other Internet entrepreneurs, swapping stories of the latest daft idea to get a squillion dollars of funding. Not that the ideas we had weren't daft too. My best conversations were with then Oxford graduate student Alex Straub, of the splendidly daft mondus.com (hey, I too was a believer once), who probably personally made a few million from Italian investors Seat Pagine Gialle before mondus went belly-up. Back in 1999 Alex and I would go all googly-eyed at crazy Internet ideas, the madder the better.

So here's the idea - and it comes from a DPhil Biochemistry student at Oxford. (Hurrah for the biochemistry training - it's so darned versatile!)

A website where you buy moments in time. Your first kiss, it's suggested, or perhaps the moment you were offered a book deal. For $1 per minute you get to baggsy that moment and upload content which will be hosted in perpetuity, to share and share again with everyone in the world.

Thomas Whitfield apparently pitched this to Dan Wagner, himself a wily Internet entrepeneur, the guy behind the business information service M.A.I.D and then Dialog...and now the investment fund Bright Station Ventures, at a competition run by the Oxford Entrepreneurs. Instead of giving the £5,000 prize, Dan Wagner offered Whitfield and his associates access to the whole $100 million fund to develop and idea that I'm guessing they think will be the new Youtube. Wagner thinks that Designthetime (now known as miomi) captures the whole zeitgeist of the Internet.

Except...Youtube, Facebook, MySpace and all those sites on which we all frantically upload content to our hearts content...are free. What's to stop Yahoo or Google setting up something like this, and not charging?

When the whole dotcom thing collapsed it did so largely because most of the new businesses had non-existent revenue streams, and were spending money much, much faster than they could possibly make it. The smart money flew away and settled on the few safer bets, like Google and Yahoo. So respect is due to these guys for building in a user-driven revenue stream from the beginning. But will people pay for this frivolity? It will be interesting to see.

I can't see how this won't be imitated. For one thing, what will I do when I discover that my special moment has been nabbed? Will I upload content for my second favourite moment? Or will I go to a rival site, one that's quite possibly free?

I like being all sceptical, but deep down I really hope it works. It was a great feeling, the belief that a graduate student could spin a yarn and end up running a multi-million dollar business. I Googled Alex recently - he looks to be doing pretty, pretty fine.

Walking and Plotting...flowers help!

2007-07-03T06:48:00.001Z

Wall Poppy
Originally uploaded by mgharris

Every day I walk to Summertown, not along the main road which is deafeningly loud, but around the residential streets. It's a great time to think about what I've just written, what I'm about to write but mainly I find it's a great way to mull over elements of plot.

In summer it's even better - the little front gardens I pass are crammed with gorgeous flowers and some with fruit trees, including vines and asian pears, as well as the usual apple, cherry and pear.

Yesterday the sun emerged for a brief hour as I took my afternoon walk. I snapped a pic of all the flowers I pass on my route. I thought they would cheer me up come winter, giving me hope for the return of sun, heat and long days.

Check out my flowers-in-Oxford collection on Flickr.

Degrees of Separation: Two

2007-07-02T15:15:00.000Z

In the space of less than 10 hours I had the uncanny experience of having 2 degrees of separation from two of Britain's best-loved children's authors. Not via their agents, publicists, etc, or anyone in the industry; I wouldn't count that. No; I'm talking sheer coincidence.

Lookit: Yesterday, we're having lunch in Brighton, celebrating the First Holy Communion of our friends' daughter (her parents are enlightened atheists...). Two of the guests haven't seen me since I first started writing novels a few years back. They ask me to fill them in on the progress since then. "Someone I know at school - a parent - writes childrens' books," one of them says. "What's his name now? He's always saying how competitive it is." Later she remembers his name: Anthony Horowitz. "My nephew's favourite writer," I tell her. "My nephew keeps asking me if maybe one day I can get his autograph."

Much later that day we walk into Xi'an, the Szechuan Chinese restaurant owned by my pals Amy and Gary. Gary tells me over the bar that Philip Pullman used to be his teacher at Bishop Kirk, once a middle school in Summertown. "He comes in here sometimes," Gary says cheerfully. "He still remembers me! Tells me how I used to misbehave in class!" Then Gary tells me that Amy is giving lessons in Mandarin. I should learn, he says, so that I can one day converse with Chinese readers of my books. Gary does a quick mental calculation about what tiny proportion of the Chinese would need to read the books to make me a millionaire.

I love it when my friends are this optimistic. More power to the positive visualisation!

Strange Fruit

2007-07-01T11:01:00.001Z

Strange Fruit
Originally uploaded by mgharris

Our friends in Brighton have a garden filled with fruit trees. This one has lovely soft plum-like fruit that tastes something between a pear and a peach. Anyone know what it is?

Emailed from my BlackBerry®

Following the railroad in Cuban Granma province

2007-06-29T14:13:00.001Z

Following the railroad in Cuban Granma province
Originally uploaded by mgharris

I was delighted to see today on Flickr that someone favourited this photo. My husband David snapped this from a Viazul tourist bus as we crossed Cuba. He kindly took lots of photos of what you see of Cuba as you cross from West to East; Havana to Santiago de Cuba. This was so that when I came to write the relevant sections of Project Jaguar, I would be able to recall the images and atmosphere of this country.

Maybe I was asleep or watching the movie because I didn't actually witness this scene myself so I'm even more grateful that he caught it. This captures the essence of how tough it is for Cubans to travel around in Cuba. Most people in Havana that we spoke to had never been to the other side of the island. And people in Santiago would tell us, "I went to Havana once, about twenty years ago." (It's not like in the UK where people are too busy going to Mallorca to go to London - they can't go anywhere - it costs too much!)

Few people own a car, those who do tend to own cars that are too clapped out to get far without breaking down and of course there's nothing like the RAC if you do. On the major roads you find small crowds of hitchhikers gathered under bridges, despondently waving money bills at passing private cars but mainly goods lorries. There's no such thing as a free ride.

These hitchhikers aren't game young students; ther are people of all ages, often with small children in tow.

I wonder where this woman in the photo is going with her two little ones. Waiting for a freight train to give her a lift? I wonder how long it took to get there.

Top Ten Superhero Films Part 2

2007-06-27T15:16:00.000Z

It turns out that I'm an idiot who can't count. I forgot one key superhero movie which is awesome, easily in the top 5, and when I looked at the other 4, none could in all good conscience be thrown out in favour of Spiderman 3, which I loved even if everyone says it's bad.

The one I forgot is now at number 4. I think it's that good.

5. X2
You know the X-Men franchise takes itself pretty seriously - at least this far in its run - from the fact that it opens in Auschwitz. Ooer, dark; Frank Miller, Alan Moore territory here we come. After that it comes together very nicely as one of only 2 successful multi-protag superhero movies. A raft of terrific actors have a great time with a good screenplay.

4. The Incredibles
I remember watching this at the cinema with my daughters and being impressed at a film which could hugely entertain a pre-school child, a teen and an adult. The story structure is terrific, the pace never lets up, the humour sections are genuinely funny and not just saddo cheese-fests (I particularly loved the costume fitting). It's not easy to write a great story that has pace, humour, always with an eye on the video game opportunity. I think The Incredibles really pulls it off. My only teentsy concern is the self-referential nature of the movie, with its commentary on the nature and perception a world in which superheroes exist. It seemed a very original twist on the superhero mythology when Alan Moore did it in 'Watchmen', but now seems a bit passe. Then again most people haven't read 'Watchmen'.

3. Spiderman
I love Tobey Maquire and have always loved Peter Parker. Green Goblin was a great villain to pick for the Spidey movie. Peter's growing delight with his powers and the way that, despite being a superhero he only slowly dispels his nerdy-boy persona, are the stand-out bits for me. Yes, the swinging is all very good too, love the swinging and the wall-crawling.Everyone in this movie is just great, but Jonah Jameson is a special delight.

2. Superman II
I almost put this top. It's not top of anyone else's list, as far as I know, which makes me think; where were you people in 1980? Don't you realise the significance to those of us who were lovelorn teens, of the moment when Clark tells Lois that he's Superman? Their first kiss is up there with Han Solo's kiss with Princess Leia as one of the defining movie smooches for people my age! We also get to learn more about Supe's homeworld, see the camp wonderfulness of the exiled Kryptonians and actually worry that Superman may not win the day. The end somewhat spoils it, with Clark being allowed to get his powers again. I see that it's called for, but basically, it's a deus ex machina.

1. Spiderman II
It's unusual for a sequel to be better than the first, but not uncommon in Superhero films. Why? Because the first superhero film necessarily serves up the Origin Story. We all know more or less what such a story will give us. Ordinary guy becomes extraordinary and finds that he must use his extraordinariness to help people. Big Baddie threatens the world, superhero to the rescue, problem solved. Not very interesting, so far. The surprises, threats and complications really arise in stories further along the line. Jaded superhero; superhero tempted to evil; superhero in love, etc. Spiderman II goes for an early foray into Jaded Superhero. It's probably not a bad time for that story. You can't really roll that one out again until the superhero is supposedly 'past it', as in "The Dark Knight Returns". Doc Ock is great, ripping chunks out of walls and hurling them at people. So many classic moments of the genre, so well executed.

Didn't make the list:
Daredevil - one of my greater movie disappointments. How was this not wonderful? Why didn't they get Frank Miller to write it? What was with the stupid, pumping rock soundtrack? Why was Matt Murdoch not blond??? I love MM but Daredevil was baaad, and not in the good way.

Elektra - not as dreadful as people say, actually. Better than Daredevil. But again...why didn't Frank Miller write? Why didn't they at least use one of his Elektra stories?

Constantine - (based on Hellblazer) really good. Would put it at twelve.

Spidey 3 - cos I can't count, but I'd put it at 7 probably, in a rejig.

Superhero Movies I'd Like To See:
The Spirit, Watchmen, a good Daredevil movie, Groo the Wanderer, The Trouble With Girls. Technically neither The Spirit, Groo nor Lester Girls have superpowers. But then neither does Batman, so fair is fair.

Top Ten Sweeties

2007-06-26T16:50:00.000Z

Here's an addictive Website for sweetie-lovers. A Quarter of These. You can order all your old favourites, and sweets they didn't have round your way but you wished they did. Ten flavours of chewy bonbons; TEN! This shop must be one of the best places in the world!

I lost quite a bit of weight (like 7 kilos) on the vegan diet, but if I'm not careful it's all going to pile right back on with a new habit I've acquired, namely, treating myself to a sweetie or two (or five) as I write.

Sugar is wildly addictive; once your system is used to that early morning sugar rush (I write first thing), you get to looking forward to it. I've started to find myself musing about sweets of old, found myself toying with the idea of going to Thorntons in town or Hamiltons in Burford to get a fix of premium sweeties.

You start with something recreational and 'harmless' like a Bassetts strawberry bon-bon and before long you need a handmade violet cream, Soor Plooms or some Extremely Chocolately Thorntons Special Toffee. You have to go further for your fix, make special trips.

The thing is, I just can't afford the calories. I snagged a fabulous size 12 Diane Von Fustenberg wrap dress on ebay this morning (very good price!) and I'll be damned if I can't look good in it this summer.

So the bag of M&S Devon Toffees on my desk will have to be the last for a long time.

In the meantime, I can bypass the craving by thinking about sweeties and which are my Top Ten.

10. Sherbert Lemons

Sharp, tangy taste but there's a price to be paid in the wounds you get to the roof of the mouth. Good for those with vampiric tendences who quite enjoy the taste of blood.

9. Cream Soda Sherbert

Pink and creamy, vanilla and icing sugar combined with citric acid, it's not half bad. Great for dippin', ideally a strawberry lollipop.

8. Chupa Chups

It's not all about the nostalgia, and not all the best sweeties are British. These Spanish lollipops are the best! So many yummy flavours. When the Spice Girls broke up, Sainsbury's sold off buckets of Spice Girl Chupa Chups for a fiver. I bought them for my office and that whole summer long, everyone sucked Chupas. I love them all but the cherry flavour just wins.

7. Mazapan

Another foreign sweetie - Mexican this time. It's like halva but made from peanuts; a little cake of compressed, powdered roast peanuts and sugar. de la Rosa brand are ubiquitous but I prefer the other kind...can't remember the name.

6. Cajeta

A Mexican milk caramel in the style of 'dulce de leche' or 'manjar' but made from goat's milk. It is sweeter, stickier, pours and has a distinctive flavour. Amazing over hot cakes (fluffy American pancakes). From a town in Queretaro state called Celaya, which I once visited and found a shop which sold ONLY cajeta! Walls stacked high with shelves just crammed with shiny bottles of the lovely caramel syrup. My favourite flavour is quemado (burnt), favourite brand is Coronado. Best served fresh on a spoon.

5. Blackcurrant and Liquorice Eclairs

Whoever dreamed up combining the flavours of blackcurrant and liquorice? Sheer genius. The boiled sweet is heaven and then the chewy contrast of the aniseedy liquorice.

4. Anglo Bubble Gum

You need two at a time to get a really good bubble-blowing session going. There's a salty tang to these that I love. (Bazooka Joe is okay too, and Bubble Yum. I disapprove of all these new fruit-flavoured bubble-gums. Bubble Gum should taste of Bubble Gum!)

3. Pear Drops

Not the massive ones which slice your tonque when you suck them down to razor-sharp candy slivers, but the small, sugar-encrusted ones. What an amazing flavour; nothing likes pears, but exactly like something we used to make in organic chemistry practicals.

2. Rose and Violet Creams

Juicy, floral fondants in dark chocolate. The more expensive the better. The local French patisserie does these; delicious. My favourite flavour is rose, except on days when it's violet.

1. Thorntons Special Toffee

Gosh this is good. I have tasted many, many a toffee and not found it's equal. Buttery and caramely; I've spent a lot of time trying to cook sugar and do not underestimate how hard it must have been to get this recipe right. The flavoured variants are well-intended but they just detract from the subtle buttery notes which float over the caramelised, milky sugar. Stick to Original.

P.S. Can't believe I forgot Spanish turron, a sweet made from almonds! Jijona-style, please. Mmmmm.

Gobbolino the Witch's Cat

2007-06-25T16:44:00.000Z

I first read this, one of my favourite children's books, when I was about seven after seeing it on the TV show 'Jackanory'. After just a chapter or two, I remember thinking that I MUST HAVE IT! I hassled my mother until she went to buy it from a bookshop. That must have been a marathon mithering session because we were too poor (or my stepfather too mean? who knows) to actually buy books. I owned fewer than twenty books by the time I was 12. But the library just wouldn't do for this book. With a fierce desire, I wanted to own this one.

Tonight, I'll be reading the final chapter to our little five-year old daughter. It's the first long book we've read with her - until now we were mainly reading the wonderful picture books by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. But my beloved baby brother Michael remembered how much I loved this book and sent it to our daughter last Christmas. So I thought we'd try it out, to see if she was ready for a long narrative - and she is.

She's very excited about bedtime tonight, to see how things work out for Gobbolino. Me, I'm watering at the mouth at the possibilities this opens up. "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" is next - she adores the film. Then perhaps "The Robber Hotzenplotz".

It's all lovely. Our older daughter didn't share my tastes in books - adventure stories. She was bored by most of the long books I tried to read to her, until we discovered Jackie Wilson. But our younger one is dying to be read Harry Potter. I think we'll give that just a couple more years, for maximum impact.

Ancient Knowledge at the Ice Cream Cafe

2007-06-24T08:41:00.001Z

Ancient Knowledge at the Ice Cream Cafe
Originally uploaded by mgharris

I have become a Flickr addict, I admit it. Especially since this morning when another member added me as a contact. I favourited some photos yesterday and a few were this guy's amazing photos of Mexico. This morning I spent ages admiring the rest of his work...check out Aleksu on www.Flickr.com

I started looking around at other stuff you can do on Flickr. Pretteh, pretteh, pretty cool! You can upload to you blog via email. Which means that if you are like me, also a CrackBerry addict, you don't need to pay to moblog!

Here's a poster I saw in G&D's ice-cream cafe yesterday. This ancient knowledge stuff is all the rage, it seems, or la bomba as we Latinos say. Let's hope it still is in 2008...to say any more might be a spoiler...

Emailed from my BlackBerry®

This could be Leo...

2007-06-21T11:20:00.001Z

This could be Leo...
Originally uploaded by mgharris

This morning, sorting through some photos I took in Cuba I came across this. I'm just writing a section of 'Jaguar' in which the hero, 'Leo', dressed in a borrowed school uniform (they are standardized across Cuba) is escaping across Cuba. 'Leo' is a blond boy, 12 years old, of Russian and Siberian descent who's lived most of his life in a secret school in Cuba.

And lookee, here he is...

My New Editing Regime...and Memories of Subcloning

2007-06-20T18:48:00.000Z

The publisher and I have agreed a deadline for Joshua bk 1 v3.0. I'm deep in the process of writing Jaguar though, and can't let the momentum go. So I try to work on Jaguar in the morning at my desk, take a two-hour break to refresh and then it's on with the editing, which seems to require a different skillset as far as I can tell.

Thank goodness for editors. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Mine is probably going to save me from being a laughing stock, if nothing else - hopefully a lot else but you can't predict these things.

I like to take my manuscript out for little walks. I can't be bothered going all the way to the Bod this time around - I'm only spending 2 hours a day on it, what with the Jaguar writing taking up all my morning brain activity. So I've been going to Summertown.

The above photo is taken of my set-up at the Summertown Wine Cafe, a bijoux little joint on South Parade which makes the best coffee in Summertown (there are many Italian coffee machines in Summertown, but few baristas who have a clue how to use them). Sadly however, they charge a small fortune for savoury food - best to stick to cake, I'm trying to avoid blimpdom so that's out.

Blah, blah, blah. Nothin of consequence in this entry sadly. I'm just writing something to have to test in a new way to do an RSS feed. If you read this, you've just participated in an experiment.

Do you feel used?

I kind of miss doing experiments. Somewhere in the back of my mind is the niggling feeling that a PROPER day's work is what I used to pull off at the height of my keenness as a graduate student...a long day in the lab which ends with a successfully identified new DNA subclone to use in a lovely biological experiment.

'Subcloning' is a way of starting with a widgey little bit of DNA that is no use to anyone and two days later having bucketloads (as much as a milligram!) of the stuff that you can use to do biological experiments in tissue culture cells or even in unsuspecting fluffy creatures. (Some journals are so fussy that you can't get published unless your results are in a live organism.)

You insert a piece of experimental DNA into a 'vector' of usually bacterial or yeast DNA which has the ability massively to replicate it. Then you can grow the 'bugs' in a 500ml culture overnight and in the morning extract enough DNA to 'transfect' cells which allow you to test the properties of your experimental DNA. The tricky bit is that when you try to stick your experimental DNA to the vector DNA, only a small fraction will combine to give you the subclone. The rest will just be vector DNA that sticks back to itself.

When I were a lass we used to pick at least 24 bacterial colonies in the hope that 2 or 3 would have the subclone. It could take up to a whole day, a day spent 'doing minipreps', as we used to call it. Sometimes you had to use radioactivity and horrible, ooky, gloopy, neurotoxic polyacrylamide gel to help identify the subclone.

(Any molecular biologists reading this, bright young things with your PCR, your DNA synthesisers and sequencing machines...it's all very easy now, I'll bet.)

But! Throughout most of career as a molecular biologist I noticed that although I was a good little scientist and picked my 24-48 colonies everytime I wanted to find a correctly subclone, more often than not, colony 1 (the first I picked with a sterile toothpick) actually had the subclone. i.e. I didn't need colonies 2-24 and all the effort in 'working them up' was not actually essential.

Other people in my lab noticed this too. It turns out that in maths the number 1 is disproportionately represented (there's some rule and it's used as a way to detect fraud), well, in molecular biology this seems true too.

Don't think we let that observation go to waste, either. Towards the end of my time in the lab, I would often just pick a colony right off, inoculate my 500ml flask and grow up the bugs without testing whether they had the subcloned DNA in them. It saved a whole day! Of course I tested a sample before I used it to transfect my tissue culture cells. Well, duh.

If you didn't understand a thing I wrote in the last few paras, tell me. R1X did, so I have tried to rewrite it so that it makes sense.

Carnival de Cuba

2007-06-17T19:16:00.000Z

Ariel Rios Robert (left) as the Orisha Eleggua, with an impromptu dance student

I know, I'm like a stuck record.

Such a fabulous weekend of partying in Southwark Park at the Carnival de Cuba with mi gente caliente de Londres (those hot-blooded Londoners), followed by a night at Salsa Republic's Afterparty at Club Colosseum where everyone turned out in style. Including (bless their colourful socks) the 8 best dancers from Ballet Rakatan who treated the clubbers to a blistering guaguanco and rueda show at 1.30am, after doing two performances that day.

(You can see the guaguanco here...from some TV show, not exactly what they did in the nightclub)

Flaked out between 12.30am and 1am...thinking...this is it...I can't take any more.

But a quick snooze put me right. Well, not really. Young children and nightclubs don't mix well - they conspire to rob you of sleep. Didn't drink a single drop of alcohol last night but this morning felt like I had a horrible hangover.

I'll be Youtubing some clips of all those Londoners grooving away in the park. (Yes, including me.)

A Brush with Cuba in Summertown

2007-06-15T13:14:00.000Z

Miladis Diaz shows paintings by Cuban artist Fuster at The North Wall of South Parade, Summertown, Oxford

A stroll into Summertown today resulted in a surprise Indian lunch at the Spice Lounge (a bargain at £4.95!), a coffee in Costa's watching Oxford Uni students spilling out of their Prelims in sub-fusc (and pink carnations...we always wore red or white...since when is it pink?) and then a drop-in to an art exhibition on South Parade where one of Cuba's premier artists, Fuster, is showing his work.

(see The Colours of Life, in Oxford until 24th June)

Miladis and I had a nice chat about Havana and Cuban art. I told her I was writing a book set in Cuba and this morning had written a scene set in a 'country school', where high-school students are used as unpaid labour to harvest coffee for the state-owned industry. I admired her name, as exotic as are many Cuban names.

"The truth is, lots of them are made-up," she said, blushing.
"And they're the better for it," I said.
"I'm not so sure. You get all these silly ones, starting with Y... it's a generational thing," she said. "People in their twenties and younger. Ynieski, Yulieski, Yolexis, Yoanni, Yumiel, Yadel, Yonelki, Yunior..."
It was my turn to blush. "I used the name Yoannis for one of my characters," I admitted, "And I know a Yunior..."

Miladis gave me the phone number of her friend in Havana for next time we're there. Her friend is a biologist who writes children's books, as coincidence would have it!

Jaguar - the Midpoint...

2007-06-14T09:29:00.000Z

Reaching the Midpoint of a story is always deeply satisfying (for me). You're beyond the part where you feel you've broken the back of the manuscript, in terms of wordcount you're halfway there if not more, the end starts to loom into view.

More than this though, if you've constructed the plot properly, this is where things should seeeriously take off. If you have, the Midpoint should include a spine-tingling reveal, (simply delicious to write)and then the pace should ratchet up a notch, stakes increase, excitement factor nudged up a level...all of which makes the story easier to write.

In past manuscripts, when I've reached the Midpoint, typically I find that I can painlessly add another 500 words to my daily target.

Well, today I need to write the Midpoint of Project Jaguar. I'm not sure I'm worthy of it. Looking at what the plot calls for, I'm feeling way too fuzzy to write it well. Battling some virus or other...right eye infected, bloodshot and sore...committee meeting to chair later this afternoon.

A Midpoint is to be relished. I think the writer has to enjoy it, before anyone else. If you don't have fun telling it the story, how can anyone have fun hearing it?

So...gosh. I'll have to take a break. Get some inspiration. Maybe go to a juice bar in town and buy Haruki Murakami's new book?

How to be thin - don't eat enough

2007-06-14T08:02:00.000Z

Well it's all downhill for me, intellectually speaking. I'm experiencing a strange symptom of what is probably an early-onset form of dementia. It's this: I've completely lost the ability to guesstimate how much pasta to cook to feed a family of four.

I used to be an overestimater, if anything. I figured that extra was always good, because you could always make tomorrow's lunch. But now through no intentional action of mine, I'm an underestimator. When I cook pasta - which is something I cook at least three times a week - even though they all howl with disappointment. Not just that it's pasta (boo!) but that there's not enough. They're always still hungry.

It reminded me of when I was growing up. We were never, ever given meals that left us feeling satisfied. My stepfather had grown up during the post-war rationing period and believed in small portions. (It was different in Mexico, obviously, where you could eat until you popped and proud relatives would stand by going 'Look how well she eats!')

But I was stick-thin until I was about 20, so this not-eating-enough thing clearly has something going for it. I'm sticking to the underestimating and telling my family to be glad of going to bed hungry. I try to fool them by heaping salad on top so they don't notice the pitiful serving of pasta underneath. When they complain, I growl, "S'more than I used to get, so think on!"
They don't listen though, these kids. They head for the cupboard and eat big spoonfuls of peanut butter.

P.S. No-one suggest using a balance, please. Weighing ingredients is for cissies who can't cook in anything but a properly-equipped kitchen. That's not the way I was taught Domestic Science by Mrs Blackwell. It's acceptable to weigh amounts for confectionary and high-end baking - say French pastries - but nothing else.

The principle can transfer to some aspects of laboratory work. I speak as one who even learned to make tissue culture medium and bacterial growth broths by flicking out The Right Amount, who added DNA and restriction enzymes in amounts we referred to in the lab as A Smidgeon, A Wodge and A S***load. (a s***load was 10 microlitres, just to give you the scale)

Pokemon Revisited

2007-06-13T19:19:00.000Z

I've got a real soft spot for Pokemon. Oh, I don't keep up with it now. Where are they...Johto? Probably far beyond that. But I remember being addicted to the first few seasons. I even remember being bitterly disappointed at the lameness of Pokemon - The Movie. Our eldest daughter (now fourteen) collected trading cards (the excitement of her first Charizard!)and stickers, all the Gameboy games, had the soundtrack and everything.

Time was, I even knew part of the Poke-Rap. I reckon I watched every episode of the first two seasons with my eldest girl. That's over 100 episodes!

So today, when our little one (aged 5) asked to hear the Jigglypuff song and wanted to hug a cuddly Pikachu she found in her mountain of inherited soft toys. I felt a stab of nostalgia for:

Squirtle and Jigglypuff
Any episode featuring the childhood memories of James of Team Rocket - especially the one where he is going to be married off and ends up cross-dressing - again

The brilliantly kitschy songs in the first two seasons

I remember one of our accountants back then sitting in a pub with me and chuntering over the phenomenon. "It'll all blow over, won't it," he said. "Like Beanie Babies?" "I don't know," I told him. "It's got a richly detailed world and story. It could have longevity."

Well, it may not be the worldwide phenomenon it was years ago, but as far as I'm aware, it's still going pretty strong. And from the way our five-year old went to bed singing the Jigglypuff song to herself tonight, I think we may be in for a major revisitation of Pokemon round our way.

Rare books mark climactic page in archaeology's history

2007-06-13T06:49:00.000Z

This article in the Boston University Bridge caught my eye two years back and inspired a chapter in 'Todd Garcia, Boy Archaeologist', a chapter which didn't make it to the first two drafts of 'The Joshua Files'.

The article describes how a book collector came across a super-rare copy of a book by the explorer who kicked off the whole field of Mayan archaeology, John Lloyd Stephens. The bookstore didn't recognise quite what they had in their shop, not having realised that the apparently insignificant inscription in the flyleaf was from the author to President Martin Van Buren.

Only two copies of this book ('Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan') would be more valuable and are in fact still missing...the author's own copy and the one he gave to his friend and collaborator, the artist Frederick Catherwood.

In real life they are still missing. In 'The Joshua Files', however, one of these might be hiding, unnoticed in a second-hand bookshop in Jericho, Oxford...

And today, that deleted chapter (rewritten for Joshua) will be making its way into Invisible City version 3.0.

(Provided I don't get tempted by something else, like an afternoon at the pool. Fingers crossed for rain...)

WOW! Havana Rakatan

2007-06-11T19:02:00.000Z

Promotional video for Ballet Rakatan

We saw the terrific dance show Havana Rakatan in London on Saturday. Performed and choreographed by a Cuban ballet troupe who specialise in folkloric dance, it demonstrates the evolution of dance in Cuba. From the fusion between Spanish dances like flamenco and African rhythms and dance from the Santeria religion, the show charts the development of dances including son, mambo, cha-cha-cha, rumba and salsa.

It covers similar ground to the show Lady Salsa but in a more balletic manner, without any explanatory narrative. The music is performed by son band Turquino, a tight ensemble who play a hugely impressive set.

The dancers are all gorgeous, but my favourites were Joel and Yordy. It was hard to take my eyes off the beautiful men, (especially during the little striptease at the beginning where, breathing hard after a strenuous introductory number, the men line up at the front, slowly unbutton their shirts to much audience encouragement, and strip to the waist, revealing a row of the most delectable torsos you're likely to see this side of Cuba...)

I did occasionally watch the women too, who were pretty darn fabulous.

Act 1 focuses on the African dances of the Orisha deities who intercede, in the Santeria/Lukumi religion, between humans and the creator God. That very morning I'd written a scene featuring a Santeria chant to Ochun. Watching Havana Rakatan, I was delighted to hear that very chant being used to open the sequence of breathtaking dances of the Orishas.

(It is also the chant at the beginning of Adalberto Alvarez's santeria-rap-salsa composition, 'Y Que Tu Quieres Que Te Den'.)

Act 1 alone is worth the ticket price. To see these dances performed by the world experts in Afro-Cuban folkloric dance is a huge treat. The music adds another level. I was simply astonished at how well Turquino and their singers performed this Afro-Cuban music. Mesmerizing is the only word for it. I could have listened to them for hours. At one point five singers (including two percussionists) joined in, singing tight close-harmony. Spellbinding!

The other highlight is the blistering performance of rumba near the end. Echoing their earlier roles as warring Orishas, the two lead dancers performed a rumba contest, including the fastest tembleque (shaking of the shoulders and pelvis) I've ever seen.

It's on at the Peacock Theatre in London's West End, until 23rd June. I may have to go again...

The reviews use words like 'dazzling' 'spectacular' 'rip-roaring'. They're NOT exaggerating.

(NB If you go on a Wednesday, Thursday or Friday there are salsa classes, DJ and dancing 'til late.)

The Secret

2007-06-11T06:45:00.000Z

Whilst dining together at a Lebanese restaurant in Andalucia to celebrate her wedding for the third time, my lovely friend Alison turned to me and asked me if I knew of the secret.

Ummmm, no, I said.

"I mean, 'The Secret' - a movie, now a book too - it's a publishing phenomenon."

I didn't know anything about it, living as I do in a claustrophobic fog of adventure stories, school governance and salsa dancing.

Well, I've been missing out, by the sounds of things.

From Wikipedia:

The Secret, described as a self-help film,[2][3] uses a documentary format to present the "Law of Attraction." This law is the "secret" that, according to the tagline, "has traveled through centuries to reach you." The film features short dramatized experiences and interviews of a "dizzying dream team of personal transformation specialists, spiritual messengers, feng shui masters, and moneymaking experts".[4] As put forth in the film, the "Law of Attraction" principle posits that people's feelings and thoughts attract real events in the world into their lives; from the workings of the cosmos to interactions among individuals in their physical, emotional, and professional affairs. The film also suggests that there has been a strong tendency by those in positions of power to keep this central principle hidden from the public. The previews or "clues" to the film, show men who "uncovered the Secret...".

Oh.My.Giddy.Aunt. It's prayer for the secular! That is too, too wonderful.

There's so much I could say about this...but I won't be tempted. I'll just relate the rest of mine and Alison's conversation. (We were enjoying the best part of a bottle of vino tinto at the time.)

"So I don't need to work hard on making my novels exciting...and the publishers don't need to work hard marketing them...all we need to do is to visualize the book being a big success...?"

Alison nodded. "Visualize your success. Don't let any negative thoughts interfere at all! Don't have anything to do with people who cause you to experience negative thoughts or feelings!"

"Visualize my success...?" I repeated. It surely can't be that simple. But according to Alison, that's just what The Secret is all about. If you visualize it enough and with enough of the right vibes (and none of the wrong vibe), the universe will align itself with your wishes. Don't ask how, but I'm sure there's an underlying pseudo-scientific explanation designed to bamboozle.

"Visualize it...massively," Alison said. "Look, I'm doing what I can, babe. I'm already visualizing you paying for us all to come here again next year..."

The following day, more sober, Alison pointed out the flaw in The Secret.

"Anyone who's ever experienced unrequited love knows that it's a load of hooey. I've spent most of my life fantasizing about various women, visualizing and everything...and it never worked!"

I thought about this for a second. "But did you ever consider asking any of these women...?"

Alison's face fell. "Wha...? No... You think I should have...?"

The Secret. It's one of those things that only works if you put in the hard work also. As with prayer - God helps those who help themselves.

Timba and the challenges of escapist music

2007-06-10T10:37:00.000Z

While researching the Orishas of the Santeria religion I came across this fascinating academic article about the origins and social impact of timba music.

One of the things that I find intriguing about the popularity of Afro-Cuban music and dance in the non-Spanish-speaking world is that the music and rhythms clearly have the power to transcend the language barrier. Watching people dancing away I sometimes wonder - do people have a clue what the lyrics are saying? Does it matter? Are they somehow getting the ache (the spirit) of the song without understanding the lyric?

If you've ever wondered, I highly recommend this article, which

"makes the case of timba as a type of non-engaged music which, while presenting itself as emphatically escapist, during the 1990s has in fact become intensely political in the way it has articulated a discourse challenging dominant views on race, class, gender and nation."

http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans9/perna.htm

That's what I'M talking about...

2007-06-08T08:12:00.000Z

Just came across this Youtube video entitled, Reggaeton in Cuba, 3 hot girls dancing in a disco.

The first two girls dance about as well as I might hope to dance one day if I keep practicing 30 mins a day. (Oh let's face it, I'm dreaming.)

The third girl, especially when she gets going, looks to me like a professional dancer. She is awesome!

The band is Charanga Habanera, timba geniuses, and according to the debate on Youtube, the dance is known as reparto. But it looks like what we in the UK refer to as reggaeton.

Dale reggaeton!

New Content? Did I say 'New content'?

2007-06-08T07:47:00.000Z

The comments on Joshua book 1 version 2.0 are in. After a lengthy meeting over fennel tea and swiss chocolates (aren't we girly?), The Editor and I had a frank discussion of what still isn't working as well as it could. And from this emerged, yesterday, my new draft of the plot for v3.0. The exciting part for me is that it calls for New Content.

Yesiree. Editing where you're just cutting is no fun, not to me anyway. There's a sort of masochistic pleasure to it. Ha! I'll cut out my favourite chapter then, see if I care! That sort of thing. But adding in New Content is lovely. I wrote one new chapter for version 2.0 and writing that was the best bit.

But version 3.0 calls for the restoration - in suitable form - of two sequences which originally appeared in 'Todd Garcia, Boy Archaeologist', the oft-rejected ms which provided the central concept for 'The Joshua Files'.

And they're two really fun sequences, too. I'm relocating one to an even more evocative setting - originally set in a Cotswold village, it will now be set in Oxford's-canal based neighbourhood, Jericho.

It's my first experience of being edited, and I'm really impressed with the attention to detail in a second edit. Little things get picked up, like the consistency of a particular character's diction.

I'm going to film myself writing one of these new chapters and put it on Youtube after the book is launched. I got the idea from my mate Noam, about whom I posted a few weeks back. I might even go to Jericho to write it, on my little red laptop.

Hmmmm.

(In an aside, Caitlin Moran writes in The Times Online:

"Big Brotherly love
Quick note to all those who are saying that they are “Not going to watch Big Brother this year, actually” – YOU ARE DELUSIONAL. Get out of denial and put the telly on."

To which I say...Get behind me, Satan!

Oh help. It's Friday night - eviction night. Must find salsa event to attend....)

I am becoming an airhead with the attention span of a five-year old

2007-06-07T12:20:00.000Z

Actually, my five-year old daughter has a longer attention span than me.

Sometimes I wonder what on earth has become of me. I used to listen to Bach and Mozart and Palestrina and sing in choirs and have a season ticket to the orchestra and read a book a month at least, as well as a bunch of scientific papers, watch TV for hours at a stretch and have dinner parties where people tried to make intelligent conversation.

Well, stuff all that. Now it's work, family and salsa.

My friend Nathan has the same issue. We did the middle-aged stuff in our twenties and now we live for our nights out on the town. My friend Dr. Rebecca too, who won the Gibbs prize for Biochemistry in our year at Uni - she's out dancing 3 or 4 times a week, hooking up with Cuban hotties and whatnot...

I can't watch TV for more than 30 mins without having to get up and see who's on MSN. I prefer simultaneously to chat to my cousins on MSN, read blogs and post to my own, and watch Youtube videos than to watch TV. (I KNOW!!! What the heck?!)

And...gah...I haven't finished reading a novel for ages. I can still read non-fiction, just.

I probably need a brain scan. I think the pod people have got me.

But you know what? I feel like Tom in that Tom&Jerry cartoon where Tom inherits a million dollars, on condition that he does no harm to a living creature, EVEN A MOUSE, and after struggling to restrain himself, he gives in and goes back to persecuting Jerry, saying "I'm throwing away a million dollars...BUT I'M HAPPY!"

Now. Who's on MSN...?

Left Brain, Right Brain

2007-06-06T19:10:00.000Z

Beth, looking pretty much as she did 20 years ago... Full moon on the beach at Conil de la Frontera.

Well it's a funny coincidence because after a discussion with an old friend last week during a moonlit, firelit beach party (with flamenco music) in Andalucia, the same topic came up in the latest Litopia podcast (005).

Beth, a Bostonian woman I hadn't seen for 20 years since we briefly crossed paths at St Catz, Oxford, now works as the foreign media officer in a hospital in the US. She produces short movies about the hospitals healthcare offerings. She'd known me 20 years ago as a biochemist and was intrigued to hear that I was now going to be an author. "So you can do left brain stuff as well as right brain," she said, fascinated.

I bet most of us can, although some scientists I know probably can't. My brother-in-law, for example, who admits to 'outsourcing' all his emotions to my wonderfully sensitive, touchy-feely sister. (He won't mind me saying this, but he might have to check with my sister if he's supposed to be cross about it...)

I admitted to her that I have a very 'left brain' approach to writing, in that I'm massively structural. Beth seemed very surprised that it could work this way, so I explained.

Where did the 'muse' come into it, that's what Beth wanted to know.

It's an interesting question. I was reflecting with Agent Cox the other day that when I read back my writing, months later, I mean, I look at it in wonder and think, "Did I really write this?"

Not that I'm making a value judgement, just that all that time later, I can't see what part of me those words came from. I've begun to think that some weird entity takes over me when I sit down to write. Now - the entity has its instructions - because the structure is all in place by the time I start to write. But aside from two or three lines dictating what must happen in the next 1500 words, the entity is free to get on with it, and it does, and I don't seem to have a lot of conscious input. I guess that's the right brain taking over. It's verrrry strange.

Borges wrote this wonderful little essay 'Borges and I', in which he described how strange it felt to be the writer in this relationship with his famous self. There was the Borges who went and gave talks and was received over the world and lauded. Then there was he, Borges, who wrote the words that made that other Borges so famous. And the writer-Borges didn't always feel that connected to the famous-Borges.

When I first thought about all this, I hadn't thought of it in terms of left-brain/right-brain. (Well, duh, I am gradually becoming a hedonistic airhead, in case no-one had noticed). But I guess it kind of is.

Capoiera in Oxford

2007-06-05T20:19:00.000Z

Here's a video I made last year of the Oxford capoeira players demonstrating their sport in Summertown. The hero of "The Joshua Files" is a capoeirista. I love watching this sport, something I became interested in when on a business trip to the USA. I had this really tense meeting to go to and I couldn't sleep, so watched this bad-but-fascinating movie called "Only the Strong", all about a school teacher who motivates a gang of rough kids through capoeira that he's learned in the street gangs of Brazil.

I really love writing the capoeira sections of Joshua.

(Yes, the compression sucks on this version, I don't quite know how to fix it. Looks fine when I run it locally... Any suggestions welcome.)

Maikel Blanco Y Su Salsa Mayor

2007-06-03T12:55:00.000Z

Maikel Blanco y Su Salsa Mayor (Maikel on keyboards)

(Yes, I'm still going on about Cuba...)

I finally found the name of the salsa band who played in Casa de la Musica the night I first took my teenage daughter to Galiano in Havana. Yes, naughty me, I passed her for 18 when she's only 14 and introduced her to a world of loud timba music, the best dancing in Havana, the raunchy dance moves of Bustamente and Yoandy who were grinding away with their latest dance pupils (who we met weeks later in Oxford), the Cuban hottie who tried to get my daughter to fall for him...and to this amazing timba band Maikel Blanco Y Su Salsa Mayor, who had us mesmerized.

Their hit son "Eso Esta" (This Is...) is my FAVOURITE salsa song to dance to. I hear this and I have to dance... Here's the video of "Eso Esta".

Soneando en Oxford - Claro Que Si!

2007-06-03T12:41:00.000Z

What a pleasure last night to see a halfway decent homegrown salsa band - Soneando.

The creation of a Bristol-based keyboard player, Sara and two British conga/bongo players, Soneando also feature Jimmy, a Columbian bass player and Cuban tres-player and frontman (I think they called him Jesus...?). Yesterday they added in a terrific singer from Santiago de Cuba whose sultry, high voice blended brilliantly in the harmonies with the two male singers. It was a set of classics of Cuban son, but with groovy piano lines and pretty-darn-good improvisations.

They were as good as any small (i.e. non-famous) band we saw in Cuba. Seriously.

After dancing son all night, David and I felt as though we'd been at the Casa de la Trova in Santiago de Cuba - another place with zero air conditioning.

I went to talk to the lead singer afterwards. "You guys were great!" I said. He shook his head, embarrassed. "No...we were RUBBISH!".

A Cuban from Las Tunas, he was amazed and then sceptical to hear that I'd liked Las Tunas, through which we'd passed on the bus to Santiago, about two months ago. Jesus has a nice line in stage patter - in English too. He likes the word "Wha'eva".

The Illustrated Ape is here!

2007-05-24T20:39:00.000Z

(photos a bit rubbishy cos I took them with my BlackBerry, but you get the idea; latest issue is North vs South. They put my story in with the Southerners! Me? A soft southerner? Eeee...)

Christian Pattison and I go way back to our first day at St Catz, when I was 18. I think I may even have met Christian before I met my husband, which happened on day 3.

He hasn't changed much; still madly enthusiastic for art and culture in all its forms, still has the looks of a Panzer Fuhrer or a Nordic god, and the build of a muscle-bound, black-belt martial arts dude...which he actually is. By day he takes care of a severely disabled man, by night (and on his days off) he writes his novel on his iPaq and edits and co-runs The Illustrated Ape, one of the world's leading fringe arts/literary magazine.

(website still under construction as I write, a big Ape party planned for when it launches)

Christian may not know it, but he had a big influence in inspiring me to write. He was in the Very Cool Arty Crowd at college, which you had to be studying English to be in, more or less. As a (northern) biochemist, I should have been beyond the pale but Christian always talked to me about art and literature as though I might actually have a clue (I didn't and still don't but he's nice enough to act as though I do). He carried on talking to me years after we left college, both still living in Oxford. When he and a friend started Ape years ago, we bumped into each other and Christian enthused about getting me to write some graphic novel-style Blake's 7 stories for Ape (which I did until the copyright holders had a stuff word after 3 issues...)

Anyway, I'm a big fan of Christian's, can't wait to read his finished novel and I hope he finds a publisher, and I hope The Illustrated Ape goes from strength to strength. It's sold in over 150 outlets, and in 30 countries.

I've a short story published in the latest version. My first short story published under my own name! It's illustrated by two guys from the Black Convoy urban graffiti guys. (Black Convoy are a a UK based multi-disciplined art/design collective.) The image at the top is from their brilliantly funky work on my story.

Buy The Illustrated Ape! It's way, way cool.

P.S .At breakfast today Christian told me that he met Joseph Heller when Heller spent some time at St Catz, before he died. Heller told Christian that he never wrote more than 300 words a day. I've been trying to match Graham Greene's manageable 500-words daily target. Now I feel like an overachiever. A smug one, at that.

Big Brother Is Back

2007-05-24T06:47:00.000Z

For the love of God, let me not be tempted by Big Brother this year. It's wicked and venial and I know I shouldn't participate. It's bad for me and wastes hours of my time.

I'd love to join those smug people who don't watch it and go around being very lofty about their non-participation.

Arggghhhh...but I'd rather not...I wanna be one of the people who are having fun, especially on eviction night!

It's not easy being a Catholic and a hedonist. More or less constant temptation! I must ask my brother-in-law for advice - he's really good on loopholes in canon law.

When You Just Have To Go To Bali

2007-05-20T17:43:00.000Z

On the phone today to my brother-in-law in Perth, Western Australia, I found myself once again being drawn into one of his hedonistic schemes.

It's my family's turn to make the trip across the planet so that we can all spend some quality time together. But Paul has a better idea. It seems that there's been a distinct shortfall in his family's experience of sumptuous luxury this year. They've been slumming it in their suburban house in Perth, where they don't even have a swimming pool, poor things, watching goanas try to find cover in what used to be a wild back yard, as builders put up the cheapest possible (I'm assured) extension known to Western Australia. My sister has had to do all the decorating, whilst Paul is kept busy by his nascent biotech firm.

There's been a serious lack of pampering, of decadence, of perfumed air, gentle gamelan music and serenading musicians as you eat lightly steamed fish with flavours like lemongrass, saffron and mango. There's been a shortage of surfing in conditions that Paul explained to me (in detail) were nigh on perfect between March and December.

"You want us to meet you in Bali," I guessed.

"The Hilton," he said, "wasn't quite luxurious enough last time."

Last time, I remember arriving at what looked like a modern-day temple of extravagance, being met from the airport limo by gorgeous young women in sarongs who placed frangipani flowers in our hands and gave us warm, lemon-scented towels to soothe our fevered brows as we endured the hotel's checking-in process, pressing chilled glasses with tropical fruit mocktails into our weary hands.

Paul continued, "Since then, it's been taken over by someone else and they've turned the decadence up a few notches."

"I don't think we can quite run to the Hilton," I said. "The Melia?"

Paul checked with my sister. The answer was no. They'd been to the Melia. It's not up to the job. But if we choose to slum it, they'll be down the beach at Nusa Dua, where we can visit them. In a proper hotel.

Cup Final Day...and I Have Writer's Block

2007-05-19T07:52:00.000Z

Oh I am in such big trouble. Meant to be going to Brighton today for a wedding. (Yes! I won't be able to watch the FA Cup Final...gaaaahhhhh!) So I'm trying to hit my 500 word daily target on Jaguar but can I write? NO!

I'm stuck in some loop of memory, thinking about my aunty who died recently, and the university where she used to work, and how from the first moment I saw St Catherine's College, Oxford, where I did my undergrad degree, it brought back powerful memories of a place which had meant so much to my family, before it was destroyed by an earthquake.

Compare and contrast...

St Catz (top) vs the late, lamented, earthquake-clobbered Universidad Iberoamericana (bottom).

...and...that's it! Out of time, have to go. Come on you Reds.

My Mate Noam

2007-05-18T15:22:00.000Z

There's a guy on my street who has two boys. We've all been friends for years and we've watched his boys grow up, he's watched our girls grow up - even saw our youngest the day she was born. We're all fans of Man United so we got together for all those big games in 1999, when we won the treble. As one, we lept into the air like crazed loons when Ole Gunnar Solskjaer scored the winning goal against Bayern Munich.

The oldest boy's name is Noam, because his parents are friends and admirers of Chomsky. (So we can't hold that against Noam...)

Noam and I chatted today on MSN - he's in Edinburgh studying biomedical sciences right now. Like many guys his age he doesn't stay in this country for long - it's one long world-wide trip punctuated by the odd few weeks taking classes in Uni. He showed me his Youtube page, which has two of the most innovative videos I've seen.

Check this one out. It's a video-meta-email! He calls it a facetube.
I love it - so clever, it works on several levels. (Goes long though - Noam, cut the end!)

This next one crack whore made me roar with laughter.
It plays with the notion of bilinguality. If you don't speak Spanish, all you need to know is that the conversation between Noam, his Mum and his gran is actually about the gran being cross that Mum has put Gran up in her own bed. Not about being a crack whore at all. If you speak Spanish you'll get the joke even more.

I've known Noam since he was about 11. Watching children you know well grow up really IS wonderful. A great comfort to those of us this far along the aging process...

Non-Stop Solemn Salsa

2007-05-16T07:55:00.000Z

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...

Septeto Santiaguero

2007-05-15T07:30:00.000Z

This one's for motorpilot from Litopia.

Septeto Santiaguero

Forget Buena Vista Social Club - founding members Compay, Ruben, Pio and Ibrahim have all passed away. The best son band in the world is Septeto Santiaguero. Contemporary son compositions played in a upbeat, energised way, hugely danceable. We saw these guys on our last night in Santiago, in the famous Casa de la Trova.

Here's a video from their latest CD 'Los Mangos Bajitos'. It's a wonderful guaracha called 'El Culpable'.

('I get the blame for everything; I get the blame for my own stuff, I get the blame for everyone's stuff, caramba - I get the blame for EVERYTHING!

They say I'm vain, cos I dress like a lad, they say I'm capricious, a drunk...

They say I'm a low-life, stuck me with it, cos I fancy my mate's woman...

Someone loses a wallet, they mutter that I took it, without noticing that the wallet has an owner - me!')

Pie Season

2007-05-15T06:55:00.000Z

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'.

Living Like Bloody Millionaires...

2007-05-13T11:21:00.000Z

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...

Pupy y Los Que Son Son

2007-05-12T19:10:00.000Z

A small break from thinking about superhero films. (Hint: there are only three different comic books in the final 5 - getting the order right, that's the thing.)

To reminisce about Cuba (again) and about how great Pupy y Los Que Son Son are. I've been listening to their terrific CD Mi Timba 'Cerra'. It's so amazing, really hot salsa/timba, infectiously danceable. Almost as good as Los Van Van's Chapeando.

Here's the video for the delicious De La Timba A Pogolotti.

Pupy (Cesar Pedroso) is the greatest. This is what I love about salsa; some of the biggest stars are in their 60s. My daughter and I saw Celia Cruz on stage in London when she was in her 70s. She danced all the way through the show!

Like any of you care. I have to get some fellow salseros reading this blog.

Meanwhile, here's a photo of one of their three soneros (improvisational lead singers) - my favourite, Pepito. He's like a fiery, red-haired gypsy from Andalucia. This is actually taken in Casa de La Musica, Galiano, where my teenage daughter and I danced the night away with two Cuban hotties. While my lovely husband babysat. What a star!

Top Ten Superhero Films Part 1

2007-05-10T15:45:00.000Z

Let's count down.

10. The Shadow (1994)
I like that The Shadow isn't a victim of a horrible accident or scientific experiment gone wrong. I don't quite understand where his powers come from and the film doesn't really explain properly, which is all to the good - leaves some ambiguity. Is he some reincarnated warrior, or an immortal? Why does he change from handsome Lamont into ugly-mug Shadow? But the psychic aspect is really intriguing. The 30s-art-deco thing is done perfectly here, not overstated but consistently elegant. Alec Baldwin when he was still very hot, is deliciously inaccessible to the feisty blond sidekick who wants to get her paws on him. This movie is under-rated as far as I'm concerned. A certain amount of cheesiness is called for in superhero movies.

9. Batman Returns (1992)
Utterly classic! For Batman fans, this has it all - the scenes of Arkham Asylum - the lunatic, disfigured baddie (Penguin), the introduction of the sublime Catwoman (Michell Pfeiffer giving Julie Newmark a run for her money), and Batman before he became, as he is wont to do, a self-parody.

What is about The Bat that makes him eventually descend into bad self-parody? The new incarnation of Batman was allegedly influenced by Frank Miller, great reinventor of Brucie as a tough, angsty crusader. But by the third movie all that was forgotten and we were lurching back into Adam West territory. So now, with Batman Begins, we're back with the Miller-esque Batman. Let's hope it sticks. But 1992 was still a heyday for long-time Bruce Wayne fans like me.

8. Batman Begins
Comic books films grow up! said the critics. hey! Who said we wanted them to? This explores not just the origins of Batman and his early years, allegedly based on Frank Miller's Batman Year One (and presumably Year Two, not written by Miller, but which introduces Ras Al Guhl to the early-Batman lore). Quasi serious and quite violent action movie. Brilliantly explores the psychological dimension of Bruce Wayne's incarnation as the Batman, in a similar way to the best Batman comics.

7. X-Men (2000)
Now I'll confess to never having read X-Men comics. I don't like multi-protagonist comic books; there I've said it. With the exception of the brilliant Watchmen. This is my beef with Marvel. If one hero is good then two is better, seems to be the prevailing thinking. I always worry when I pick up a Daredevil that shows MM battling a few demons with the help of Spidey et al. Oh, boo, demons v the Marvel crowd, I go. So I don't read JLA or XMen or Fantastic Four.

I prefer my superheroes to fly solo and preferably to be in big trouble, suffering. (Which is why Miller's Daredevil is my favourite stretch of comic books stories ever)

This meant that I didn't expect the movie of X-Men to be so damn great! Who knew?! It's awesome. If I had time I'd go back and read the comics. But I don't. And now I'm probably too old to properly enjoy them.

Part of the movie's brilliance are the performances of Ian McKellan, Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman, amongst others. But the writing and effects are also terrific.

6. Superman (1978)
People forget how amazing this was. It was fabulous! Christopher Reeve made it look simple to be goofy Clark Kent and Superman too, but it was a genius performance. And Marlon Brando as Jor-El, the whole Krypton thing, Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor. This is where great superhero movies all began.

A Guilt-Free Pastime

2007-05-10T15:31:00.000Z

Watching an Almodovar movie late last night, I dimly remember hearing a terrific line before sleep overwhelmed me. It was something like "A real Chanel? Babe, how am I going to justify spending money on a real Chanel with all the suffering that there is in the world."

It's a hilarious line, intentionally so. But I know people who actually think like that - for real. Well, one person at least (and she's Spanish too). imagine living your entire life with that kind of anxiety. Obviously, you can't GO to the movies. That would mean spending a shocking amount of money for something that you've already paid for, if you own a TV.

Which is why I've decided to spend the afternoon giving some serious thought to the Top Ten Superhero Films. As a pastime, it's almost guilt-free - I don't even have to hunt for a carbon-offsetting website onto which to download my guilt. If I decide I want to watch one of these movies, I can download one or walk to the local video rental place. Somehow I'll have to live with the guilt of the electricity that I use to play the DVD, or the computer I'm using to write this blog.

I mean, it's not even solar-powered. Just shocking.

Spidey 3 - Best Comic Book Movie Ever?

2007-05-08T19:35:00.000Z

Spiderman 3 starts with such sunshine and happiness in the eyes of young Peter Parker that you just know things are going to get real, real bad.

But what a movie! It has romance, massive action including Green Goblin (2) on his board, two laugh-out-loud-for-ages-funny comedy scenes, pathos; heck, it's got it all!

In the tradition of Marvel superhero comics, the climactic scenes feature a titanic battle between the improbably-abled, unfortunate victims of scientific-experiments-gone-horribly wrong. In this case, that would be Green Goblin (2), Spidey, Venom and Sandman (not Neil Gaiman's...the Marvel one).

Those clashes-of-titans can be a a bore to read for the 'mature' comic book reader, but heck, they look good onscreen. What makes it much, much better here is that, true to the recent vogue in some comic books - since the early days of Frank Miller and Alan Moore - the superheroes are motivated solely by human tragedies and personal demons. The whole story is constructed on the relationships between the characters.

And no sign of a Pinky-and-the-Brain plot, whatsoever.

(Pinky: " Gee Brain, what do you want to do tonight?"
The Brain: "The same thing we do every night, Pinky - Try to take over the world!")

PS. I've just remembered Superman 2. (Old-skool Superman, the one when Supe gives up his superpowers so that he can ahem! Lois Lane). Is Spidey 3 better...? Hmm, tough call.

Bank Holiday In The Telly Zone

2007-05-07T20:11:00.000Z

I've never been comfortable with the English obsession for fresh air and walks but my English stepfather did a good enough job impressing these as ideals for the family weekend that I still feel guilty if we haven't put the time in on one such activity.

"I don't want to go for a walk," our little five year-old says. "I want to watch TV."
"You're not expected to enjoy it," we tell her, tersely. "It's just the rules. At weekends you have to go for a walk."

Rain, of course, is the big saviour in such a situation.

I looked at the sky hopefully this morning, for any sign of being rained in. But no. Then I thought, heck, why can't I watch TV all blessed day, if I want to? I'm grown-up now!

So I did. Ahh, bliss. Three episodes of Doctor Who season three - which I'd been saving up, and the final two episodes of Stargate SG1. Yes, that's how far behind I was on my TV viewing, on account of Cuba and writing and even reading.

I like the new Doctor Who assistant, Martha. I like that she's allowed to be smart and ask technical questions and actually understand the explanations. I loved "As far as I'm concerned you have to earn the title 'Doctor'" Too right, Martha; ask to see his MD/PhD certificate!

"Smith and Jones" was a good new-assistant introduction episode. Hospital teleported to the moon because it's beyond the Earth-bound jurisdiction - pretteh, pretteh good. Haven't seen that before.

"The Shakespeare Code"...hmmm. Liked the Harry Potter references and the witchy magick as another manifestation of alien power, but the ending... "You're dead clever, Shakespeare, you'll think of the right thing to say!" The problem is that it's a strategy that can only disappoint in execution. What would the writer of Shakespeare's plays say in such an event? We can never know...we can only guess and that just can't be good enough.

"Gridlock". Brilliantly original concept, or at least I've never come across its like. Stuck in traffic for years...the obvious solution would be to walk, but as we understand at the end, walking ain't an option. That Face of Boe...he's such a tease. "You are not alone..." Could that mean that the Master is still around? The Black Guardian? White Guardian? Rassilon? All of the above?

I don't get why the Doctor can't go to Gallifrey in the past. Maybe I'm missing out on some bit of DW lore here, not that the RTD version is necessarily sticking to old DW canon (and that's fine with me), but is there some reason why if Gallifrey is destroyed in the year, lets say, 1 billion, it can't exist in the past? Did the Time War erase Gallifrey from the space-time continuum for all time? If so how can the Daleks come to exist in the first place? The Doctor was present at the Genesis of the Daleks and if I remember correctly he was sent there by the Gallifreyans.

I'm painfully aware that all of the above will be discussed at length on some DW discussion board. But I'm not going to look. I'm NOT.

The Stargate-SG1 finale was inspired. Wow, Sam Carter has to take a realistic amount of time to work out a solution to a fiendishly difficult problem! What's wrong with you, woman? Ten seasons of performing scientific miracles, coming up with solutions of pure genius with nothing more than "Major Carter, we need that fix right now... ten seconds before the galaxy explodes..." to spur her on. But finally, finally, finally, she goes "Hmm...tricky one...gonna have to think about that." Fifty years later, she figures it out.

Yes, you see that IS how long scientific advancement actually takes.

Luckily, Rodney McKay of Stargate Atlantis can still be relied upon for the just-in-time Nobel-prize-worthy fix. Wait until he hears how long it took Carter to solve that problem. His ego will finally rest easy - he IS smarter than her! It may be all that's needed for him to finally be able to woo her - an excuse to drop all his insecure posturing when he's around her.

I can still get a couple of episodes of "Life on Mars" in before bed, to make today a day in which I've watched as much TV as in the last month.

I didn't do my chores. And we ate a whole bag of Thorntons peanut brittle.

Bridge to Terabithia - I cried AGAIN!

2007-05-06T20:50:00.000Z

If you are reading this blog post when 'Bridge to Terabithia' is still playing in the cinema, and you haven't seen it, may I make a suggestion?

Move AWAY from the computer. Get your purse/jacket/wallet and head out to see it. Right now.

This is the best children's movie I've seen for years and not only made me cry but is beautifully adapted for the screen, and captures perfectly what it is like to be a child who lives in a make-believe world. It wasn't just the storyline that made me cry, it was being reminded so sharply of what it feels like, as a child, to lead a younger sibling into a magical world you've created just for them.

Ah, but you're writing children's books now, you may say. You'll be doing that for your readers.

It isn't the same. Writing is hard, technical work. But as a kid I once led my baby brother into an old, overgrown and walled orchard at sunset and convinced him that the apples were enchanted, that we had to cross the orchard without looking back ONCE. I swear...as we crept across, my brother trembling with excitement, in the corner of my eye I saw those trees move.

Campeone!

2007-05-06T20:31:00.000Z

Ah how sweet it is to win the Premiership by beating Man City and to have it presented to us at Stamford Bridge. In yer face, Mourinho.

Sir Alex is right when he comments that winning the Premiership is now perhaps tougher than winning the Champions League. Well, I'd say it takes a more accomplished overall performance, because of the knockout stage of the Champions League. There's no doubting that Milan were the better side on the day, but could they measure up over a grueling 40 games, including FOUR of Europe's absolute top teams?

It's nice for Milan to have the chance to avenge the shocker they suffered against Liverpool. Apart from that though, it's sad. My husband bought me three red gifts in hopeful anticipation of Man United winning the treble...a red iPod nano, a red Samsung laptop and a red astronaut pen (for writing ideas down upside down in the middle of the night).

Still have to battle for the FA Cup...

Orishas Dancing at Buena Vista Club in Oxford

2007-05-06T19:54:00.000Z

Not the Buena Vista Social Club of massive Cuban-band-fame, but a monthly Oxford Cuban salsa event organised by local Cuban dance fans who arranged for us to have our very own locally-based professional Cuban dance teacher, Ariel.

I've been chatting to Ariel quite a bit since we happened to coincide in Havana when we were over there. I'd mentioned to him about seeing Yoannis and partner doing an improvised Afro-cuban dance in Santiago de Cuba. Maybe he remembered that, because at the end of the afternoon workshop in which he taught us the dance of Eleggua, one of the orishas, or Santeria deities, Ariel offered to dance to the song "Y Que Tu Quiere Que Te Den?" (And What Do You Want Them To Give You?) and show us the dances of all the orishas who are sung to in that song.

Which was a major bonus for me, because of something I'm planning for an important scene in my latest project codenamed 'Jaguar'. No more info for fear of spoilers... Perry, one of the organisers of Buena Vista in Oxford, is going to put up a video on Youtube.

Another one of those weird coincidences - I saw a British woman dancing reggaeton and recognised her from the world-famous dance hall, Casa de La Musica, Havana, a few weeks ago. She was pretty unmistakeable - I've rarely seen a white woman, let alone British, move like that! When my daughter and I went to Casa de La Musica, the Cuban guys we were with were amazed and said about this woman - "She moves like a Cuban." I went over to talk to her and her friend, and they were indeed the two women we'd watched dancing with two quite well-known dance teachers from Havana.

She told me that just over a year ago she went to Cuba to learn to dance for the first time - as a beginner! I was staggered!

That does it. I must practice reggaeton at least half an hour a day from now on.

The Painted Veil - I cried!

2007-05-06T19:23:00.000Z

I love Deborah Ross's movie reviews in The Spectator. The poor woman mostly seems doomed to have to see films that disappoint, and when she says to stay away I usually do. Conversely, when she gives something a really big huzzah...hey, I'm there.

So I had to dash out to see "The Painted Veil", which made our Deborah weep, apparently. I was one of the only people aged under 50 in the cinema, so I could tell right away that it was a Serious Proper Film for Grown-Ups and not like the usual eye-candy I usually go to see. (Art cinema, moi?)

Actually it wasn't very arty at all, which explains the multiplex distribution. Instead it was a good-old-fashioned emotional drama told really well, with no fancy footwork. I loved the screenplay, which ticked all the boxes I can remember reading in Robert McKee's 'Story' as well as a pretty strong Hero's Journey for the Naomi Watts character, Kitty. I read somewhere that in the Extreme Love Story genre the lovers actually fall into the roles of Protagonist and Antagonist. I can't remember seeing this technique better and more subtly executed than in this film. You can keep your histrionics and your 'Frankly-my-dear-I-don't-give-a-damn's; what could be more touching than two people accepting each other's minor failings as human beings, learning who they really are and falling deeply in love?

I thought I'd get away without crying...until they played that song À la claire fontaine. Nostalgia overwhelmed me; I remembered singing that song at school in French class.

I was warned once about the soppiness of middle-age by my father. He used to stream tears at sad movies and Italian opera. As a teenager I'd watch him, all crisply dry-eyed and make some cutting remark. "Wait until you're in your forties," he'd say, "and there's nothing more beautiful than crying at Italian opera."

Mestizo - Haven for Mexicans in London

2007-05-05T09:16:00.000Z

NB - This is not a proper restaurant review - this is the personal experience of a Mexican writer visiting with on a day when she had a tummy-ache and a newly-developed meat intolerance. For a review, see here:
http://www.mexicanwave.com/blog/200506/20050623.html

When the publishers of "The Joshua Files" offered to throw the launch party (early in 2008) in a 'top London Mexican restaurant' I had my doubts. I mean - was there such a thing? Cheesy-soaked nachos, soggy enchiladas and margaritas, I don't call a Mexican restaurant; no matter how much papel picado they string around and how much mariachi music they play. So I had a look - had London changed since last time I'd ventured out to eat 'Mexican'? (Which was around ten years ago...)

Turns out it had. We found this place, Mestizo, which is run by a Mexican woman, Marysol Alvarado, where they really seem to care about catering to we few England-based Mexicans who are fed up of not being able to get decent tortillas, having to cook our own frijoles refritos (refried beans) and not being able to go out to a proper Sunday brunch where you can eat hot spicy food and sweet buns for two hours.

Agent Cox, the Editor and I rolled up one quiet lunchtime last week to test the waters. The decor is minimalist-cosmopolitan rather than gaudy-Mexican. I suppose that fits in better with London. Me, I like the colonial style, but it does go best in the right setting, which isn't London. A plasma screen in the corner shows a looped video of Mexican folkloric dancing, including the jarocho, a sort of Irish-dancing style dance which Joshua sees in a scene in the first book. Watching it, I started to get a little nostalgic, especially when they showed the voladores de Papantla...oh , why, that's a long story... The music playing softly in the background was just right - not mariachi but popular Latinoamerican songs played on marimbas, with a bit of a tropical rhythm.

The menu looked very promising, sadly I was nursing a bit of a tummy ache as a result from departing from what was meant to be a temporary, Lenten vegan diet, but which has since made it impossible for me to to eat dairy without suffering for the next two days.

(Two days previously, in honour of a bi-annual visit from our former neighbour and great pal, the Chilean tenor Rodrigo del Pozo, I'd eaten spaghetti sorrentina at our local Italian in Summertown - Cibo - which has lots of melted mozzarella, and had even dared to have ice-cream for dessert. Hey, you have to try to get back on the horse! I was still doubled up by Tuesday...)

Anyway, I picked a big selection of things for Editor and I to try, including meat and dairy. Marysol offered to make the militantly vegan Agent Cox something off the menu, a mushroom-based mixiote. He also tucked into guacamole and nachos, which are safe.

I noticed that they had tamales. Brave, to try making tamales! They don't even get those right everywhere in Mexico. I asked Marysol to be straight with me - how were they? "They're good," she said. "Not exactly what you'd get in Mexico, of course, because it's tough to get the ingredients. But tasty."

So Editor and I started with a mixed dish of antojitos - like tapas, which included a little deep fried quesadilla, a jalada (jalapeno pepper with fresh cheese), a flauta (deep fried chicken taco) and a tamale (with mole sauce and chicken). It was all yummy, even the tamale which was a little drier than you might get on the streets of Mexico, but tasted good. Especially the flauta, small and crunchy with sour cream, salsa verde, lettuce and cheese - just right.

We also tried a gordita, filled with cochinita pibil (marinated, shredded pork). This was my first indication that the vegan diet had spoiled me for meat - at least red meat. It had been weeks since I tried it, and although it tasted really authentic, I had difficulty eating it.

We moved on to our 'main' - tacos al pastor and tacos of carnitas - shredded spicy beef.

The tacos al pastor looked and smelt delicious. Sometimes I wonder if I go to Mexico as much to eat tacos al pastor and chicken-with-mole, as I do to see my family. That's how much I love those tacos. In Mexico each taco place has their own secret recipe for the marinade. It must have orange juice, lime juice, oil, achiote and cumin, but whatever else can be the X-factor. My Uncle Agustin used to cook for a living and he reckons that you add a splash of Coca-Cola. You marinade thinly sliced pork loin and then mount them on a doner-type skewer, which must be flamed as it turns. In a busy taqueria in Mexico, the pastorero cuts slices from this doner-type thing with a sharp knife, dipping in and out between the bursts of flame. Then you eat the meat on corn tortillas with fresh onion, coriander and pineapple. My Aunty Tere used to own a taco restaurant in Tuxtla Gutierrez and told me that a good pastorero can command a relatively high wage for a restaurant worker - they are rare.

Anyway, at Mestizo I don't know if they have a pastorero, but the meat tasted great and they'd even slightly grilled the pineapple for extra yumminess. But after two mouthfuls I knew that I wasn't going to be able to eat it - however delicious. Agent Cox writes in his polemical tome "You Don't Need Meat" that when you stop eating meat, your system gets retrained so that you stop craving it, even liking it. Well, it's true. You don't even need to try very hard...it just happens.

A keen omnivore, the Editor tucked into everything with gusto...hurray for her!...while she told us all about her forthcoming wedding and honeymoon plans. (Bali! Lucky her - she'll have a lovely time and food is heaven!)

Meanwhile Agent Cox demolished the steamed contents of a maguey leaf stuffed with the mushroom mixiote, as well as a dish of frijoles (black beans) and a small pile of tortillas, loading them with salsa macho, which is one of those sauces I rarely eat - I stay away from the evil-looking blood-red ones cos they tend to hurt, as he was to discover! Then...still hungry, he tried to order another mixiote, to Marysol's impressed amazement...and doubt. Well, I was a bit concerned at what double helpings of all those different chiles might do to his system, so I vetoed that and told Marysol to bring frijoles refritos, pico de gallo (a raw tomato sauce with lime, chillies and coriander) and more tortillas, which won't do anything worse than make you fat.

We also shared a pitcher of margaritas - slightly frozen, which seemed to be churned in a machine like those which make 'slushies'. It wasn't bad at all, but made with orange juice rather than fresh lime. So I asked Marysol to bring us three margaritas made fresh with lime. "Oh, you want the real thing?" she said, and went off to rustle up the cocktails.

We tried bottles of Pacifico beer. It's from Mazatlan, and actually very good. A bit like Carta Blanca, but sweeter. They also have Corona and Negro Modelo, which I know is good but I wanted a nice mild lager.

All the lunchtime beer and cocktails were making me drowsy. Editor and Agent Cox both had meetings later that afternoon, which amazed me. I knew I'd pretty soon be good for nothing.

Ah, the idle life of a writer. It's not all bad.

Mind you next week won't be so relaxed. Many heavy, serious meetings at the school where I'm a governor...

In summary - Mestizo is just the place to get your fix of real Mexican food in London. Marysol told us that they even do a proper Mexican buffet-brunch on Sundays and showed us the menu - a selection of dishes that would do the Camino Real Hotel proud. I hope they add hot cakes with cajeta and chilaquiles with green tomato sauce. Mmmmmm.

Luckily I can just about eat eggs - although only a few bites, and the odd bit of chicken.

(Agent Cox will be cross with me if he ever reads this. Okay Peter! Don't eat meat - it's cruel to animals. Eggs and dairy are horrible for your cholesterol levels - and animals don't have the best time providing them either! Being vegan is healthier!)

Once Again Unto the Breach...

2007-04-26T17:28:00.000Z

Even as I write, my publishers may be talking about The Joshua Files at the Bologna Children's Book Fair. The Editor told me all sorts of exciting things about their plans...

Fingers crossed that the reaction isn't the big So What...

Who knows, within a few weeks I may be able to refer to the Publishers by name!

Anyway, there's not much for me to do but to get on with another book. That's why I went to Cuba, to prepare the next project, which I'm codenaming 'Jaguar'.

I went back to the plot I'd reworked after an early discussion with Agent Cox. Added a few new elements that I've gleaned from my trip to Cuba. Checked against a list of...now that would be telling. Added Ingredient X...muhahahahahaha.

Now to see what Agent Cox thinks of it...

Great Things About Cuba

2007-04-26T17:04:00.000Z

Well mainly it would have to be the people, the music, the historic buildings.

Example: chambermaids at Hotel Sevilla make animal shapes out of towels and leave handwritten notes to guests, welcoming them to the hotel.

The people who deal with tourists display no envy, no resentment at all that these yumas get to enjoy life in a way that's denied to them. Even when they are asking you for something, they are keen for you to take something from them. A woman in Santiago begged me quite insistently for clothes of my five-year old daughter's, who she said was the same age as her own daughter (L). But by then I'd given away half of what we brought to give away and the rest was all promised. I'd asked L if I could give away her dresses and promised to buy her more in the UK, but L wouldn't hear of it. She's very attached to her clothes and I wasn't going to upset her - she wouldn't understand the argument of need. So I told this woman 'sorry, but no'. "Please," she said. "Or you give me something of yours," she said, "and I'll give you something of mine."

We were given salsa CDs, books in Spanish, necklaces made of seeds and beads, pottery ash-trays, little wooden dolls. Nobody took a thing from us without giving us something in return. The couple we befriended in Havana, Alicia and Giovannis, were desperate to take us to Coppelia, Cuba's favourite ice-cream chain (3 flavours!), where they insisted they'd pay for all of us (tourist money isn't allowed there).

Hotel staff, people in the street, everyone treats visitors well. It's a contrast with Mexico, for example, where tourists are also very important, but won't feel all that special.

Then there's the music.

It's incomparable and ubiquitous. Any band wandering the street is better than any so-called 'Cuban band' I've seen in most places, except top-notch Cuban restaurants in London and Mexico City. They'll play any Cuban tune you can name. In Santiago we asked for 'Donde Vas Domitila?' (the song played by the trio which follows Ralph Richardson everywhere in 'Our Man in Havana'). Well, those old geezers had never had the song requested, but they made a fair pass at it, improvising words for the verses.

It's awe-inspiring, such talent. Yulieski, the chisel-featured Santiaguero, a young salsa singer-in-training was the only uniformly cheerful Cuban we had dealings with. It was pretty obvious that he had music running through his head the whole time.

And then there's the gorgeous legacy of the Spanish - similar in grandeur to what you find in Mexico, but in the Oriente it also has a French twist that makes it all a bit New Orleans.

C'est magnifique!

Bad Things About Cuba

2007-04-26T16:56:00.000Z

It's easy to fall in love with Cuba as a tourist. Cubans make you feel very special. As a tourist, you represent the best chance for every single person you meet, for the chance, even a tiny one, at a shot of something better. If you give them a dollar (a CUC), maybe they can buy something that would otherwise be out of their reach. That's why, like the guy who drove us to the airport the day we left (a former professor of English) and our bell-hop (tall, white, perfect English, I guarantee he was a former engineer or scientist), the poorly paid intelligentsia quit their jobs for a shot at a precious job in tourism.

Here's a country that has screwed up so badly that being a chambermaid beats being a doctor.

But I don't want you to think, reading this blog, that I'm infected with the sort of romanticism about Cuba that has the some people ga-ga for Fidel. (Mentioning no names, but has anyone noticed how many notable writers and actors have reported that they've been yacking to Fidel on the phone lately? It's a wonder he has the energy to recover, what with award-winning actors and novelists after him day and night on the phone...)

Walking the streets of Havana, you don't see well-dressed people. People wear cheap-looking, ill-fitting clothes, simple skirts, jeans or slacks with T-shirts. Cheap shoes, falling apart. No sunglasses, in a country where the sun shines brilliantly most of the year. The only women who have much make-up are the ones who work in tourist places.

They don't walk with the bounce and energy of people in a Latin country like Mexico. If you discount the energy which comes from anything associated with music, you begin to notice that the energy level of every person is low. When people talk to you about life, it's clear that just getting enough varied food to eat is a problem. People come up to you and beg you for spare sunglasses, sunblock, face-cream, clothes for their kids.

This does not happen in Mexico - beggars are happy with a few pesos. They can buy their own sunglasses etc - such products are available cheap in the massive, amazingly stocked and cheap supermarket chains. The energy levels of Mexico City are about a 100 times what you see in Cuba.

Crossing the island, two things impress:

1. The utter lack of any sign of the modern world. No traffic, the main highway is an almost uniformly lumpy thoroughfare that in Mexico would barely qualify as the 'libre' - the toll-free roads which meander across the country. Apart from the dreary communist/banana republic architecture (two storeys, long concrete blocks, often painted pink or blue, with shuttered windows, no glass, or lots of broken windows), you don't see any buildings dating after the 50s. Lots of nice art deco buildings too, but everything in a state of total disrepair. There are still lots of people living in tiny, weather board huts, and it isn't for reasons of olde-world charm, in case any visitors to the island have found this charming.

Near Havana you see lots of citrus orchards. These give away to sugar cane and bananas as you go east. The plantations don't look anything like as large and well-tended as what I've seen in Veracruz, Mexico, or the expansive strawberry fields of Irapuato. There's a marked absence of modern equipment. You might occasionally see a pathetic old tractor. Elsewhere, skinny men cut sugar cane by hand, stack it on their backs and carry it around. I even saw people carrying water across their backs, in two buckets.

2. The substitution of billboards advertising brands etc, for horrible, preachy communist slogans and propaganda. Photos of the eminently photogenic Che accompany slogans like 'Che- it's our hope that you'll all be like him', 'Socialism or Death', 'Imperialism - not even a tiny bit!' It's funny until you realise that this isn't a ubiquitous joke. Like citizens of former Soviet countries that I'm friends with, the people we met in Cuba just shrugged and told us that they ignore such stuff.

Well, not the enterprising rip-off merchant Daniru who took us for a very expensive rickshaw ride in Santiago. "Socialismo!" he cried, punching the air as we passed a poster of Che. "Socialism is the only way!" he yelled. Maybe he thought we'd come searching wide-eyed for a socialist paradise. But if he lost my sympathy, it was there. When it came to asking for money, Daniru demonstrated a perfect understanding of capitalism - the price of a thing is what someone is willing to pay for it, no more and no less.

Latino people are naturally pretty hot-blooded. How has an entire island of such people been suckered into accepting such a miserable existence. Is it really worth living like that, just to be able to boast that you're independent of the USA? Maybe I'm just a stupid yuma (Cuban equivalent of the term gringo, meaning foreigner, probably from the rich West), but I think Mexico's attitude to the USA is better, more practical, whilst also being ambivalent.

The only places you see Cubans looking really happy is in places where there's music and dancing. The world famous Casa de la Musica in Havana, which features in so many salsa songs, is only really accessible to upper-middle-class Cubans and those with links with tourists. The dance floor fills with a mixture of Europeans and Afro-Cuban salsa teachers. It's even worse at the Casa de la Trova in Santiago, which fills with middle-aged, non-dancing European tourists who have fallen for the world of Wim Wenders' film, "Buena Vista Social Club". Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if like us, you've gone out there hoping to mingle with Cubans dancing in their own environment, being crammed into a room with a bunch of white, middle-class European tourists to listen to Cuban musicians is not quite the draw is could be.

At times I actually longed for La Maraka of Mexico City, the most authentic latin salsa dance hall I've ever known. If only they played more Cuban music, it could be the best in the world!