So, November...

has turned out nothing like I had planned.

Life's like that sometimes.

But I'm determined to get back on track, refocus my energies and finish a few reviews!

Thank you all for your patience, and a BIG thank you to Nancy for reviewing her little heart out and maintaining her #AusReadingMonth enthusiasm despite my intermittent attention.

Not all of my recent preoccupations have been sad ones though.

I also had the excitement of preparing for my very first photographic exhibition.

Earlier in the year, I was approached by our local library to share my Cuba photos for public display.

They had spotted my holiday photos on Instagram and thought they would make an interesting exhibition.

I had never done anything like that before, so I nervously said yes.

Back in January, when I took my 1000+ Cuba photos, my only intention had been to document our holiday.

However, I’ve always had a fascination with the art of photography. 

When I got my first iPhone in 2011, the first app I downloaded was Instagram. 

I quickly discovered @fatmumslim and her daily photo challenge. 

She inspired my eye and my photo choice.

Her word prompts are usually adjectives or nouns, but occasionally she throws in a photographic technique.

Over the years I discovered the joys of macro photography, the rule of three, playing with light and shadow, depth of field and many more. 

My love of photography is a hobby, not a profession.

Any skills I have gained are from practice, practice, practice.

One of my favourite photographic techniques is leading lines. 

I love angles and diagonals and I knew that Cuban architecture would give me plenty of opportunity to play around with this.

Santiago de Cuba

I’m also attracted to colour.

Another big plus when travelling in Cuba!

Havana

We didn’t know what to expect when we arrived in Cuba. 

It’s certainly the flavour of the month in travel destinations right now. 

We had a strong sense of wanting to see Cuba and experience it, before the rest of the world arrived. From the minute we announced our travel plans, we were inundated with questions and curiosity. 

We had our own expectations and assumptions. 

Cuba met and confounded them all!

Trinidad

My Instagram photos of our time in Cuba have attracted worldwide attention and comment all year. 

People want to know what it’s like there now, after 60 years of socialism. 

They want to know about the old cars, the colourful buildings, the music and the people. 

My photos capture the light and shadow, the vibrancy and decay, the new and the old. 

Each scene stands on its own; an image captured in time. 

Together they tell my story of travelling through Cuba.

You can see more of my Cuba photos on my other (photographic) blog, Four Seasons.

But for now, here is me, looking slightly stunned and bemused on Thursday evening, as everyone gathered around to see my Cuba photos officially launched!

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene was a great choice of book to read whilst travelling around Cuba although it was also a little bizarre.
In some ways nothing had changed since Greene wrote this in 1958 but on the other hand, everything had.

The other rather eerie side to this story, is that three months after publication, Fidel and his supporters stormed the city and ousted the very corrupt Batista regime. Although Our Man in Havana is not a revolutionary story there's something about the timing of this book that gives one the shivers. There are plenty of comments and observations that the future reader can see as signs of what is about to happen in Cuba.

The primary subject for ridicule in Greene's story was the ineptly bureaucratic British intelligence network - in other words, a spy spoof. Of course, this was all made possible thanks to the fact that Havana, under Batista's dictatorship, was a place 'where every vice was permissible and every trade possible.*'

Batista's corrupt regime and the Americans role in it do come in for their fair share of Greene's ridicule, but his focus was clearly on the whole spying caper.

With a cast of crazy characters - from the accidental agent cum vacuum cleaner salesman to the slightly sinister German drunk and the very sinister head police officer at Vedado who has designs on the ingenue horse-loving daughter - they all act to confuse, confound and deceive each other at every turn. The story lurches from one miscommunication to the next.

I prefer my satire and irony to be on the subtle side (think Jane Austen, Charles Dickens & Mark Twain - when he's not being very obvious!)
This is not subtle.

There are some moments that produce wry chuckles, but unfortunately I never felt engaged with the characters. I enjoyed the mention of Cuban places and the descriptions of cities and venues that I had also seen for myself.

Tim Parks in the New York Review of Books said,

satire alludes to recognizable contemporary circumstances in a skewed and comic way so as to draw attention to their absurdity. There is mockery but with a noble motive: the desire to bring shame on some person or party behaving wrongly or ignorantly. Its raison d’ȇtre over the long term is to bring about change through ridicule; or if change is too grand an aspiration, we might say that it seeks to give us a fresh perspective on the absurdities and evils we live among, such that we are eager for change. 

Since satire has this practical and pragmatic purpose, the criteria for assessing it are fairly simple: if it doesn’t point toward positive change, or encourage people to think in a more enlightened way, it has failed.

Reading OMIH in Jose Marti Domestic Airport, Havana

Was Greene successful in bring about change through this farce? Does one feel enlightened after reading Our Man in Havana?

I was amused and entertained, but sadly, I also felt that nothing about the secret services of the world had really changed. Just like Cuba, the raison d'etre behind all secret government agencies still feels stuck in 1958.

I'm not sure I would have enjoyed reading Our Man in Havana as much as I did, if I hadn't actually been in Cuba at the time.

As the drunk in the Santiago hotel may have said on pg 65, Cuba is Cuba is Cuba. For me that was enough. I suspect it was enough for Greene too.

*Graham Greene, Ways of Escape 1980

Strong Poison by Dorothy L Sayers

Book 6 in a series may be an odd place to start, but Strong Poison: A Lord Wimsey Mystery made its way into my backpack for our recent holiday simply because a reading copy had become available at work just before we left & I thought it looked like a nice, easy read.

It filled that bill for me perfectly.

Cuba was an extraordinary holiday destination.

So many strong impressions, confounding experiences and lots of waiting times. Waiting for a delayed flight, waiting to catch a bus or whiling away a lazy evening on a roof top garden, wi-fi free, with plenty of time to simply chat, contemplate the world and read.

Reading a book that could be picked up and put down at the drop of hat, mid-sentence, was just the right choice for this trip.

I knew nothing about Peter Wimsey but quickly learnt that he had a droll sense of humour and was rather keen on 'cheerio' and 'I say old chap'!

This is the book where Wimsey falls in love for the first time. Although I had only just met Wimsey, I was very surprised to discover that he was attracted to women. His character came across as being so camp that I'm now not sure if he was in denial or if it was Sayers!

As for the mystery, Sayers dropped plenty of clues along the way so that you could work out who did it pretty easily. You keep on reading to find out how exactly it all unfolds.

This edition was accompanied by an Introduction by Edward Petherbridge, the actor who played Wimsey in the 1987 BBC adaptations.

There was also a fun, short 'bio' of Peter Wimsey written by his uncle, included in the back.

Strong Poison is good old-fashioned light entertainment of the jolliest kind!

Cuba Diaries by Isadora Tattlin

Isadora Tattlin is a pseudonym and most of the names in her Cuba Diaries have been changed. However, this takes nothing away from the extraordinary insights into life in Cuba during the late 90's and the periodo especial en tiempo de paz (special period in time of peace) immediately after the withdrawal of economic subsidies from the Soviet Union.

Her love/hate relationship with Cuba over four years has been documented with shopping lists, brief political discussions, history lessons and loads of observations and day to day stories.

Yes, Tattlin was living a privileged life in Cuba, but then again, most visitors to Cuba would fit that category, especially during the 90's.

Her husband worked as an executive for an unnamed European energy company and they mixed in exalted company, eventually having Fidel Castro himself to dinner a couple of times in their final year in Cuba.

Tattlin's obsession with shopping (of the art and jewellery and furniture variety) wore a bit thin by the end, but her daily observations - the everyday fears, worries and delights of living in a foreign country were captured succinctly and sincerely.

As a future visitor to Cuba, I lapped up every word.

I had studied the Cuban Revolution - viva Fidel y la revolucion socialista (long live Fidel and the socialist revolution) at school - so I was aware of the basic facts of history, but the 1990's was an unknown era for me.

Tattlin vividly described her experiences in trying to conseguir (obtain) food and other necessities. There were also lots of trips to other areas of the country - places we plan to visit too - like Santiago, Trinidad, Vinales, Camaguey, Holguin and Cienfuegos.

Petty crime and the constant hassling or hustling for money by the Cubans was another factor to manage. I can't imagine what it must be like to live a life of near-poverty with very few opportunities to change that situation...and then have busloads of near-wealthy tourists passing through, glittering and flashing their wares and education and worldliness. Tattlin and her family were more embedded than that into the Cuban way of life, but they still stuck out as being different and lavish in their lifestyle.

Obviously, this all happened over twenty years ago, and times have changed. Castro's alliance with Venezuela throughout the 2000's brought some economic security and prosperity. Relations with the US also gradually thawed during this time.
Due to poor health, Fidel eventually handed the presidency over to his brother, Raul in 2008.
Raul immediately removed restrictions on mobile phone use for Cubans and announced a plan for economic reform in 2011. He installed vice-president, Miguel Diaz-Canel in 2013 and stated that his presidency would end in its second term in 2018.
Fidel's death, last month was honoured with a nine day period of national mourning. At his request, there will be no statues, parks, institutions or streets named after him to prevent a cult of personality from developing.

Tattlin's epilogue, written a couple of years later, unexpectedly veered off into the realm of magic realism. Perhaps, with a few years reflection, her time in Cuba started to feel surreal and imbued with fabulism.
It was a curious way to finish off her practical, fairly dispassionate diary...but perhaps that's the effect that Cuba can have on you.

Now that I've had this tantalising, intimate journey into 1990's Cuba, I'm even keener to observe modern day Cuba.