Another Bank Holiday!!

Another Bank Holiday! Yippee!! Well, that's how it looks from my little corner of Wiltshire. I know the sun may not shine and buses will be as rare as harebells in Piccadilly - but it's still a holiday. Wrap up warm if you need to, but let's go out to play.

Okay, not everyone sees it like that. All these short weeks, they disrupt important things like work, and school, and family routines. We need to shape our days, our weeks, so we know where we are, what time to get up and go out and come home again.

The economists bleat about productivity. We need to work to make stuff or provide stuff so that other people can buy stuff or do stuff - and this generates money which goes towards taxes that pay for schools and hospitals ... blah blah blah.

I understand that, for some people, the world feels very unsafe without routines. And I also get that, if we had holidays every day, the economy would be a bit of a mess.

But me - well this is a short post because I'm in the 'throwing-my-hat-in-the-air, it's a holiday' corner. I'm out to do something wonderful - no idea what, but I'll love it when I get there.

And you? Those of you to have time to read blogs today - do you enjoy the time off or are you filling in the hours until life returns to normal?

Am home, with apologies for blog silence.

A whole month in Cuba and only two blogposts!! That’s not like me …

Cuba is a complicated country, and I’ve much to write about. But today – and I’ve only been home a couple of days so my brain is still somewhere over the Atlantic, even though my body has made it back safely – today I’ll just explain the blog silence, and leave my musings for another time.

Computer access is limited in Cuba – the Cubans themselves can only use the internet if they show they need it for business or educational reasons. They realise that most of their visitors see things differently, and access is possible for tourists, though it is slow and expensive, and almost always involves a queue. It also involves buying a scratch card – which is fine, unless the scratch cards have run out, in which case it’s unlikely anyone will have any idea when more will appear.

(Wifi? – only in one or two, select hotels. The sort of place I only slink into to use the toilets.)

Most computers are flat-screened and look efficient, but many of the keyboards have letters missing – which is fine for those used to writing but a problem for anyone who needs to look at the keys. They have to resort to guesswork. I got into a muddle the first time I met a bare keyboard – my precious internet seconds ticked away and all I could write was gobblegook.

And then sites can take so long to load you’ve finished your tea before they're done. Than there seems to be some arbitrary decision-making regarding which sites are acceptable. To begin with I could access this blog but not write on it. Then I could write but not publish it. Then it published it, but wouldn’t let me check what I’d published.

Email access was equally random. On two occasions I was able to open my inbox, try to reply – and everything was fine until I actually wanted to write a message. On that occasion I put the message in the subject line, and sent it that way.

So I decided to keep internet access to an absolute minimum. Nothing terrible would happen – those I know and love had my phone number and everything else could wait.

Now I’m home, and the blog-ball will get rolling again before long. For Cuba has given me much to write about – I’d hate you to think that it was nothing more than internet randomness!