Undo

When I was small, my dad ran a pub for a few years. It was a pretty standard country pub. Open 10am to 10pm Monday to Saturday, 12pm to 2pm and 5pm to 7pm on Sundays. There was a wide verandah around the first floor, shading the footpath. Three doors facing the street - one for the barber's shop, one for the pub's main hallway, the last for the public bar.

The public bar was tiled and faced the street, the only women who entered it were barmaids. Fourex on tap, rum and gin in the optics. There were bottles of sherry and port and a shelf of ageing Bols liqueurs - mostly curdling advocaat - reflecting into a drunken, smoky eternity in the spotted bevelled mirror against the wall.

The bar had a shiny brass footrail with small metal bins that tucked in under the rail, snug to the bar. I used to have to fill them with sand. By closing time, they were filled with fag ends and plugs of rollie tobacco, burnt matches and scrunched up Tally-Ho papers. The detritus of the day's session.

The bar smelt good early in the morning, after mum or dad had hosed it out and had run over the tiles with a mop doused in neat Pine-O-Kleen.

To get to the lounge - which was where the ladies took their gin and squash - you walked down the ancient, crackly lino in the main hallway, past the barber's, skirted the wide silky oak stairs and through a multi-coloured plastic strip curtain.

Beyond the lounge, the pool table and the jukebox was the kitchen - a massive room with a huge wood-fired range, a long set of presses filled with crockery and cutlery, a large wooden table, scrubbed white from almost a century of use, and a walk-in pantry.

The pantry was cool and dark. Shelves up to the ceiling. On the floor stood drums of flour and sugar, rolled oats and a bin for stale bread (we made our own breadcrumbs with a mincer - a fun but dangerous job). Above the drums was a shelf with smaller containers - bakelite canisters for loose-leaf tea and tea bags, coffee powder, cereals and the like. Next to them there were packets and packets of biscuits for smoke-oh.

In the corner of the pantry, there was a tower of pink and yellow wafers for puddings. Neon bright, cardboard wafers. Something to add a touch of city slicker sophistication to a bowl of ice cream.

Mum, dad and I lived upstairs. Mum and dad's room seemed massive. It was our living room and their bedroom, all in one. It had French doors opening out on to the verandah, overlooking the main street. Dad's aquarium stood next to the doors, near the telly and the old sofa.

He had goldfish - a couple of black, frilly-finned, boggle-eyed beauties, some larger orange versions of the same and a few standard goldfish. They had a pirate's chest, a bare-breasted mermaid, a tiny underwater castle and a diver to keep them company. It looked like a good life.

If mum and dad were busy with the pub and my grandad couldn't take me, or it was after kindy hours or I wasn't at my cousins' place, tied to a tree in a game of Cowboys and Indians (I was the youngest and the smallest, I was always the Indian), I'd perch next to the aquarium and watch the fish. I'd take a pile of books, drag an old bar stool next to the aquarium and sit with my books, as close as I could. I thought the fish might like the company.

One afternoon my grandad collected me from kindy. We'd had our lunch together with Aunty Vi, the pub cook - a sandwich made from doorsteps of fresh white loaf and roast beef from that day's counter lunches. I was shooed upstairs to have an afternoon camp while my grandad and Aunty Vi went out to the back verandah for a smoke and a chat over mugs of stewed milky tea.

I climbed the main stairs up to mum and dad's room - it always seemed to take an age to go upstairs. It was easier to go down. If there wasn't a grown-up about, you could slide down the bannisters.

I went in to their room - it was a hot afternoon, I wasn't sleepy at all. I pulled my bar stool over to the tank and looked at the fish. I wiggled my fingers in the water and the fish came swimming up, thinking there were fresh flakes on offer. They suckered at my finger tips. Poor things, they never had Aunty Vi's roast beef sandwiches and sarsparilla cordial for lunch, they had fish flakes. Boring.

I sat for a little while, thinking about the food I ate and the food the fish ate. It didn't really seem fair. Our dogs got bones and the offcuts from the sides of beef my uncles cut up for freezing. The cats got liver and kidneys and bowls of hot, frothy milk, fresh from the dairy cows. The hens ate like feathered royalty - chook mash as well as potato peels and tea leaves, carrot skins and bits of beetroot. Even the canary and the budgies got a break from bird seed - pieces of apple, a carrot, some celery.

The fish needed a treat. They had to have a treat.

I took off down the back stairs to the kitchen. My grandfather and Aunty Vi didn't notice me. I crept into the kitchen through the back door. The last of the beef stood on a carving dish, cooling. No, beef was no good, the fish had no teeth. They wouldn't be able to chew it.

I walked into the pantry and looked around. Tea? No, that would be silly. Sugar was definitely out as well. Milk arrowroot biscuits might work, but I knew Aunty Vi counted the packets and would notice if one went missing. I turned and saw the wafers.

Perfect.

I grabbed a packet and scooted back up the stairs.

I remember opening the packet and laying the wafers on the surface of the water. Yellow, pink, yellow, pink. It looked pretty. The fish swam up to investigate.

Then the dye in the wafers started leaching into the water. Little poisonous curlicues of yellow and pink spinning lazily in the water, fanning out like filigree. I knelt on the bar stool, my stomach knotting and churning, my eyes prickly hot with tears. I tried to scoop the soggy, washed-out wafers from the tank, but they fell apart in my hands.

One by one, the fish started to float upwards.

I killed them. I killed them all.

Navidad a lo Cubano

I'm wishing for a Cuban Christmas again. It's not that my feet are itchy, although they are. It's not that Christmas is more Christmas-y in Cuba. It's not. Christmas was banned for 36 or so years, the island's just getting back in to the swing of la noche buena.

And that, I think, is why last year's Cuban Christmas was a joy. Bar the giant Christmas tree in the lobby of the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, wishing us "Feliz navidad y Viva la revolucion!" there were very few clues that Christmas was around the corner.

No Christmas adverts, no Christmas muzak in bars or shops, no fake Santas on street corners. The shops didn't have decorations, cards or specially packaged boxes of Christmas chocolate on sale. There was no last-minute rush for this year's must-have gift, no strings of Christmas lights twinkling in plazas and along streets, no Rudolphs prancing across Spanish colonial rooftops. There was no hassle. None at all. No doubt Cubans might prefer a little more Christmas pizzazz - an antidote to the shortages, rationing, the hardship of the periodo especial. But to this cynical westerner? The absence of commercial Christmas spirit was more than just a relief, it was bliss.

Thanks to Mildret, my friend's Trinidad landlady, we knew Christmas was coming. She had set up a nativity scene in her front room, propped up by a small, raggedy plastic Christmas tree, topped by a giant red star. Plaster Joseph watched over plaster Mary, who gazed devotedly at an empty plaster manger. The plaster shepherds watched their plaster flocks, the plaster donkey looked suspiciously at the plaster cattle. We took our Christmas cues from the plaster wise men.

Our first visit to Mildret's coincided with the beginning of the three wise men's long journey from the east (the front patio, fronting Frank Pais) to Bethlehem. As Christmas drew near, Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar nudged closer and closer to their goal. We reckoned they'd have to make the fringe of the rug for Christmas eve if they were to hit Bethlehem in time for the Epiphany, holiday traffic being what it is.

The journey was dangerous. Sometimes their path took them close to the main walkway through the house. Other times, Mildret's dachshund would help the magi on their way, picking up one and scampering off, past the tree, down the corridor, through the kitchen and out into the back courtyard, dropping the battered wise man with a hollow, chipped clunk at Mildret's feet. Sometimes the pup would stop to have a chew first. The magi were was rapidly losing their looks, chunks of their gifts and their head gear.

Mildret's battered magi had to make it to the manger for twelfth night. The thing is, there were places to go. Holguin was calling.

I still don't know whether all three kings made it to Bethlehem intact. I like to think they did. And that the infant Jesus preferred the wrapping paper to the treasures inside.

Dream

When I was seven or eight, Mum bought me a set of World Book encyclopaedia. I guess I was a pretty geeky, strange kid (even then), because I remember aching to read them.

I'd choose a volume and flip, stopping to read whatever seemed interesting. Cosmonauts were far more intriguing than astronauts, but I can remember poring over the entry on the Apollo Moon landings and looking closely at Moon maps. Like I said, a nerdy child. My parents must have wondered what on earth they'd spawned.

The World Book entries I never tired of, though, were one about the Sahara and a shorter piece about Tuaregs. My eight-year-self decided that when I grew up, I would go there. Just to see.

I don't remember thinking very deeply about it, it was more of a pointer of what could be possible once you were done with long division and PE on Wednesday afternoons. It was one of those dreams that you don't or shouldn't think through - if I had, I would have realised that, on face value, it verged on ridiculous. A kid from a one-mechanic town in the middle of nowhere, from an island in the middle of nowhere, travelling halfway across the world for sand and camels? As my Dad would say: "What do you want to go there for? We've got sand and camels here."

Didn't stop me wondering how vast a sand sea could be or imagining Tuaregs at the head of great camel caravans, ignoring borders, heat and sand storms as they headed towards the horizon. My imagination discounted the fact that the internal combustion engine and 4 wheel drives had rendered camels, as a mode of transport, virtually obsolete. Shhhh.

Still, sometimes you get to do the things you'd only ever dreamed of. One thing I know now about holding tight to a dream for so long is that reality can be very different from the idea you have carried for years. The reality can be better.

Sebha, the main town in Fezzan, Libya's Saharan province, is 1000 kilometres and a world away from Tripoli. You can feel the Sahara on the streets, hear it in people's voices. The sky is bigger, wider, emptier, bluer than the sky over the Mediterranean coast. The people have eyes that stare past the sun, gauging the depths of the horizon. There's coarse sand in the air and it creeps across the road leading out of Sebha towards the sand seas.

We'd been driving for hours - first down a long, thin wadi with dunes on one side, the twisted sandstone outcrops of the Jebel Akakus on the other. The road was a track, twisting snake tracks carved across a black gravelly reg by 4WDs, neat slices curving through volcanic debris. Ibrahim, the lead driver, swung his vehicle off to the left.

The gravel started giving way to sand. Yellow and orange into the distance, meeting the sky in a strip of white who knows how many miles away. Then slowly, the sand gained bulk and height. And then? Dunes. The dunes of my imagination. Beau Geste's Sahara. A sand sea.

And it is a sea. Waves of sand in every direction - vertiginously high in places, too. Perhaps upwards of 300 metres in places.

Our camp nestled in the bowl of a mighty dune. Its arms cradled the camp, smaller dunes crested in the distance. It was nudging sunset. I'd put my sleeping bag on a mat behind one of the 4WDs and stashed my shoes deep in my rucksack. I grabbed a can of (non-alcoholic) beer I'd bought when we passed through a small town earlier in the day. And then I took off. And up.

In places, the sand was hard-packed and rippled into hard, nobbly ridges by the wind. The climbing was easy. A little further up and the sand loosened, it was like stumbling through molasses, warm on the surface, colder, damper underneath. Scramble a couple of steps sideways and the sand was firm again. The going wasn't easy - the dune was steep, towering above its neighbours. It was magnificent, almost alive. You had to earn the right to climb it.

Finally, finally, I reached the top - a long, thin, sharp ridge of sand slicing through the flat light. I sat, pulled the can out my pocket, opened it, took a swig and looked around.

Below me was a near-vertical drop to another bowl carved by the wind. Seif dunes danced off into the distance. To my right and left and way, way ahead, there was sand. Nothing else. An ocean of it. Vaster than my dreams, vaster than the Sahara of my imagination. Dustyu orange gave way to pinks and purples as the sun bowed and took its leave. The moon rose, full, heavy, enormous, so bright it blocked out the stars.

I took another slurk from the can. The wind sang across the Sahara. I have never been so happy.

Ahmadinejad: My role in his downfall

(Apologies to Spike Milligan)

Iran's next.

Last December, I went to Cuba. It was exhilarating and exasperating in about equal measure. El Che and non-stop salsa, quotes from Fidel and Raul pinned up on CDR noticeboards, massive billboards berating the US blockade lining near-empty four-lane highways, revolutionary trinkets for sale, a dollar a piece. If I ever hear Guantanamera again, it will be too soon.

A month or so after my return, Fidel stepped down. Cuba's inching towards some sort of new era.

Last month, after what felt like an eon of wading through paperwork, getting translations and bits and bobs and wigwams for goose's bridles (for geese's bridles?), I went to Libya. The day after I left, Gaddafi - AKA the Great Leader, the Guide, the Colonel, the man who risked his soul for Libya, Arabism, Islam and humanity altogether, etc etc ad infinitum, ad nauseam - spoke on the phone to George W. Bush. It was, apparently, the first time there'd been top-level contact between the US and Libya for decades.

Coincidence? Perhaps.

But maybe not.

There's also the small matter of Slobodan Milosevic getting caught. But I can't take full credit for that. I'm suspicious of homeopathy and I was in Belgrade about a year before he was arrested. That link's a bit tenuous.

Still, I've decided on a trip to Iran before June's elections. Think of it as a test of the mojo. But going on the track record, if I were Mahmoud, I'd be worried.

Mind you, if I've got the mojo on, then it means that there's a minibreak in Pyongyang on the agenda as well. Hmm, perhaps Kazakhstan needs some help first ...

Meine digitalen Untergang

(Pretty hairy: the latest version of iTunes, left)

So, iTunes hates my iPod. My iPod probably hates iTunes in return. I am getting close to hating both the programme and the shiny gadget.

See, iTunes keeps telling me that it can't copy to the drive. I think that was the error message. It was so rude and uncalled for that I've conveniently blocked it out. In essence, what I think iTunes was saying was "I hate your taste in music. Ditch that obscure stuff and download some Shakira instead, smarty pants."

I digress.

Sometimes iTunes and the iPod would synch and all would be happy. Then, when they synched none of the newly uploaded stuff would appear.

Then the synch started happening at a snail's pace.

I could live with that, but not with the sloth-paced synch. And mid-way through a four-hour synch, iTunes would spit the dummy, claiming it couldn't read anything.

When the sloth-synch first started happening, the synch would get as far as N. Then L. Over the weekend it got to I and gave up.

I've restarted the machine on occasion. That doesn't work. Then I tried resetting the iPod a few times. That was a waste of hard-won hand-eye co-ordination skills.

After that, all I could think of doing was seeing whether restoring the factory settings to the iPod helped. It seemed like a good idea. Wrong.

The synch after that? iTunes uploaded four - four! - tracks to the iPod and spat out another "I give up. And by the way? Ms Wilfully Obscure? Your taste in music sucks the big kumera and I refuse to have any part of this pathetic charade" message.

So now I'm planning to reinstall iTunes, copy across music library again (did I mention how much I love my external HD?) and hope for the best. Fingers crossed.

** Late breaking news **

Broken. iTunes broke my iPod. My iPod broke iTunes. The gremlins broke the external HD. All of them broke my heart. It's a luxury problem, I know, but right now? There's a small world of music and it's gone.

Guess Edwyn Collins is right. Rip it up and start again.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled broadcast ...

I'm struggling with a perplexing and frustrating iPod issue. I've tried swearing at both Mac and iPod and neither have worked. I suppose I have to resort to the long, dull process of trying to isolate the problem. Ugh. You'd rather look at photies of Libya wouldn't you? Me too. Feet, non-alcoholic beer, sunset and the affects of too much non-alcoholic beer and sun. Much more interesting than iTunes hassle.

Sprung

Miss Etta must have thought she'd finally cracked it. Months of patience paid off. She'd waited until the killjoy was busy elsewhere, snuck into the living room, made a leap for the sideboard and finally - finally - the planets fell into alignment. She had the time, opportunity and claw length necessary for some serious ikebana.

Good thing too, that there were lilies in the vase. Palest pink petals, just in full bloom, vivid orange centres.

Her bad luck though, to bounce into the office apres-shred, all squeaky and filled with lily-killer joy.

That thick stripe of orange lily pollen running from the tips of her ears, down her nose and curling round her mouth?

Sprung. Sprung badly.