Manning up

As a child I have an abiding memory of my first rugby match - another eight year got tackled and threw the ball at me as he lay on the ground.  I threw it back at him - humiliation. It wasn't like it was a conscious decision I just wasn't that interested and give or take a few horrors I've managed to avoid making a prat of myself in sports with any kind of technical factor since I left school.
But I digress. That doesn't mean I want to look like a shrieking wallflower but I do have shocking coordination so I was slightly anxious about the deep sea fishing trip while we were in Cuba. There we were in the middle of the Caribbean with two swarthy, taciturn sailors trawling for barracuda.

R (bastard) knows about these things and had already established a rapport with the swarthies.  I'd already been caught taking too many pictures of R fishing which the swarthies had wanted to look at. Thankfully I'd had the foresight to get rid of the naked pictures also on my camera or we might have had a man overboard situation. 

R caught the first barracuda in excellent fashion and then it was my go. Chief swarthy strapped me into a harness for additional control (a harness!) and off we went.  I was struggling with the idea of pulling in the fish and then reeling like mad as you let the rod drop - it felt like it was going to be confusing and I managed to unscrew the handle of the rod for starters. 
I took ages and made a prat of myself but I caught the barracuda and then another. The adrenaline was pumping and maybe it was that second rum and coke but I felt a particular affinity with my hunter gatherer ancestors.  Check out our final haul.

Look but don't touch

R and I had both flitted to the sparse section in our Rough Guide covering Cuba's gay scene and worked out where on the Malecon - Havana's promenade next the sea - the local guys hang out.  After dinner in the Verdao district and several mojitos too many we were emboldened.

A basic open air cafe perched beside a petrol station was pretty much it.  The crowd was young and a little bit desperate.  There were several older European guys chatting to some of the kids - bit predatory and we moved to a spot where we could watch but not get overly hassled.  We were already being devoured by a 40-something munchkin whose eyes pretty much said where's the knife and fork.

Extraordinarily everyone around us was using sign language - an attempt to avoid detection and persecution? A means to communicate in a clandestine manner across crowded spaces?  My mind raced across the desperate possibilities as the hand gestures became more obscene.

Or maybe they were deaf.  Yup - we had found ourselves within a niche (within  a niche) within Cuban society.  The 40-something munchkin could get by without hearing aids but hated wearing them. The rest of the guys were completely deaf.  With negligible Spanish ourselves we had some of our longest conversations. I'd like to take a picture of you and put it in my pocket and go back to your hotel for a foursome came across loud and clear.

Travelling

I've just come back from two weeks in the Caribbean which I think sounds incredibly bling and a tan in November is just great. I have friends who keep a holday spreadsheet of what they would've done differently so here are my starting contributions in no particular order.

• Why do I always pack a smart outfit in the vague assumption that there will be some sort Ferrero Rocher based event at the local embassy in which I willk thank God for the crumpled chinos.
• Too many books as usual 
• Burning lots of new tunes onto the MP3 was a good thing - more of that
• Stop living the guidebook - the world changes after publication
• In love with new North Face rucksack (with wheels) but it was pretty obvious that I'd bought it in Selfridges the night before we got on the plane

Naked drinks party - RSVP

A man with too much time on his hands had sent us an invite via Dudesnude - we'd been selected to join a gathering in North London on a pending Saturday afternoon. Initial reaction?  Blind terror moving to fascination and then acceptance. Emboldened by two pints in a local pub we presented ourselves on a miserable autumnal day. 

Whatever your assumptions you have to say that the organisation was blinding.  We'd been give one of two windows in which to arrive as the host did not want to be bothered by endless arrivals as he tucked into the buffet (sorry).  Despite the fact that everyone was starkers for the first five minutes you still felt like the only naked man in the room - weird.  Not just that but I was horribly aware of my penis' ability to demonstrate exactly how I was feeling despite the way I was nonchalantly chatting. R had to go and hide behind the dining table until things calmed down.

It was the waves of the thing that were so extraordinary,  You'd be talking to someone and then suddenly the room would go quiet as people began to fumble. Ten minutes later drinks would be recharged and the conversation would go on.  We left at sixish as the drinks breaks seemed to be getting shorter and the room thinned.  We have been invited back.