I spent the weekend with my mate Anas, his wife and his family in Morocco. There were a couple of big family dinners. The most impressive things served up at the table was a whole lamb splayed and roasted, served with some amazing home made bread. For some photos see my online gallery.

On the way back we stopped at a real dive of a place. Behind the warehouse fronting the docks in Tangiers harbour where the fishing boats more are a couple of places serving up seafood let into the wall of another warehouse. The fifteen or so tables, surrounding chairs and parasols are of the plastic garden variety. Most of the customers are the dockers and ferry port hustlers with a few of the townspeople sprinkled about.

Anas ordered in Arabic, I asked him what he ordered and he told me that there wasn't a menu, you just told them how many of you wanted to eat. The first thing that arrived was a platter about eighteen inches across covered in prawns, shrimp and langostines that had been fried with a little salt and loads of fresh oregano. I can honestly say I have never in my life eaten shellfish that tasted so good and I have eaten shellfish a lot! This was served with a big round loaf of Moroccan bread, good, but not up to the standard of the home cooked loaves I'd eaten the day before. Once the crustacia had been dispatched the lad working there brought a plate of spicy cold sauce for dipping the bread into which tasted much like a cold harira but without the lamb. A little while later another enormous platter fish arrived, some grilled, some lightly floured and fried with some octopus thrown in. Delicious. All in all the bill came to a wallet quivering 8o Dirham ( 8 Euros) which also covered three bottles of Coca-Cola and a tip for the waiter.

The Beer
Well as I predicted the secondary fermentation took 2 days and the brewbox was looking like a beach ball so I had to tip it up and let some air out on both days. This of course disturbed the sediment which meant that to clear it actually took about six days, but on the seventh day God created beer!

I had my little wine glass tester and opened the tap around 11:45am and for the first time it was a beautiful clear copper colour. I sipped it. It was like my first kiss, like the tears of an angel on my tongue, like, like, like a pint of London Pride actually, possibly just a tad sweeter. I couldn't help myself, out with a proper glass, and another. Yes! It was fantastic, by about 4pm I decided it was time to slow down. Truly spectacular. I phoned Dave and told him that karmically he was now probably insured against all sins, in all previous lives and could probably get away with genocide for bringing me this wonderful kit.

The next day I had some more but it was a tad dead. I figure that this is because in the heat of a Spanish summer all the sugar had been fermented in the first two days and I'd had to let a lot of that CO2 out. So daringly I tipped the brewbox up, took the tap out carefully and added another couple of teaspoons of sugar. Two days later and... Result! It was back to fantastic. Unfortunately the day after that the box ran out of beer. I will definitely be doing this again.

Cuba and Castro
Today marks the 79th birthday of Fidel Castro. The chief underlying causes of the Cuban revolution were most probably; the huge difference in wealth between the poverty stricken agricultural workers and the corrupt rich of the big cities; the desire for self governance as the country was more or less ruled by American plantation owners and gangsters. It had noble beginnings. There is little doubt that at the start, the chief protagonists, Fidel Castro and Ernesto 'Che' Guevara were of good heart and idealists.

The ideal that all men are equal and should share in the profit of their labour is a noble one and I fully believe that Che lived that belief. As the renowned photographer Alberto Korda related;

"Once, I had to take pictures of Che cutting cane with the workers," he said. "He made me work for a week cutting cane before he'd let me take a shot. He was hard that way."

The Cuba of today is a mix of poverty and tourism, wealthy foreigners walk around the lobbies of the Hotel Nacional wearing 'T'shirts printed with Che's image while on the streets of central Havana people live in slums often without running water, grafting away, conning tourists, selling reject cigars, the girls renting themselves out to the foreigners. The barmaid at the hotel selling a $2 drink that costs more than she earns in a week, the friendly cubana waitress talking about the medicine that her mother needs, the doctors moonlighting as illicit taxi drivers to augment their $12 or so monthly wage all under the ever present eye of the police, there to keep a lid on overt fraternisation and prevent the poor cubanos liberating the very well to do tourists of their cash.

In an interview with US students Guevara said;
"What I least like is our occasional lack of courage in confronting certain realities, sometimes economic and sometimes political, but especially economic. At times we have had compaĂąeros adopting the ostrich approach burying their heads in the sand . We have blamed drought, imperialism... for our economic problems and, at times when we have not wanted to broadcast the bad news, we have hesitated, and then only the [U.S.'s] Voice of America version has remained.

Something about the spirit of Che Guevara makes me think that if he were alive today, he'd be living in the tenements of central Havana, which are crumbling and falling to the ground as we speak.

The poor agricultural workers in the towns in the countryside living in houses without glazed windows or running water are not living the same lives as the people who work for he government. The taxi drivers that rip off the tourists get more from a trip around the block than the nurse earns in a week. Most all are surviving on the government rations of rice, beans, peas, a little cooking oil and a few eggs and powdered milk for the children. What little meat they can buy in the markets has to go a long way as a pound of chopped chicken costs 27 pesos cubano (about $1) or 3 days wages for the night porter at the hotel.

Perhaps it is time for another revolution, but this time a peaceful one that really will bring an equitable standard of living and enable the people to regain their dignity.

Hasta la victoria siempre!

The Internet, the great price leveler.
A friend has asked me to shoot her wedding, which is a little daunting as previously I have only done this sort of thing as a guest. So, belt and braces, I'll take two bodies. I'll dust off the old Minolta 600Si Classic, put some new batteries in and break out a couple of fresh rolls of Ilford XP2. I love this film for it's convenience, speed, velvety texture and huge latitude. I'll also be taking my wonderful Canon EOS 20D digital SLR. The problem though is the lenses that I'd have liked to have been using on the Canon were stolen in Cuba together with the flash. I also need a little more memory, you can't go running out at a wedding! So it's off to e-bay. I have scored a new 1GB Compact Flash card for about ÂŁ25 and a new 2GB card for ÂŁ15. If the 2GB card arrives I'll be amazed, but it's worth a go. Prices for stuff from e-bay can be good, but generally not as good as if you just went to B&H Photo in New York and bought them off of their website, even with shipping it's still about half the UK price. There's import duty if you are in mainland Europe but it's still a lot cheaper. So I think unless there are some terrific used bargains in the next week or so then B&H get the lens business.

The tachometer bracket on my Harley rusted through and broke the day before yesterday, my tacho was hanging on by the wires, so it was hastily bodged up with gaffer tape. Gaffer tape is probably what Lex Luthor should have used to defeat Superman instead of messing around with that Kryptonite nonsense.

I am now bidding on the replacement part on e-bay, even if I can't get it there, it will be cheaper buying it in the US, than buying it in the UK.

Why is Britain such a rip-off?

Beer and other Stuff
Since moving to La Linea the things I have missed most about England are the architecture, which I can get on my not infrequent visits to some more illustrious cities, Jerez, Sevilla, Madrid and the beer. I am a great lover of real ale which is unfortunately not available out of a barrel anywhere that I know of in Andalucia or Gibraltar. Occasionally I will make a trip to a shop that might sell London Pride in bottles which is nowhere near as good as it is on tap, but I'll open a bottle anyway, stir some of the fizz out of it with my finger and pretend.

I was without a drop of the real stuff for 18 months after first moving to the Iberian Peninsular. I was on the Thameslink train from Luton Airport to Streatham as the train rolled up to the platform at London Bridge, the grey cells in my brain moved into warp drive, the time for a decision had come. Home or the George Inn on Borough High Street, the options span in an ever accelerating circle in my mind until I felt so dizzy I had to get out and get in to the George for a pint to calm down.

The first pint was actually almost disappointing, was that what I had yearned for all those lager filled days, was that it? I persevered. By the third of fourth I realised that it was indeed a magnificent brew. I was only in London for four nights, by night four I fully realised that God himself probably drinks it and if there were to be a second coming of Christ, he would certainly get off at London Bridge and nip into the George for a couple of pints. Ideally he should turn up with Muhammad, who as he doesn't touch the sauce, would be an ideal fellow to be the designated driver and ferry the other prophets home in the car.

Anyway, My dear friend David announced he was coming over a couple of months ago and asked if there was anything I'd like brought over. A few minutes internet research turned up The Brubox in London Bitter flavour. It sat around the flat for a while, then on Tuesday I decided to get on with it. It's very easy and basically involves brewing a 'tea' with 'teabags' of hops and grains, heating a can of malt extract and pouring the lot into a plastic cube with a lot of cold water, some yeast. According to the instructions you should wait until the temperature of the cube settles down to around 22C. There is a little plastic strip thermometer to go on the side of the box, which ranges from about 15C to 28C. Ambient here is low 30s at the moment. I couldn't well put it in the fridge so I put the yeast in the following day when the cube was at room temperature. The instructions say fermentation should normally complete in 10 days, it has taken 3. I added the finings and a couple of teaspoons of sugar for secondary fermentation this morning, by this evening the cube was spherical, so I let a little pressure out, don't want my laundry room redecorated in a copper tint with the smell of stale beer coming from every inch of the room. Although saying that, it might remind me of a pub I know in Streatham. Anyway, I am supposed to give it 5 days to clear and allow for secondary fermentation. I reckon 2 days in this heat for the fermentation, I guess the clearing will still take 5. But whether I should refrigerate it before serving is another matter. I might try it, room temperature here is really too hot and provided the beer is served in half pint glasses it should warm up enough to liberate the smell and flavour quite quickly. More on this later.

As a wise man once said:

"Give a man a fish and you have fed him for a day, teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day."

History and the News
I expect you have heard the phrase 'Everyone remembers where they were when Kennedy was shot'. Well, a moment of the same gravitas is upon you. Last night while Maria was sleeping, she got here about 24 hours late and was tired, I was up watching episodes of the absolutely fantastic ITV Poirot series on my PC. I absolutely love the set design, screenplay and the other worldly innocence of it all. A became suddenly hungry and not wishing to interrupt too much Poirot time I headed off to the kitchen. A moment of inspiration hit me, I imagine in much the same way as it hit Archimedes in the bath, a few seconds later i had put a spicy Jeera poppadom in the microwave for a minute and a half ( the type you can buy uncooked at your local supermarket or Indian food shop). While it was cooking I grated a little cheese which I sprinkled on to the poppadom before putting it back into the microwave for another few seconds. Then out onto a plate a dash of Tabasco and there I had it, a snack fit for a Rajah!

Art
I have obviously been living in a cave (in Spain) as I had never heard of the Guerilla artist Banksy until his superb planting of a spoof cave painting of a caveman pushing a supermarket trolley in the British museum. I was also
Ď‹ber impressed by his recent paintings on that abominable wall the Israelis have erected.

My Photography
Well Hertwig has finally sorted the problems with my gallery pages so you will be able to look at my snaps on Phoice. I managed with the help of a friend of mine in the US to get a paid for copy of Paint Shop Pro 9. I am spending a lot of time retouching photos and learning new techniques and feel my work is coming on well.

Ambition.
I have decided that the key influencing factors on my life are lack of driving ambition combined with sloth. Although I put in vast amounts of effort when switched on to something there, is very little that holds my attention for more than a few months. Although I am impressed and admire artists, authors, scientists, spiritual leaders, some politicians, explorers, admirals, generals, my ancestors, people that can make a really good banoffee pie and the spirit of the common man, I am still waiting for the the fire of goal driven strife and passion to be ignited.

Egg poaching
My friend Joe has been extolling the virtues of poaching eggs in a bag of clingfilm, unaware of the carcinogens release when you warm it up. My preferred method in the absence of an egg poacher is to put two glass coffee cups into a larger saucepan with an inch or so of water in it. Put a dab of butter in each cup and then crack an egg in once the butter has melted. Put the saucepan lid on and a few minutes later you have ouef ecstasy to put on your buttered wholemeal toast.

Poetry
If you haven't read it recently read If. Also read Abou Ben Adhem.

I was out celebrating last night. My friend Dave, who we can consider to be my brother as we have been close now for about 20 years, has just become a father. As we live in different countries, I had to 'wet the babies head' remotely. So today I am spending recovering and making a curry.

A friend has asked for me to do the photography at her wedding so I think I'll be digging out a film SLR to go along with the EOS 20D. It's a little worrying. The professional wants about 700 euros and she has seen my work and likes it, so fingers crossed. She said she'd buy me a flash as payment, which is good as I miss the one that was stolen in Cuba.

I am very y annoyed with Corel who have bought out JASC the makers of Paint Shop Pro, which I have been a legally paid up and registered user of since the last century. I decided to upgrade to version 9 and went to try and download it, which is 55 US Dollars, if you are in the US, if you are in Gibraltar, you can't buy it at all as the country isn't listed. My Spanish debit card is not accepted by the Spanish site and the best that they could come up with in the UK is giving me a 10% discount off of the non-download version making it 44 pound sterling, which is almost double the price. It is amazing in this world of rampant software sharing (theft), that if you try to do something right, you get penalised. I had a friend in the US buy it for me, paypal'd the dosh to him and got him to send it.

I am really enjoying the curry, which is one of the things I miss most about the UK, the other really important one being real ale out of the tap. Dave brought me over a kit last time he was here but what with everything else going on in my life I haven't got round to making it.

I am really enjoying listening to podcasts, there is a great UK one called The Naked Scientist and the Superb Science Friday from America.

Just so as you know, for desert I am eating natural yoghurt, with nuts and honey, delicious and almost healthy.