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Back from Cuba

In the Spring issue of N16, Metal Crumble’s Roger Taylor reported on the progress of his charity walk across Cuba. Here, he concludes the story.

Well I’m back on this island, and now at last have clear distance between me and that island... Cuba. Only now can I really begin to put all the pieces together: ninety-seven days and around 1200 miles, a callus on the tip of every toe, and at the end of it all a fullness so immense that it was impossible to separate the moments.

I feel like I’ve plodded, trudged, tramped and, in the better moments, walked across and through the very soul of Cuba, and inhindsightitwasglorious. The pace of the journey let me absorb things so slowly that I was often able to say to myself ‘Ah, no, I’ll think about that in a few days time... or whenever!’ Such luxury, utter luxury: time stretching to accommodate me, not me squeezing to fit in time.

Shooting stars and shared glasses of coffee, water and rum, and country voices, unseen in the tall sugar cane or reeds, yet ringing clear to us in our silent approach. Country girls and women singing alone beside houses... and how they sang. At times, my tiny tent was almost a prison yet, when I could fit myself and all my possessions in a tent six feet long and two and a half feet wide, well, in some way I knew I was a rich man.

The last part of the walk was physically the easiest stretch. We were strong, and this was the valleyed, hummocked surreal green of spring in the west: the tobacco lands. Each night I would accept a freshly rolled ‘criollo’ or countryside cigar – moist, mild and aromatic – and sit smoking beside the tents, talking, listening and smoking, then lying down upon that rich red soil with the smooth bitter honey of tobacco on my lips.

Cubans, like everyone, have their dreams, yet, for the time being, all dreams are on hold, and the Cubans stand and wait for transport, each one knowing that somehow their fate lies not with themselves but, cruelly, within the hands of another country.

I’mstillcollectingmysponsorshipmoneyandwill,onmynextvisittoCuba,presentittotheHospital Trust on the Isla de la Juventud. You can sponsor me at Metal Crumble, 13 Stoke Newington Church Street, N16. To Church Street shopkeepers: I’m coming round to see you all, and not to ask for a glass of water...

I’m sure absolutely nobody remembers my Issue 28 comment that when it comes to crime Stoke Newington is ‘rather white collar these days’.

Well, in the interests of good old N16 equality, I offer you the following headlines from the press over the last 3 months. All saw members of our community involved in some way or other: ‘Monster returned to Britain and had 3 killed’ Sun, ‘Robber killed man for his Louis Vuitton briefcase’ Standard, ‘Karate chop killer faces life’ Times, ‘Head of Ferrari cocaine gang jailed for 21 years’ Standard and most depressingly ‘Killers left baby lying in blood of dead mother’ Standard.

Factor in a Brazilian rain forest of print concerning alleged terrorists from our midst, and much of the summer news emanating from our Republic has been as depressing as the August weather. The odd ray of sunshine has peeped through the clouds, however. A fine piece by local resident Michael Goldfarb in The New York Times entitled ‘Where London comes together’ gave a modicum of hope. He noted that ‘in a world slowly splitting at the seams, Clissold Park is like a dream’. There, ‘some of the most intractable conflicts in the world seem to have been resolved or at least temporarily ignored. Kurds and Turks, Jews and Muslims, working class and middle class all coexist’. One reason he puts forward is ‘the bedrock British custom of queuing. There are only four swings, far too few for the number of kids who use them... but parents take care to wait their turn. The Hasidic Jew nods to the woman in hijab and the exchange of swings takes place, with none of the coiled resentment seen in American playgrounds.’

Swing shortages in the park are never a problem come the summer holidays. It’s usually like Baron Bomburst’s Vulgaria in the playground. The Observer seems to know why? Apparently we’re all swimming in the mud at festivals. A piece on The Big Chill stated that ‘it looked like someone had organised a mass outing from Stoke Newington, I lost count of the number of thirtysomething couples pushing state of the art buggies’.

I’m sure autumn will see normal service resumed, as the future of N16 and their creators go about doing what they do best. In an article titled ‘How can a whole area be allergic to gluten’, Christina Patterson of The Independent noted that in Stoke Newington cafes ‘you can’t read a paragraph of your paper without a perfectly enunciated little voice demanding a “babycino” (hot frothed milk, apparently) oranorganic flapjack. Oranadult voice telling little Emily or Sam or Tallulah that if they eat up their lentil lasagne they’ll get a lovely mango lassi. A soya one, of course. For these are the fussiest children on the planet, born to the fussiest parents.’ Another reason why, according to the Observer Food Monthly ‘London’s yummy eco mummy central Stoke Newington’ has the first all-organic farmers market in the UK.

Whisper it very quietly, but many of these parents may well be voting Conservative next May. Looking for answers to the question ‘So could you vote for Cameron?” the Guardian came to ‘comfortably pinkish Stoke Newington’ looking for the answers. I’m not going to name names but the sign frontage on everyone’s favourite cycle shop on Church Street may well be changing from red to blue some time soon.

With so much depressing news around I’ll leave you on a note of optimism. The Standard interviewed a selection of London 18-year-olds who had just passed their A Levels. One of them from Stoke Newington wants ‘to be the first female United Nations secretary general’. I’m sure we all wish her well in her quest.