This morning my daughter turned up to drop the small boy off at my house at some far too early hour as is usual on a Thursday. She was dressed in black and white and wore cat ears and a tale. It’s world book day, when pupils and teachers dress up as characters from children’s books, but I’m not sure which fictional cat she was supposed to be. When she arrived with her small daughter some time after the end of school this afternoon, the small daughter was dressed as a mermaid, a very fetching outfit. My daughter had by then ditched the ears and tale.
Someone on Facebook posted a picture of a small redheaded boy wearing a false beard. Apparently he was supposed to be Prince Harry - a character from a book but not really a fictional character, even if he seems to live in a soap opera.
Yesterday evening I watched a DVD of Ry Cooder’s visit to Cuba in 1998, I think, when he sought out and recorded the artists who played in the Buena Vista Social Club. Of course there was Compay Segundo but another of those artists was Omara Portuondo Peláez, born in October 1930 and according to wikipedia still performing and touring in 2022!! Impressive. Indeed, all the musicians were splendid!
When Fidel Castro died in 2016 an old friend and I decided that we wanted to visit Cuba before it all changed too much. It took us a while to get our act together, both of us being busy growing older quite disgracefully. But finally in 2019, both of us by then having hit the landmark 70 the previous year, off we went. One of the things we had on our list was to see the Buena Vista Social Club. We were not naive enough to think we might see the original artists, or even the social club itself, but we knew we could book to see a tribute act, which we did one evening in Havana.
As we waited for the doors of the venue to open we saw an elegant, very elderly lady sitting on a bench close to the entrance. People kept arriving and approaching her respectfully, greeting her or stopping to chat. When we were allowed in, she was ushered to a front table, close to the stage. Even the artists and technicians testing equipment paused to greet her. I’ve seen the Ry Cooder film of his visit to Cuba a couple of times since then and each time I have wondered if that elderly lady might have been Omara Portuondo. Of course, she might have been some other elderly Cuban who had in her time performed on stages around the city of Havana.
I’ll never know, but it hurts no-one for me to imagine we might have had a close encounter with a bit of musical legend. We can all dream.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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