This fine painting, or at least a print of this fine painting, now hangs on my wall as a souvenir of Cuba.

The original hangs in the Museo de Bellas Artes in Havana where there is a magnificent collection of Cuban art from the conquest to the present day. It is the work of Mario Carreño whose pictures have sold for millions. My investment in his work was more modest. I spent substantially more on getting it framed, 13 times more in fact.

If your Spanish is up to it you can read about him here, or if not just enjoy the pictures of which there are a dozen or so. If you like them you can order copies in oils from this site where there is a bit of biog in broken English. They it seems will copy anything you like so a Titian in the toilet is within reach of us all.

No doubt like me you absorbed with your mother's milk stories of hospital patients being roused from slumber by officious night sisters in order for them to take their sleeping pills.

So you will appreciate my irritation as a resting partygoer at being shaken awake around five this morning to be told (by it has to be said an employee of our national health service) that it was time to go to bed. He promptly took over the spare room, where I imagine he is snoring his head off as I write, leaving his hostess and myself to continue dozing as best we could on the settee. An hour or so later she gathered enough will power to wriggle free from the sofa and shuffled off towards her own sleeping quarters.

My sleep now broken twice I left her applying a late but no doubt essential coating of cold cream and struck out up Easter road dreaming of breakfast. Tesco being unaccountably out of fresh croissants at 6.20 on a summer Saturday morning I am toasting some stale bread as I inhale the wholesome odour of fresh Cuban coffee.

Good morning and good night.

Can I stand the strain of watching Andy Murray play again? He's just won the scrappiest match, admittedly in straight sets but each set and indeed each game followed a crazy paving path that had me screaming at the TV in disbelief.

STV launched an Edinburgh focused daily news broadcast at the beginning of this week just as the Guardian is folding up its Edinburgh local web offering. I haven't tried the STV programme yet but I was a daily visitor to the Guardian site for an encapsulated view of what was happening in the big wide city that surrounds Spurtleland.

I shall henceforth have to have an early morning dip in the Edinburgh Reporter to set me up for the day.

The BBC are giving tennis lovers a treat with their continuous coverage of the French Open on the pretty little red button. Yesterday I saw the young English girl Heather Watson become the first British lady since who knows when to get past the first round. She won convincingly against an opponent who simply lost heart in the second set. The monetary reward for reaching the second round is $45,000 so even if she goes no further she can pop home to mum and dad in Guernsey with her head held high and her pockets bulging.

I had to go out just as Andy Murray came on court this morning and have just watched a recording of his match. Given that the guy he played is well over a hundred places lower than him in the rankings I expected him to slaughter the poor chap. But in fact he struggled here and there in a way that I don't think either Nadal or Djokovic would have done so I don't rate his chances of getting past the semi-final but I'll be pleased if he does.

There was an absolutely cracking match later when Isner took Nadal all the way to the wire. Five sets of very exciting tennis which should fire Nadal up for the rest of the tournament.

It would seem that in my case the effect of jet lag increases as time goes on. Not only did I drop off around tea-time yesterday causing me to be late for a drinks appointment but last night I slept for an unprecedented nine hours.

In between I stayed awake for the Grads production of A Comedy of Errors. This is all about the mistakes and confusion provoked by the arrival in Ephesus of a master and his servant each of whom has an identical twin in the city.

The Grads original twist on this story is that their sets of twins are not exactly identical. Although that may seem daft I found it quite helpful in following the plot and since the other members of the cast behave as though they were identical the farce rolls along with the fun and games that Shakespeare had in mind unimpaired.

Any of my readers thinking of mounting a production of Laurel and Hardy should rush along. There is a perfect Stan on display and with a bit of fattening maybe an Ollie as well.

It's nice to be back in fresh-aired Edinburgh but the music of Cuba is still in my ears.