The Sunday Times.
March 18 2001
The twinning of cities has always baffled me somewhat. Beyond the fact it is
supposed to be terribly good for trade and facilitates those decadent rampages
known as school exchange trips, it always seems rather random - like a
topographic round of pin the tail on the donkey.
Sleepy hamlets are twinned with spangled metropolises; obscure and
unpronouncable little places are unearthed and bullied into establishing cordial
links on the whim of local councillors. Glasgow, apparently, has twin cities
called Rostov-on-Don and Dalian; while Edinburgh, ever the exotic, has one
called Xi'an. Does anyone benefit from this overseas bonding? Can one buy little
piper dolls in Dalian, or demand salt and sauce in Xi'an? If our cities are
going to amass such large international families, we really should be kept
informed.
Rather more publicity has been afforded to the ongoing courtship dance
between Glasgow and Havana, Cuba. After Alex Mosson, the lord provost, visited
Havana last year, Cuban sources confidently reported that a twinning agreement
had been signed. The Glasgow camp was a little more coy, however, preferring to
commit itself only to "closer trade links" while flattering its new
friend with the promise of a Glasgow festival of Cuban culture, which happened
rather quietly last autumn.
More recently, Havana's mayor Conrado Martinez was in town, and the
possibility of twinship was raised again. This coincided with a new flurry of
curiosity about the island stimulated by three portly men in search of an
ideological parking space. Those three men are the Manic Street Preachers, and
on February 17 they became the first big Western pop stars to play in Havana
since - er - Billy Joel, actually, in 1979.
Fidel Castro was so taken with the band he expressed a flirtatious wish to
travel to Britain to see them play again. Maybe the bearded one should get his
dancing shoes on for their two Glasgow Barrowlands gigs in April. After all,
Martinez has smoothed the path to Glasgow; and Castro already has a friend in
Brian Wilson, who visited him last year.
Doubtless our own homegrown Che, Tommy Sheridan, would be delighted to see
him too - he spent his honeymoon in Cuba, and that was only after he had been
dissuaded from holding the actual wedding there. Glasgow council leader Charles
Gordon also honeymooned in Cuba last year, and expressed his enthusiasm for the
place by declaring: "We like their rum, we like their salsa and we like
their politics!".
There's no reason why salsa shouldn't squeeze out line-dancing in the
national affections. The west of Scotland is, after all, probably the last
British enclave where the word "socialism" can be uttered without the
immediate intervention of a crack squad of undercover spin doctors armed with
hairspray and euphemisms.
There's something else we have in common. Cuba has its own whisky, Old
Havana, allegedly the product of a secretive fact-finding mission to Scotland
undertaken by Castro's spies 20 years ago. All right, so experts sneer that it's
greenish, oily, and fit to be renamed Castro GTX - but it's the family
resemblance that counts. Cuba must have needed its own whisky to wash down a
diet reputed - just like our own - to be one of the world's worst. We could
tutor each other in variations on the theme of deep-fat frying; they could
further deplete our standards of public health by popularising cigar-smoking.
So there are many obvious reasons why Scots would be romantically drawn to a
small country that stubbornly defies the wishes of its bigger, richer neighbour.
But twinning is a serious business (just ask our close comrades in
Rostov-on-Don).
Some, for example, might feel just a little twitchy about cosying up quite
so close to a dictatorship, even if it is a fashionable holiday destination for
Guardian readers, and home, as Wim Wenders' Buena Vista Social Club showed us,
to lots of lovable elderly musicians.
In common with quite a lot of successful dictators, Castro does tend to lock
up dissidents. Amnesty International has recently identified "a new wave of
political oppression" in Cuba. Castro has a particular dislike for
homosexuals, the HIV-positive, and anyone else he deems decadent or eccentric.
If Havana and Glasgow are going to keep developing their relationship, as
promised, attempts will undoubtedly be made to play up the romantic, pop-culture
Cuba - the one that is evoked by Che Guevara T-shirts, salsa dancing and Havana
cigars rolled on women's thighs.
My own image of Havana is positioned firmly in this kitschy sphere, and
however hard I try, I can't sober it up. It was burned into my memory by early
exposure to the film Guys and Dolls, in which Marlon Brando lures an unwilling
Jean Simmons to Havana and plies her with rum.
Proving that strange psychological parallels can occur between twins, the
Edinburgh Royal Lyceum's production of Guys And Dolls will be in town at the
same time as the Manics. You never know - it could just be another date for
Fidel's cultural diary.
Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd. | 