DIARY
JEREMY PAXMAN Ihave spent the past week in one of the last unspoiled places in the Caribbean. We were 50 miles off the south coast of Cuba, fishing and diving with only egrets, pelicans and the occasional salt-water crocodile for company. Not a telephone rang, not a news bulletin was heard, not a newspaper read. Yet somehow, even amid the mangrove swamps, Cubans got to hear the latest developments in the tragicomedy of Elian Gonzales, the six-year-old boy forced by Fidel Castro, Janet Reno and the raving exiles of Miami to bear the burden of this impoverished country's tortured relation- ship with the world's last superpower. Who would have imagined that US federal agents would become Cuban national heroes? I could not find a single Cuban who did not applaud the 4 a.m. raid to restore Elian to his father. But there may be more to it than a mere desire to return him to his closest blood relative. Thus far, Cubans fleeing Castro have had to touch American soil to request asylum. The American coastguard devotes vast resources to intercepting migrants on the waves and sending them back. Yet Elian was, famously, rescued out at sea. If America were to grant him the right to remain, how could it deny similar rights to other refugees, drifting towards Florida on everything from old inner tubes to polystyrene boxes?
In a curious way, the straits to which the Cubans have been driven since the Russians pulled the plug on their economy have cre- ated something of the 'non-alignment' which was for so many years an empty boast. Cana- dian and European investors are piling m and tourists arriving in record numbers, while a poor child in Cuba still has a far bet- ter chance of reaching maturity than its counterpart in most of the world. The Rus- sians were never particularly popular any- way and their habit of wandering around the tropics in fur-lined anoraks particularly offended the Cubans, who are scent- obsessed (there is even a Museum of Per- fumes in Havana). Many a Havanero could clamber aboard one of the country's rattle- trap buses, twitch his nose like a hamster and declare, 'There's a Russian on board.'
The food crisis which followed the Rus- sian exodus is now over. At one time, a friend who works for one of the govern- ment departments recalled, the entire ration for his department had been a single bread roll which, after much discussion, The gave to the oldest member of staff. "le old boy spent the afternoon feeding it to the birds, while the rest of them returned home to eye up their neighbours' dogs and cats hungrily.
Things have changed so much that I even noticed a canine beauty parlour in Old Havana. In fact, compared with my last visit, only just over a year ago, Old Havana is booming. Crumbling buildings are being restored, hotels renovated and cobbled streets relaid. There are plans for art gal- leries and a conservatoire. The rescue of Old Havana is the consequence of the city historian's persuading Fidel to spend Havana's tourist dollars on restoration, while there is still something to restore.
contriving an environment in which ordinary Cubans can afford to eat in any of the restaurants of Old Havana will be anoth- er matter. The menus may look cheap at $10 a head, but that is half the monthly salary of a doctor. But the ingenuity of Cubans is undiminished. Police road checks in the countryside are now focused on detecting stolen meat. A skilled gang can kill and butcher a state-owned cow in just over five minutes, and the offence, I was told, now carries a possible 20-year prison sentence, which is longer than you would serve for most murders in Britain. So a herd of 1,000 water buffalo introduced from India required daily surveillance. As water buffalo spend most daylight hours wallowing in mud up to their nostrils, counting them presented no great challenge. Each day the cattle inspectors went forth and each day they returned, having counted 1,000 buffalo. It was only after a week that they began to think that, even for water buffalo,- several dozen of them seemed remarkably dozy. Wading into the water, the inspectors dis- covered that there were indeed 1,000 buffalo heads sticking out of the water, but about 100 of them were on stakes. Everything below the water-line had vanished.
ack home in Oxfordshire, the great distraction is the arrival of a film crew, complete with make-up caravans, location catering wagons and the rest. Local people are signed up as extras, the local hunt stages a special meet. I ask one of the techies if he can outline the plot. 'Well, it's called The Hunt,' he says. 'But it's for Carl- ton. so I expect it's about shagging.'
0 n Friday, I am due to give a talk in Oxford in memory of Philip Geddes, the young journalist killed in an Irish republi- can bombing. Pressed for a title weeks ago, I suggested 'Surviving Spin'. But the truth is, I haven't written the thing yet, and cer- tainly won't finish it until the day itself. Yet a month ago, under the headline Paxo's punch', the Times Diary confidently assert- ed that I was 'clearing my throat for a fero- cious blast against Alastair Campbell and his propagandist chums in Downing Street'. This 'tirade' was 'expected to stoke up ten- sions between the BBC and the govern- ment'. 'I gather', the diarist sailed on, 'he is likely to address Campbell's tactic of pro- tecting Tony Blair from the tough nuts on the interview circuit.' That 'I gather', so authoritative, yet so vague, bothered me. I wrote a Letter to the Editor of the once- upon-a-time paper of record, explaining that the diarist's report was news to me, since the lecture hadn't even been concep- tualised, let alone written. I pointed out that if he had bothered to telephone me, I could have spared him the trouble of exer- cising his imagination. Needless to say, the newspaper did not print the correction. A few days later, the Times diarist did ring to claim that they had tried to contact me, but had failed. This, apparently, justified their making up the story. It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for Alastair Campbell.
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