This takes me back to the days when I worked for an Export company that was truly universal in it's services, sometimes secret. I remember it like it was yesterday. In the hot summer of 61 I was sitting on the balcony of my small yet salubrious Mayfair rooms finishing my second pot of coffee when a letter arived with an all too familiar post mark. The content was startlingly blunt in that I was instructed to pack my travel case and depart for Havanna as soon as possiblely convenient. On arriving at Heathrow I was delighted to discover that HR had laid on a charter aircraft for my hop across the Atlantic. The flight itself was, although fashionable, frightfully boistrous. The captain notified me that we were about to cross Florida and we should be landing shortly. I was aware that Cuba was a communist state and had become a little too cosy with Khrushchev lately so had come to think of all socialist countries as rather dull yet sinister climbs but the vista of the Cuban coast that greated us put right any assumtions I held. I'd seen grainy images of the Carribean from school text books on the empire but in the flesh the landscape was beautifully alien. Lush forests dotted with Topaz lagoons invited the aircraft to land into the islands exotic embrace. The native airport was exactly what I'd imagined. Hot, sweaty and livestock everywhere. In my brief I was told I was to be greated by a Cuban counterpart who would be identifiable by a carnation on their attire. I scanned the eclectic crowd of travellers, peasants and taxi drivers for my floral beacon of calm. That's when I saw her. Her radiance electrified all that she was, an Amazonian Godess. "Come, We must go, others are waiting". I could see the lightning behind her dazzling eyes and sensed the thunderstorm in her hips as she strode out towards our awaiting vehicle. Throughout the journey she and the driver spoke only in Spanish which left me to my imagination which, as you can imagine, was having an all too public effect in my most sensetive department. Eventually we arrived at my hotel and the driver took my belongings to my room and then left. I deposited my belongings in my room and allowance in the hotel safe and made preparations for the next days excursion into the mountains. My mind was still racing with unholy thoughts of my opposite number. So ferverant were these images that I retired to the bathroom to 'calm down'. After this I decided on a light dinner. She was still there. A lump formed in my throat and another started forming elsewhere that I quelled with memories of boarding school. We exchanged a few pleasantries and she inquired upon my reason for being in Havanna. This took me by surprise I'll admit that to this day I still wonder why I told her I was in the business of selling vacuum cleaners, it sort of blurted out. She told me that she'd never met an Englishmen and wanted to see if the rumours were true. We went for seafood and it was delicious. We then went dancing and I was introduced to what they call a Mojito. It's a rather homosexual affair that involves the infusion of mint leaves with Lime cordial and Rum, most bizarre. We ended up back at my hotel and she'd transformed from a calm sea of desire to a wanton maelstrom of lust. Normally I like to offer a lady the option of Gin and tonic but she bluntly stated she'd rather leave the lights on. Now that certainly put some wind in my sails as I'd been aching to see her as nature intended all night. What happened that night will remain in my 'bank' for the rest of my life. We did things that the church would excommunicate us for and that satan would reward us. I never saw again after that night but I heard she ended up with some scruffy anarchist and that they were killed in Bolivia.