TWINNING PEAKS..

Many years ago, in yet another of my former lives, I was forcibly but mercifully fleetingly conscripted into the world of twinning.   It`s a device by which communities in one country can develop links with those in others and I`ve often wondered at the motives behind such ventures.   I`m sure some are entirely genuine - fostering ties that encourage mutual understanding and all that - but I also wonder about the cost in time, effort and money for cash strapped local councils who are normally behind the funding of these twinning arrangements. 

My own experience of the twinning business is admittedly sparse but I discovered enough to understand that exchange visits can involve lots of travel, a hefty bill and a degree of anxiety as one blunders into foreign parts, struggles with language, customs, gastronomic uncertainty and diplomatic guesswork.   And this is going on all over the place, as witnessed for example by the fact that the charming Somerset town of Wincanton is twinned seriously with somewhere in Germany and another in France.  (See picture above.)

But look closely and you will see that Wincanton is also twinned with Ankh-Morpork, an entirely fictional place featured in Terry Pratchett`s Discworld novels.  Now I would guess that if Wincanton is known for anything it might be its racecourse and the name on those lorries you see doing their articulated thing up and down the highways of the land, even though their head office is in Chippenham in Wiltshire.   But I suggest that Wincanton may have stumbled upon the solution to the question of how to get involved in twinning without it costing anything and without actually having to do very much.  It is, after all, the only place in the country twinned with somewhere that doesn`t actually exist

It`s a clever, bold initiative and one of which the good folk of Wincanton should be proud as they lead the country out of the misty and uncertain world of formalised twinning.  And Wincanton has done its best to take the Ankh-Morpork twinning seriously - you can buy Discworld sausages in the local butchers and there`s a shop in the High Street, the Discworld Emporium, which claims to be `the official Ankh-Morpork Consulate.`  And some of the streets in a new housing development have been named from Ankh-Morpork in the Discworld series - Peach Pie Street, Treacle Mine Road and so on .   

There are obvious candidates to extend the policy of twinning with fictional locations - Milton Keynes, for example, might sit happily alongside Never-Never-land.   Closer to home, the sanitised, neatly choreographed community of Kings HIll here in deepest Kent might comfortably exchange with Stepford, whose respective wives would surely have much in common.   And here in Dibley we might welcome a tie-up with Camberwick Green....or even the Land of Nod.   With twinning having peaked in Wincanton, surely the rest of the world will follow its lead.   Anyone for Wonderland?