Twinned Town

There was a time in my youth when I thought, on glimpsing the road signs you often see when entering a town or village indicating it’s twinned with somewhere, that there existed a perfect replica of that village in France, or Germany or wherever the sign indicated.

I imagined the continental equivalent to have identical roads, houses, shops and local amenities; identical gardens, cars and even weather. In fact, the only difference would be the roadsigns (which would be in a different language) and the haircuts (unruly bouffants if twinned with somewhere in France, mullets if in Germany).

In my age and wisdom, I now know this not to be the case, as logistically, this would be almost impossible to set up, let alone maintain. The village I now live in is twinned with somewhere called Sully-Sur-Loire in France, and part of me feels a kinship with my European doppelgangers. I like to think of individuals, similar to myself, shouting “Merde!” and other obscenities on their way to work in the morning when trying to overtake a convoy of farm boys driving tractors at three miles an hour as I did today.