Now, I’m here to write about life in Havana, about daiquiris, fishing and salsa. But it’s fair to say life in Cuba has been getting a bit intense. Not as tense as it is elsewhere, but we’re very definitely on the list of countries where the US wants regime change. Washington has cranked up its 64-year trade embargo on the island into an all-out oil blockade. Donald Trump said he is hoping to conduct a “friendly takeover” of the island.

The Habanos cigar festival, which I had been planning to write about, has been “postponed.” So I find myself pushing aside my notes on the ever-higher prices of Behikes, instead scribbling the word, “siege” on my page. It all seems a little medieval.

I’m not going to get into the rights and wrongs of this situation, which is for elsewhere in the magazine, but I want to write about what it feels like to have a big, belligerent neighbor threaten to starve you into rebellion, or worse.

The answers are legion, but let’s start with uncomfortable and........

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