…you don’t realise how bad they are until they’re gone. adam and the ants dominion over the charts in the early 1980s springs to mind, as does the belief in a cartesian dualism, and, the archetype of them all, the bogeyman under the bed. typically, we accept, for example, how great the double-drum sound of adam and the ants is, how the tribal chant supplants the need for melody, a good voice and someone who can actually play the guitar with a kind of ur-sound which speaks to the primeval soul within us all. only later, after rehab and madness and vanessa feltz, does enlightenment visit us with a glimpse of the terrible truth: ant music was garbage.
in a similar vein, last friday i realised the passing of another tyranny of which i had previously been unaware: greeting cards. it was when the builders stopped that i knew it was an important day. the builders just down the road from me work a minimum of 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, often more. it doesn’t matter if it is minus 40 and a blizzard, they simply keep going. they are driven. however, last friday they stopped, and the reason for this was that it was ‘defender of the motherland day’, or, as some of my students explained it to me – ‘man day’. on this day, all russia celebrates men and how great they are. it makes a pleasant change to celebrate the awesomeness of men but, even so, i had thought it might be one of the kind of made-up days, like ‘bosses’ day’ of the kind we have in england. nevertheless, when the builders stopped i knew it was for real.
because they are ever thoughtful, the russians i know made me feel like a defender of the motherland too by giving me the appropriate greeting and little gifts. what they didn’t give me, though, was cards. nor did i get any cards at new year or christmas or valentine’s or any of the other special days since i have been here. the reason for all this is not because they think i can’t read; rather, it hit me on friday, it’s because there aren’t any cards to give – siberia is a card-free zone. suddenly, the cause of the lightness of spirit i have felt since being here, the extra spring in my step, and the causal joie de vivre with which i take each day is clear – i am free from the tyranny of getting cards. no more hours misspent amongst acres of over-priced pink cardboard, searching for that elusive hallmark verse which is both highly irreverent and deeply sincere and which will have a masterpiece of postmodern art on the front designed to reveal all the depth and shade of my personality. no. this is russia and the tyranny is over: happy day to you all.
