wish i had a drink problem

i don’t remember being on an aircraft carrier before…

2007-05-16T17:10:00.000+06:00

…but i have a fair idea what it must be like slap-bang in the middle of a war, with enemy planes attacking from all angles, the radar tower on fire, the cook shouting ‘no fool mess with ma beans and gets away with it!’, and a general state of pandemonium. in a roundabout way, this is because my flat was designed for very old people. one of the giveaways here is that it is so hot you can roast a chicken without the aid of an oven. another little clue is that the mirror over the sink is conveniently located on a level just below my head, making shaving even more fun than it normally is. the final clue, however, is the doorbell.

there are in fact two doorbells – there is the doorbell for the front door, and the bell on the intercom. they have different sounds so you can tell them apart, but they share one key quality – they are ear-blisteringly loud. the one on the door sounds like someone stole all the bells from st paul’s, notre dame and the duomo, stuck them in the roofspace above my flat, and provided a crack team of campanologists to man them. for those of you who wish to sound a little less gothic, the intercom buzzer has a more modern feel to it and in a previous life was an air-raid siren designed to alert people within a 50-mile radius. the upshot is that if someone is at either of my doors and they ring either of the bells, i can’t claim i didn’t hear them.

however, this is somewhat academic as i am not actually allowed to answer the door. back in my old flat, i once had an entertaining half-hour conversation with a man who came to the door wanting to sell me the very cable package i already had. when i told my boss about it though, she had conniptions. ‘anything could have happened,’ she warned me, ‘anything’. unlike stephen king, my boss knows that a vague menace is always more spooky than a concrete one, and i promised nevermore to open my door.

fast forward to last wednesday, which was a public holiday here. ‘victory day’, as it is known, celebrates the end of the second world war, or the great patriotic war as it is called in russian. it is a very big deal, with signs and banners and flags tacked onto every building, billboard and lamppost in the city. there are three key events – a parade in the morning, a speech by putin on the tv at midday, and fireworks in the evening. there was also a world cup ice hockey match at tea-time, so it was an action-packed day for all concerned and one whose focus was a swelling of national pride and patriotism.

if you are german, it is best to keep a low profile around russians on this day. one of my students told me that once he was on holiday in turkey on may 9^th and the hotel where he was staying was populated exclusively by germans and russians, but on that day the germans all but disappeared. a few brave souls went white-water rafting and it so happened that one boat was german and one was russian. there was a little bit of banter, and some water-splashing of the kind you might see every day, but then one russian suddenly snapped, picked up his paddle and whacked it on the head of the nearest german shouting, ‘that’s for stalingrad!’. it goes very deep here in a way that it doesn’t in britain.

so, having been to the parade, listened to the speech, and watched the ice hockey, i was rounding off the day in style by watching ‘apocalypto’ on dvd. yes, i truly know how to live. and then, suddenly, a siren broke into my reverie about mayan slaughter. halfway across the city, some of the old soldiers, who’d been guests at the parade that day and who were vivid with the memories it brought on, must have looked upwards expecting bombers. but no, it was just my intercom buzzer. without moving her gaze from mel gibson’s paean to knife wounds in south america, my friend asked me who it was. no-one i knew, i assured her, which was true as the real doorbell is my mobile.

the siren went off again. and again. and again. if it was no-one i knew, it occurred to me, then it must be someone i didn’t know. a stranger. on the film, a head rolled ominously down the steps of the chichen itza. the siren kept going. ‘something must be wrong,’ my friend said. ‘you’re right,’ i responded, ‘there’s an air-raid siren in my flat making more noise than a donkey who’s just discovered his retirement home is a tall building in spain, and there’s no way to turn it off.’ i decided to answer it but my friend urged me against it. ‘it could be anything,’ she warned me, ‘anything!’

and it was anything, for next the church bells started pealing too. at first there was a polite one push on the doorbell, but then it started going mad, as if someone had stolen all the bell-ringers’ shoes and then lit a series of small fires under their feet. it was at this stage that my flat began to assume the aura of an aircraft carrier under attack. the evening fireworks started to explode in the night sky outside the window, fighting with the thunder to see which could make the loudest bang. what with all the noise from the church bells and the air raid siren, the scenes of mutilation on the dvd, the sense of an unknown menace outside both doors, the storm, the fireworks, and the general panic gripping the flat’s occupants, i think it’s fair to say that i am in no way exaggerating my plight.

eventually, my friend decided she had to answer the door. almost, anyway, as they don’t answer the door here like we do in britain. as every flat has two doors, what they do is open one door and shout through the other. it lends proceedings a certain siege-like air, especially if you don’t understand what is being shouted. naturally i provided my own translation:

friend: we’re not coming out!

stranger: you know it has to end sometime.

friend: you’ll never take us alive!

stranger: if that’s the way you want it…

etc.

this, as it turned out, was not wholly inaccurate. but what the stranger and his friend downstairs wanted was not us, but my tv. or rather, his tv.

as everything inconvenient tends to do, it all turned on my landlady. if she had played tennis on the men’s circuit in the 1970s, we would now lovingly refer to her as the kind of character the game is missing now. this is because she has a special personality which she made herself using nettles and drain hair. she has a slightly squashed appearance like a raisin trodden underfoot. and she tends to shout-come-scream if a line call goes against her. because of this, it normally takes three of us to deal with her at any one time, and we tag-team it, pulling each other out when the tongue-biting comes close to actual severance. for added spice, when i speak to her it is through a translator, which often makes it seem like we're an old couple who can't bear to speak to each other directly anymore. the other day, for example, she asked me why i hadn’t washed the net curtains.

me: perhaps because the washing machine she promised me 4 months ago still doesn’t work.

boss/translator: i don’t think we’ll tell her that.

me: well tell her the curtains were clean until she touched them with her slimy fingers.

boss/translator: i don’t think we’ll mention that either.

and so on. anyhow, it turned out that my landlady had stolen the tv off the man at the door and passed it off to me as her own. when the man had threatened legal action, she had relented and decided to give the tv up. in the process, and for reasons best known to herself, she had told the man that i was german. given what day it was, the man had made his own assumptions about why i wasn’t responding to the bells and this is why he had been more persistent than a cold sore. he explained that he thought i was hiding behind the door. ‘o no,’ said my friend, eager to clarify the matter, ‘he is english - he was hiding in the open.’ next time, though, i’ll be hiding under cover properly. my boss was right, anything can be out there, anything – even the telly snatchers…

britain and russia have recently suffered from the same affliction…

2007-05-07T19:13:00.000+06:00

…local elections. that’s probably where the similarities end. the local election here, for example, encompassed a region larger than europe (as long as you understand that europe doesn’t include the russian part of europe – the russians don’t think of themselves as european anymore than most of the english do). there was also a difference at the polling stations. whereas in britain you roll up, cast your vote and leave, here they had parties at the polling stations – food, drink and music. if this wasn’t enough to make you want to scrawl an ‘x’ in a box, they also had a free scratchcard lottery on the go with the top prizes being six cars and a flat. you didn’t even have to vote to enter, just turn up. if it was your first vote, you got a framed certificate and a t-shirt. all of this seemed to work as turnout was a healthy 60-something%.

perhaps the biggest difference, however, was the result. whereas blair was quick to dismiss losing a 1000-odd seats as par for the mid-term course, here putin suffered no such reversal of fortune. on the contrary, although putin does not officially belong to any party, the party he is associated with took 90% of the seats up for grabs. this is not because russia is secretly a one-party state, as some of the media coverage might suggest, but because they genuinely adore putin. i think people liked blair the first week he was in office, but other than that i don’t remember a time when a prime minister in my lifetime was ever close to receiving the sort of adoration putin does here. the vast majority of people are just plain grateful that he has established and maintained the kind of stability and prosperity we take for granted in britain. the only concern people seem to have about putin is that he will have to leave at the end of the year when his second term is up. in britain, on the other hand, i don’t even think mrs blair wants to see her husband stay in office any longer than it takes for him to pick up his coat and turn off the light.

your cheese sandwich has made me join the undead...

2007-04-23T21:26:00.000+06:00

…: fact. i’m not an actual scientist in the traditional sense of wearing a white coat and fiddling with test tubes and knowing anything about science, but, as i understand it, cow gas is pretty much responsible for global warming, and we have so many cows in the first place because all the selfish cheese-eaters in the world put their lunch ahead of global apocalypse. until recently, i was prepared to forgive you all the destruction of the planet for the sake of a little cheddar. however, everything has changed now.

specifically, what has changed are the mosquitoes in my flat. i have no experience of mosquitoes and when they moved in at the beginning of last week i was more than happy to welcome them, show them round, chat over some vodka and blini, etc. but no, that wasn’t good enough – they wanted blood. my blood. my actual real factual existing blood. vampire-like, they steal upon you in the night, knife their vicious little proboscis into your vein and suck the juice of life from your sleeping body. if you ever wake from your sleep again, which you may not given the amount of blood loss involved, then you will have joined the undead.

naturally, my first thought was revenge. i considered bingeing on some free radicals but there weren’t any to hand, so my thoughts turned to old testament violence. while not quite prepared to bite them and suck their blood, i was willing to splatter them all over the wall. armed with a flat palm, i scoured my flat the next day for any sign of these dracula-manqués. unsurprisingly most of them were hanging upside-down from the ceiling, but i found one within reach on the wall and whacked it. mistake. it died alright, but in so doing it unleashed all the blood it had taken from me or someone else or possibly even someone else. it went everywhere. i was aghast. it was like the moment in alien when they realise the aliens have acid for blood. they were unkillable.

my next recourse was to find a flame-thrower or some kind of agent orange with which to bring the war to the mozzies’s front-room. however, when i went to my local arms-supplier i was told they had nothing because the mosquitoes were almost a month early due to global warming. we are isolated in siberia and supplies have to be planned many weeks in advance. i’m paraphrasing here, but basically the shop assistant said we should still have snow on the ground at this time of year but what with all the people eating cheese and encouraging cow growth, the planet had heated up.

the only thing left for me to do was shut my windows to keep the mozzies out. however, the heating is centrally controlled here and it is still on as they don’t switch it off until early may because they haven’t realised the effect all the selfish cheese-eaters have on global warming. it is like sitting on a radiator wearing a40-tog duvet in a greenhouse on the equator in the middle of summer. specifically, it is 18 degrees and the heating is on 24 hours a day. it is ridiculous. so now i have a choice – i boil alive with what little blood is left me or i let myself become a kind of living gro-bag for mosquitoes. whatever i do, i get no rest. it’s either too hot to sleep or i daren’t fall asleep because i know they are there, waiting, in the dark, to suck my blood. it’s a choice between being undead or being undead. enjoy your cheese sandwich.

made in russia...

2007-04-16T21:16:00.000+06:00

...from decommissioned cossacks and caviar.

i knew i'd find this somewhere after overhearing a siberian saying 'tak a cloot tae yer oxters son'.

of all the things i thought i'd experience...

2007-04-09T10:37:00.000+06:00

…out here – going mano-a-mano with a wild bear, a sabre fight with an enraged cossack, or a troika-ride with julie christie – being a two-day z-list celebrity was not one of them. however, this week i managed to add it to the list. i was at a trade fair dealing with education abroad. i had my own little cubicle with a table and a couple of chairs and a sign saying ‘test your english – ask questions about england’. it seemed innocuous enough and my boss seemed to think it would help her cause, so i was happy to do it. what neither of us banked on though was quite how exotic an englishman is out here. to begin with, people walked by singly and in twos, then they would go and get more people and they would point and laugh, and then, finally, one of them would get the courage up to come and talk to me, at which point as many people as possible would gather around the little table to hear the strange words spoken with the strange accent.

the conversation was pretty basic but very engaging. if i gave a particularly good answer (‘what is your favourite colour?’ ‘green’ ‘ooooooh!’) it sent the whole crowd into raptures. where it got a bit freaky was when people started asking for my autograph and to have their photo taken with me. i kept asking за чем? – what for? i have a deeply unimpressive signature, built for speed not art, but still they seemed to think it was worth something so i was happy to oblige. however, as monroe and lennon knew – fame is not the ride on easy street they would have you believe – it has a terrible cost too. in my case, by the end of each day my voice was reduced to a little gusty noise at the back of my throat and i was compelled to take another in a long line of folk remedies – honey and vodka. awful.

i heard england...

2007-04-09T10:36:00.000+06:00

…last night. it came through the window, a strange sound i did not recognise at first but evocative of marmite and radiohead. and then, finally, it dawned on me – it was rain. living in a bone-white desert, i have not heard rain for at least six months. i am sceptical about it.

they stand by the side of the road...

2007-04-04T23:00:00.000+06:00

…not looking to cross it or, indeed, looking to do anything at all. snowflakes blow carelessly across their vacant faces. they are well-dressed, often carrying bags of shopping or briefcases, and they just stare into the snow with a terrible yearning on their faces. i see about one a day, however grim the weather. they are suffering from what they call here a ‘depreznyak’ – a little depression. it is a tiny bleakness that shrivels the soul, like dusting a slug with salt. the distress is acute and paralysing, at least for a few minutes or hours, and then they carry on as if they had merely wandered in and out of an accidental void. no-one is astonished.

i see dead people...

2007-03-19T17:33:00.000+05:00

…on an almost daily basis here. and many of the dead people are not just dead, they never existed in the first place. when i go to a station, for example, i see anna karenina. when i see my landlady, i hear raskolnikov in my ear. when i hear a doctor, i listen to zhivago. this weekend was no different as i was invited to a dacha. the very word ‘dacha’ is so evocative of great fiction that i can scarcely believe they exist in real life, especially not in this century. nevertheless, they do, and the majority of russian families have a dacha somewhere in the country – ranging from a small shack, where they grow vegetables in the summer, to mansions on large estates the size of a european principality. the dacha i went to was somewhere in between – a wooden house deep inside a forest and perched on the banks of an ice-bound lake with a statue of lenin at the gates holding up a cheery hand in welcome. naturally, my hosts, being russian, were generosity itself and the table moaned under the weight of a muksun cooked in salt the size of small whale, enough lamb to put a shepherd out of work, plus any number of salads and accompanying dishes, my favourite being ‘herring in fur coats’. as wonderful as this fayre was, however, the highlight for me was simply sitting on a bench outside and catching the dacha vibe. i could all but see tolstoy pacing up and down, smoking a pipe and fretting over what to do with his peasants, while chekov emerged from the banya having decided what to do with uncle vanya. of course, that may have been the vodka.

the russians have no word for 'privacy'...

2007-03-13T08:38:00.000+05:00

…but they make up for it with a whole lexicon for which english has no answer. here are a few i’ve come across, translated as best as i can (don’t try and pronounce these without asking your parents’ permission first):

иней – stalactitic snow. it is the russians, not the eskimoes, who have 50 different words for snow. this kind of snow is found at outdoor thermal pools in the middle of the forest – at least that’s where i saw it. it looks like frosted flakes of coconut in the shape of an icicle.

душевный – having a warm soul. there are a lot of words to do with ‘soul’ in russian. for example, they say ‘no soul’s in the room’ rather than ‘nobody’s in the room’. this makes them terribly frustrated with our apparently ‘cold and scientific language’. blah blah blah – tell it to shakespeare.

всухомятку – eating without drinking. this is a kind of crime in russia. if you do it, people will stare.

прощай – goodbye forever. the russians like things to be dramatic and this one means you will never ever ever see the other person again. ever.

утопленник – drowned man. this one is pretty sinister – how many drowned men do there have to be before you invent a special word for them? apparently there isn’t an equivalent word for a man who has died of radiation poisoning after going to a sushi bar. at least not yet.

недоперепить – to drink too much but not enough. you know when you’ve had too much alcohol but you don’t actually feel drunk? well, this is the verb for those special occasions. it is probably related to the previous word in some way.

смеркалось – it was getting dark. this one is way out there. you can only use it about the past and it is a complete sentence in itself to which you are not allowed to add anything else. needless to say, i use it every day.

there hasn't been a murder...

2007-03-06T22:26:00.000+05:00

…but in order to prevent a death the police have cordoned off an area round my flat. winter in siberia can be a killer – if your car breaks down outside the city and no-one finds you in a couple of hours, you will probably die. however, spring is the real assassin. when the city starts to melt in the new season’s mawkish heat, it’s not just the putrid stench of tulips clogging your nose like poisonous gas you have to watch out for; it’s the small avalanches of snow tumbling off the rooftops too. there is at least 1.5 metres of snow on my balcony and when such thick compacted sheets slide off the roof in clumps 5-6 metres across, it can hurt you if it hits you. the icicles, on the other hand, hanging like crystal spears above the pavements, can actually kill you. they slice clean through car roofs when they fall from a tall enough building. when they hit a human head, the human will never eat blini again. each year several people here are killed in this way. they cordon off likely 'death-spots', such as the one near my flat, when they can, but they can’t shut the city down entirely, so when you go outside you play russian roulette with ice javelins. at least it takes your mind off the impending daffodil hell which will no doubt spew fetid fluorescent yellow cess all over the place sometime soon.

some tyrannies are so close...

2007-02-27T09:51:00.000+05:00

…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.

god will forgive you...

2007-02-19T23:13:00.000+05:00

…apparently. at least he will if you asked for forgiveness yesterday. this is because yesterday was the last day of mazlinitsa. mazlinitsa is like pancake day but spread over a whole week, and this is in a country where pancake day is already spread over the whole year, so you can imagine why some form of forgiveness might be called for. unsurprisingly, then, the last day of mazlinitsa is called forgiveness day. the idea is that you ask for forgiveness from everybody you know, whether you think you need to or not, because you never know whom you have accidentally slighted. when someone asks for forgiveness, you simply reply ‘god will forgive you’. and that is that.

it is all strangely touching – being absolved of an offence of which you are unaware – especially when combined with the mighty blini. the connection between the two seems fragile at first but it is all to do with renewal, as mazlinitsa is actually a festival to say goodbye to winter. blini are symbols of the sun, and of the warmth which is now so close. well, not that close actually. it is minus 34, as i write, and it is snowing and blowing a gale. not even the toughest parts of skegness would consider that summer weather, but still, it was minus 40 the day before so maybe the great pancake in the sky really is on its way. either way, i hope you can forgive me.

some people eat caviar here...

2007-02-12T14:15:00.000+05:00

...some people don't.

sometimes you have to get a train...

2007-02-04T10:49:00.000+05:00

…when you get a train on the trans-siberian railway. sometimes you don’t. sometimes you can get an electrichka instead. this is better than a train apparently, although it looks remarkably like a train, largely due to the fact that it is actually a train. there are other non-train trains you can get too which also look like trains, but you had better be dead or drunk before you get one of them because everyone else on board will be too. it is a very complicated system.

it is made more complicated by the fact that you have to be stephen hawkings to understand the space-time continuum in which you will be travelling. this is because all the trains in russia operate on moscow time. moscow is several time zones away. when you look at your ticket for the time of your train, you have to do maths to work it out. this is hard. there is a whole chapter on it in ‘a brief history of time’. first of all you have to determine whether you are adding or subtracting, then you have to decide how much you’re going to add or subtract, and then you actually have to do the addition or subtraction – all without the use of excel. you can’t even look at the station clock to help you because you aren’t sure if it’s siberian time or moscow time. they could be trying to trick you, after all.

luckily, i spot a group of quantum mathematicians and hang around listening to them until i have the correct answers (with working out). my iq certified, i join the rest of the population of siberia in the waiting room. everyone i don’t know is there. there is a man with one leg and a long beard, who looks like he sailed with ahab, hawking for change with a tin cup. there is a card school with old men smoking cigars. there is a makeshift nursery using suitcases as crawl-proof walls. a middle-aged woman with slack jowls sleeps with her head lolled back over the seat. a family share satsumas from a handkerchief spread on a babooshka’s lap. a couple stand in the corner embracing tightly, with their heads on each others’ shoulders, not talking. it is not as frenetic or as anonymous as a large british train station. there is life but there is no fuss.

there are also no seats left, so i’m happy when it’s time for me to find my train. it is due to leave from platform 2, it says on the board. unfortunately, when i get outside, i discover that not only is there no platform 2, there are no platforms at all. what there is, is a great snowy plain with trains as long as the horizon. it is fantastic – like a station from a world war 2 film or ‘dr zhivago’. the trains and carriages have no discernible livery beyond a kind of faded darkness. they look like they are haunted relics from the revolution, used for transporting troops to the front to fight the white bolsheviks. i can’t wait to get on board. i am expecting straw.

getting on board is not as simple as it sounds. without a platform and with no steps, it is a big leap from the ground to the train. but, as ever, people help each other, dragging the short and the infirm by their wrists onto the carriage. once inside, there is no straw. instead, there are nooks made from dark wood, as if the whole thing were an old pub on tracks. and like my idea of a perfect pub, there are dark leather benches which you can stretch out on. i can smell alcohol too, so all that’s missing is a dart board. i say hello to my companions in the nook – a couple and a young woman – and sit down. all is well.

and then the conductor shows up. there is one for each carriage and i show her my ticket and passport (and insurance docket – reassuringly bought for every journey). clearly a very curious woman, she starts asking me questions about my sleeping habits. it all seems a little personal when we hardly know each other but i show willing and reply as best as i am able. surprisingly, given that this is siberia, she doesn’t seem to understand russian – specifically my russian. we babble at each other for a bit while i try out different facial expressions – ‘somewhat confused’, ‘not really very sure’, ‘quite uncertain’, ‘flummoxed’, and finally, ‘oo it’s all so mysterious’. in the end i admit, in russian, that i can’t speak russian and that i am a stupid foreigner, in the hope that she will leave me alone.

but no, the young woman next to me has, it turns out, a basic grasp of english.
- you sleep? she asks, pointing to the plank of wood above our heads.
- eh? i reply, using one of the many words common to both languages.
and so it goes on until it’s revealed to me that my ticket is for the fold-down bench six feet in the air. the bench i was sitting on is for the young woman only. naturally, there are no steps and i have to vault up to my new abode using the table. once again, i am forced to ponder the miserable fate of short people in russia.

to begin with, i feel very isolated up there. way down below, as if on a beach seen from some cliffs, the couple have laid out a picnic on the table and are busy sharing it with the evil young woman who understands the devil’s tongue. i worry about my boots, left behind me on the floor. if this were england, they would surely be stolen. and then there’s the fact that i can’t sit up – i am forced to lie down. suddenly it hits me – how fantastic! i am forced to lie down. there is no need to negotiate for knee room with the person opposite, and no jostling for elbow room with the person beside you. i have a bed all to myself and i can do nothing but relax for the next five hours. i watch siberia sail by through the window – it is all wilderness and snow for hundreds of miles. it is hypnotic, and eventually i overcome my fear of falling out of my bunk and fall asleep.

i am reluctant to get up, or down, when my five hours is nearly up, but russian trains are as punctual as the swiss and when the time comes i have to move. i am unable to think of a dignified way to get down for some reason, and so i launch myself off the top as if i were doing parachute training and land on the man sitting opposite. i immediately apologise. the young woman then translates his reply. we all begin to talk in halting english and russian. almost instantly, there is a small crowd. they quiz the young woman. as i am secretly fluent now, i understand they are asking her if she understands me. she says she does a bit but boy, does he speak fast compared to my teacher – and that accent! you don’t hear that on the tapes. then they have a brief competition to see who can imitate me the best. unflatteringly, they all sound like ducks, but still i smile graciously while they wet themselves laughing. i am offered food and drink but it is time to disembark. as we shuffle off, i wonder if this is how it is if you are a foreigner travelling on british trains. if it is, i can’t imagine that the equivalent journey, london-aberdeen, would cost just £4. but then you get steps and a platform in britain and obviously they don’t come cheap.

i am standing on the roof...

2007-02-01T22:40:00.000+05:00

…of the tallest building in yekaterinburg. it is the middle of the night. it is icy. it is windy. there is no railing. and there is no guard. it is a beautiful sight and i am reminded once again of the little freedoms the russians enjoy that we don’t.
- you would never be allowed to do this in britain, i say to my friend.
- why not? he asks.
- for health and safety reasons. plus, people would jump off.
- they would jump off? why?
- because they could.
- o, he says, pausing to think about this strange idea, in russia we would only jump off if they told us we couldn’t.

c новым годом...

2007-01-15T12:49:00.000+05:00

…or happy new year. and it finally is – new year, i mean. the wait has made godot seem timeous. this is because russia is ever so slightly schizophrenic about the whole festive period. way back in december some of them, myself included, celebrated the western christmas. this was followed a week later by the western new year. a week after that we all celebrated the russian christmas. and eventually yesterday we had the russian new year.

as a result i now have festive fatigue. this condition is much like i imagine shell-shocked soldiers to have felt during world war one, because if there’s one thing russians like to do in order to celebrate something it’s letting off fireworks. if you can remember how overwhelming the sound was during the first 30 minutes of ‘saving private ryan’ when you originally saw it then that gives you some idea of the noise on new year’s night. it was insane. i didn’t so much watch the fireworks as feel them. explosion after explosion pounded the night air, bouncing off the tenement walls and enveloping me in the violence of the blasts. i felt like the fireworks were going off inside me. it was exhilarating in the most literal sense and it went on for hours. by the end of it, i was like a tuning fork on automatic, incessantly trembling with the vibrations.

all of this took place against a backdrop more garish than vegas. for we have lights here, and then some. in the weeks leading up to the festive period, merry gangs of men armed with cable and bulbs fought their way round the snowbound city and hung up lights wherever they could. it’s not like in britain where it’s just the shops in the high street that have lights, it’s everywhere. all the streets have them, all the trees have them, all the buses have them, all the signs have them, all the mobile phone towers, even all the scaffolding on the building sites have them. i’m sure if i stood still long enough they’d have put them on me too. like some kind of luminescent graffiti signalling an underground rebellion against the siberian darkness, it is brighter at night than during the day. and it’s not just any old lights – there are lasers and spectacular flashing displays and a weird phosphorescent plastic and candles and frosted glasses in the trees and searchlights in different colours. there are even whole pictures rendered in light. the bus station, for example, has a giant sketch of a tram on it complete with waving passengers and a driver showing a crooked smile. it will be the work of a year just to take them down again.

amidst the ever-falling snow, it is quite breath-taking, but, this being siberia, no celebration is complete without some terrible scouring of the soul and several of my students sank into a hopeless depression as new year approached. the emotions are too much, mumbled one of them, her head in her hands, as i explained the word ‘tinsel’. i even had one glorious hour with an individual who sat there the whole lesson staring into space, listlessly repeating the fact that he no longer knew anything. i am stupid, he said, can’t you see?

thankfully, my six year olds were less easily daunted by the festive period. they trooped into the lesson bearing a fruit pie on their shoulders the size of an average family table with ‘merry xmas sputnik’ emblazoned on it in decorative pastry. naturally, i wanted to tuck in there and then but i had a lesson to teach first. i had decided to instruct them in the finer points of ‘jingle bells’ by getting them to draw key scenes from the song which they could cut out and hold up at the appropriate point while singing. i drew some bells jingling and they copied – so far, so good. then i drew, as best i could, a one horse open sleigh. they immediately fell about laughing – eta sabawka, they shouted. it’s a dog. and it was - a dog of a picture, if nothing else. when they had settled down ten minutes later, they offered to show me how a horse should be drawn. i was expecting the usual random line and blob hell that constitutes children’s pictures but what i got was four sketches that a young stubbs might have been proud of, complete with snorting equine breath. i was shamed. and, just to rub it in, when we began to sing ‘jingle bells’, instead of chanting ‘one horse open sleigh’, they began to imitate barking and then neighing instead. as they rolled about on the floor laughing and howling like dogs, i wondered if being taunted by six year olds over my inability to draw a horse was grounds for compensation in russia. however, the festive spirit got the better of me and by the end of the lesson we had all ‘agreed’ that we would now say ‘merry woofmas’ for the rest of the season instead. it’s what santa, or grandfather frost, as he is know here, would have wanted.

drinking vodka without food...

2006-12-18T14:33:00.000+05:00

…is for advanced learners only. please do not attempt this without the supervision of a bona fide russian expert:

1) lament the fact that you are forced to drink vodka without food (keep it short, but be sure to mention that the only way you can overcome your infinite sadness at the lack of food is by drinking your sorrows away).
2) turn your head to the side and exhale all the air in your lungs.
3) down vodka in one gulp.
4) immediately sniff your left forearm (note ‘forearm’ – you are not checking for b.o. here but fooling your senses into thinking that you actually do have food. ignore the fact that this is rubbish).
5) repeat steps 1) to 4) until you start sniffing other people’s forearms, legs, etc.
6) get into taxi, drive all over city looking for flat, randomly saying any and all russian numbers with 3 in them to confused driver in the hope that one of them is your block.
7) arrive outside block, tip taxi driver two months’ wages as you can’t get your head around currency when sober, let alone after a couple of carafes of cedar nut vodka.
8) engage mind fully on task of cracking code to flat stairwell lock. it is 3 digits long. imagine it is like the lottery – it could be you! it isn’t.
9) randomly push numbers on key pad – you have to be in it to win it! you don’t.
10) wonder if nose is numb from sub-zero temperatures or from evening of repeatedly rubbing it against forearm. ignore mild panic at the back of your head about hypothermia and imagine you are tom cruise in ‘mission impossible’ dangling from wires. concentrate memory – narrow eyes and frown to aid process of concentration. collapse on step with hilarity at own uselessness/possibility of dying from cold yards from your flat/piece of lint on your glove/etc.
11) apologise twice to woman in nightie who eventually opens the door – first in italian, then remember, go back and repeat in russian. sniff your forearm to show how sincere you are.
12) emerge from coma next day and wonder why left sleeve of shirt is covered in snot and spittle.

anxiety and comfort meet...

2006-12-14T21:54:00.000+05:00

…as i ease into the seat. something is wrong, even though it feels so right. for the first time since i’ve been here, i’ve managed to get a seat on the bus home. i am deeply suspicious. i even have a choice – one with no view through the window on the left, or one with no view through the window on the right. naturally, i take the seat with no view on the left.

the lack of a view through the window is one of the many features of riding siberian buses that makes them so endearing. there are several reasons why you can’t see out of the window – the window is dirty or it is covered in ice or there is a frilly pink curtain in the way. siberians aren’t big on curtains in their own homes, perhaps because there is no word for ‘privacy’ in russian, but when it comes to buses they really go to town. and it is always the slightly over-fussy style of curtain that you find in domestic british toilets. to complement this look, there are also fading pictures of kittens or puppies dotted around the place, while the driver very often has to peer through a variety of enormous rubber plants to see where he is going. i’m sure if i looked carefully, i’d find a wool-knit matrooshka doll with a toilet roll underneath.

the source of this travelling toilet chic is the conductor. there is one on every bus and it is invariably a woman. as in all good matriarchal homes, she takes care of the money (18p for anywhere in the city) and keeps the bus spotlessly clean, while the driver, invariably a man, enjoys himself cutting up pedestrians and ladas. i like to think of them as a slightly grumpy couple who might bicker with each other but otherwise show the kind of tough united front that stymied both napoleon and hitler. indeed, the only time i’ve seen the driver leave his seat-cum-armchair was when a slightly drunken man complained for all of two seconds about the driver’s staccato clutch control. the conductor immediately launched into a defence of her ‘husband’ while he simply stopped the bus in the middle of the road, walked up the aisle, literally picked the man up and threw him out of the door.

when choosing which bus to get on – there are so many you can wait a minute or two for the next one – an important factor is the size of the conductor. basically, is she a porker? porkers are rare here – you see about one a week, as opposed to one a minute in britain – but there a couple on the buses. and size really does matter because, despite the number of them, the buses are massively overcrowded. in the mornings it’s not too bad. this is largely because i’m not an early starter and also because my stop is populated by special dwarf russians. these little people take up less room and therefore it feels less congested. sadly for them, all the buses are german (i know this because charmingly they still have all the german signs on them, my favourite being one written in seven different languages, none of which is russian). germans are generally quite tall and so the handrails are placed at an appropriate reach for their height, one which is several inches above the arm length of the little people. the little people then have the choice of whether to fall over every time the driver changes gear, or to jump up, grip on and hang suspended from the rail for the duration of the journey. some of the older desperate ones will grab onto your coat like someone drowning and you have to beat them off or face being pulled to the floor with them.

in the evenings normal size is resumed and a fat conductor can make the difference between life and death. this is because every journey feels like an attempt on the world record for the number of people in a confined space. it is staggering. you can only take shallow breaths, not only because there is very little oxygen left on the bus, but because you are so crushed you can only breathe in when the people around you are breathing out. and this is just the static situation – when the conductor starts moving down the aisle people have to make way for her and the only place available is other people. there is a kind of domino effect and a fat conductor can be felt some 20-25 people away as she rolls slowly through the crowd like a human ball in a claustrophobic’s nightmare of 10-pin bowling.

naturally, only the strong survive, but as the weak ones are crushed and die, this engenders a blitz-like spirit among the rest of the passengers. we all laugh as we sway back and forward to the rhythm of the bad driving, and go into fits when the bus stops and someone else actually tries to get on. there are cheers if they manage it by clambering over heads and lying on top of people in the seats. and if someone wants to get off, it is like the culmination of a successful escape plan if they manage it. for not only do they have to get past the hundreds of bodies, conscious and unconscious, between them and the door, they also have no idea where they are. the windows are dirty, iced up, covered in german stickers, shrouded in pink toilet curtain and finally blocked by the heads of all the people. if we are lucky, someone finds a tiny crack through all the obstacles and sends word back – ‘permyakova!’ if it’s your stop, you steel yourself, square your shoulders and begin your escape. ‘mozhne?’ you say jokingly – ‘is it possible?’ of course, it isn’t, not without someone getting hurt, but this is the ritual and everyone understands – if you break their leg forcing your way through, it is an honourable injury and they accept it without malice just as you would for them. when you finally make it to the outside, the fresh air is painful in your lungs, like a starving man eating too much too soon. but at least you have made it.

all of which makes me suspicious about getting a seat on an uncrowded bus. this state of mind is not helped by the fact that, as usual, they are playing the theme from the godfather over the bus stop tannoy. is someone going to be iced and only us ignorant few don’t know about it? the doors close and the bus pulls away. like all the buses it is old and at every gear change it makes a noise like bruce lee before he launches the decisive kick at someone’s head. i begin to sweat, nervous. the conductor comes and issues my ticket. i recognise her. she is one of the porkers but i am not crushed by her movements. i grip the armrest, all this relaxed and comfortable travelling is making me tense. the bus stops. no one gets on. it is silent. we all look at each other fearfully. this is wrong. it is like we have contravened one of the deeper moral precepts – murder, adultery, baked potatoes without pickled onions. what is going on? suddenly the conductor starts moving down the aisle asking for our destinations. she reports back to the driver. he is not happy as only he should be allowed to sit in comfort. he tells us as much over the tannoy. we agree and offer to bunch up in a corner but it is no use. he kicks us all off and, pathetically, gratefully, we all clamber aboard the next bus, happy to be crushed and starved of oxygen once again.

there is a proper way to drink vodka...

2006-12-04T15:11:00.000+05:00

…and this weekend i learnt it:

1) put a large piece of meat on your fork.

2) turn your head to the side and exhale all the air in your lungs.

3) down vodka in one gulp.

4) immediately eat meat.

it’s a simple technique but there is logic behind it. some vodka has a very high proof, so high in fact that it will burn your insides should you have any air in them. exhaling first prevents this tragedy. eating the meat stops you getting totalled in the space of a few minutes and instead allows you to get totalled over a few hours. the russians even have a word for it which means ‘eat and drink at the same time’. it doesn’t stop your head hurting in the morning though. for that there is another in the long line of natural remedies – pickle juice.

all the siberians are clapping...

2006-11-27T15:22:00.000+05:00

…so i am clapping too. i feel i am blending in rather well. when the siberians kiss their neighbours, i kiss my neighbour. when they eat, i eat. when they drink, i drink. when they tinkle their little bells, i tinkle my little bell. when they throw rice in the air, i throw it. when they start chanting something at the bride and groom, i start chanting too, even though i do not know what i am saying. i am just one more guest at the wedding, as clear about what is going on as everyone else, even though i have absolutely no idea what is being said by the man in the middle of the big horseshoe of tables with the microphone.

it has been an energetic event so far. the actual wedding ceremony took about three minutes, if that. as far as i could make out, an official at the town hall said to the couple, you are married. they said, yes we are. and they were. it seemed a very civilised way of doing it and everyone clapped loudly while the couple danced around the room to their favourite song. there was a brief pause while they played the theme to ‘the godfather’ and signed some papers, and then we all drank champagne and ate chocolates, before piling into cars and mini-buses. i had seen wedding processions hurtle around the city before with people leaning out of the windows whooping with joy and honking horns and i was all ready to do this but sadly it was deemed too cold so i just had to make do with the hurtling bit.

this involves driving for 10 minutes, stopping, getting out, eating some bread and meat, drinking champagne or vodka, taking pictures, and then getting back in again before heading off to a new place to do the same. it goes on for 2-3 hours and is a lot of fun and a great way to see the city. many of the places we stopped at were memorials to the great patriotic war – the second world war. it is traditional for newlyweds to go to these fantastic monuments (giant candles and flames) to give thanks for the enormous sacrifices made by the 20 000 000 who died defending the motherland.

from there we headed to the reception where i am busy clapping and blending in. suddenly, however, i notice that everyone is looking at a point behind me while they are applauding. i turn round to see what it is and find that the people behind me are looking at a point in front of me. it takes a while, but sherlock-like i eventually put two and two together and realise my cover is blown. they are all actually looking at me. the strange noise i hear coming from the man with the microphone begins to take on a semi-familiar ring too – it is my name with russian vowel sounds. i begin to wonder, have i done something wrong? maybe i didn’t tinkle my bell hard enough or i didn’t kiss my neighbour when i was supposed to. at which point the mc breaks into english – we are honoured today to have a great guest from england…

he continues with this elaborate build-up and i have to stand up and take a bow. he goes on, as if leading up to something. i begin to suspect i will have to make a speech. i am gripped by linguistic paralysis. ever since i came here, my response to russian is to speak italian – it is involuntary and pointless. half of my brain is calculating how many people in the room speak english – i estimate 4 at the most. the other half is compiling this fabulous italian encomium using both the passato prossimo and the passato remoto. i think of my italian teacher, she would have been so proud. and then i remember where i am. think in english, i urge myself. i run through other speeches i have heard. there aren’t any. my head is empty. i wonder, what is a speech? the mc finishes his – i am vaguely aware that it has been magnificent. he has built me up to be some kind of literary great, a master of english prose and verse equalled only by shakespeare. i am a giant, a legend. my words will be beluga for the brain, people will talk about it for years to come, it will be the greatest moment of their lives… he pushes the microphone into my hand. i cough. it will be alright i tell myself, you always think of something. i ponder idly what it might be while the mc gestures for me to speak. everyone is staring at me. er, i say, all the best from england…

and sit back down. i am struck straightaway by the sheer awfulness of the speech. it is worse than anything i have ever heard. if i had stood up, dropped my trousers and farted for 30 seconds it would have been better. i am stunned by myself. these lovely people have invited me to one the great moments in their life and this is how i repay them? naturally, all the siberians are clapping, and, to compound my own ineptitude, as a reflex i start clapping too. i console myself with the thought that only 4 people will have understood it and that even those who did will not grasp how inappropriate it was. at the earliest opportunity i nip out to the foyer for a fag. there is a crowd out there smoking too. immediately they all start speaking english to me – great speech, the mc said it was an example of the british art of brevity as beauty, well done, etc… i am simultaneously mortified that so many people understood what i said and overwhelmed with their generosity of spirit. at which point everything moves on and they begin to show me how to dance siberian-style. it is one of my life’s ambitions and, as five of us fall on the floor in a heap of uncoordinated limbs, i stop caring that i can’t speak english anymore.

every day brings a new low...

2006-11-26T15:40:00.000+05:00

…in temperatures. the temperature is an obsession here and every other building has an electronic thermometer on it telling you quite how unimaginably cold it is. apparently, it even affects property prices because the north of the city averages 5 degrees less than the south. earlier this week it got down as far as minus 28 and even the siberians think it’s cold below minus 25 and they shut the schools for the under-12s. bizarrely, this actually felt warmer than later in the day when it rose to the dizzying heights of minus 19. it is the wind that makes the difference. imagine pressing your face against the inside of a freezer, scraping your skin against the ice and repeatedly slamming the door against your head – well, it is much worse than that. i was only outside for 15 minutes and could feel the epidermis blackening and dying on the tiny bits of exposed skin on my face.

naturally, none of this impresses the siberians. many of them are like old people in their 80s who add a few years to their age and pretend to be in their 90s, as if they weren’t old enough. minus 28? this isn’t cold – last winter it was minus 45. you should have seen it – now that, my foreign friend, that is cold. i even did a little experiment with my students, getting them to assign temperatures to the scale - freezing, very cold, cold, cool, mild, warm, very warm, hot. warm came in at 0 degrees and mild at minus 5. obviously, i thought this was ridiculous, but then when the temperature rose to minus 10 the next day it actually seemed like a mini-heatwave and i was too hot. i think this is what they mean by going native.

i knew something was strange...

2006-11-19T12:23:00.000+05:00

…even before i opened my eyes. it was darker than it should have been, like the earth had drifted away from the sun during the night and the daylight was thinner. i wondered idly about this scenario for a couple of minutes (the end of civilisation, mass extinction, no more кафе с молоком chocolate bars) before deciding to open my eyes to see if it was true. it wasn’t. it was much more frightening than that: the view from my windows was almost entirely obscured by snow. i had gone to sleep in a flat and woken up in an igloo. wow, i thought, that’s a lot of snow. i can see why siberians don’t bother with curtains. and then i remembered – i live on the second floor.

because i am five i thought this was very exciting and had to get outside as soon as possible, assuming it was actually possible. to honour the occasion, i decided to wear my hat. the way people talk about hats here, endlessly discussing their importance in reverential tones, i have come to think of them as magical objects granting their wearers almost supernatural powers that make you immune to radiation, bear attacks, coverage of the tomkat wedding, and even the cold. while the first three are true, the last one is true only up to a point – that point being some five seconds after stepping outside into a blizzard where the temperature is minus 12 without the wind factor (you will see, i have been told, minus 40 without the wind is a lot better than minus 25 with it – can’t wait).

however, the ferocity of the cold took second place for once to the stupendous scene before me. i had never seen this much snow before. most of the known world had disappeared – cars, trees, buildings and any sense of place. and still it was snowing. but this is siberia and they have their own forces of nature to deal with anything the winter can throw at them – they are called babooshkas. these old women, with snow shovels seemingly twice their size, were out clearing doorways and sculpting defiles through which the rest of us could plough our way to the bus stop.

nothing stops the buses either – literally. you see them come looming out of the violent fog of flakes about 50 metres away, two unsteady lights hovering in the air above where the road used to be. from 25 metres it begins to take on a shape and you see the driver pressed hard against his seat, everyone else crammed at the back of the bus, desperate to slow it down. it skids into touching distance and you notice that the road is several feet lower than it used to be. the doors fling open but still it hasn’t completely stopped. as it edges by, you realise it isn’t going to stop either. people inside the bus hold out their hands and you grab on and jump before the bus picks up speed again and heads into the city. commuting was never so much fun.

along the route there are hundreds of workers with shovels, snow blowers, and tractors trying to clear paths along the roads and pavements. even with all that manpower, however, the snow is still winning and the city is gradually sinking into drift, like a giant wedding cake. as the bus slides through my stop i jump out and land up to my knees in snow. i am helped out by two men in enormous fur hats while, bizarrely, the theme from ‘the third man’ plays over the bus stop tannoy. i turn left because that is what i normally do but i have little sense of direction because the snow is even heavier now, blinding me. i see lowrie-like black blurs moving in the flickering whiteness ahead of me and decide to follow them. coming to a junction, i find that crossing the road is now a matter of life and death. the drivers cannot see, the cars cannot stop and the difference between the road and the pavement is over a metre and a half in places and it is like scrambling up a sand dune.

finally reaching the office, i feel quite heroic. i expect medals. холодно? my friend asks me with a triumphant look on her face – are you cold? i tell her i am and wonder at the glint in her eye. looking around i notice that she is not alone and that, as it turns out, everyone is in a terrific mood. eventually it is explained to me: this is what they have been waiting for. we have had snow and cold for a while now, but this is the real deal and they can finally relax. winter has arrived and siberia is in its element. knee-deep, in fact.

taunting sick foreigners...

2006-11-06T20:32:00.000+05:00

...is what passes for fun round these parts.

russian tv...

2006-11-05T13:56:00.000+05:00

…god alone knows what that’s about. i say this because no-one i know watches it, except me, and that’s because i am sick and have nothing else to do except smear raspberry jam across my fevered brow. obviously, i don’t understand most of what’s said. it does have great range though. there is one channel seemingly devoted to replaying obscure english football games from about 10 years ago. there is another channel which shows nothing but models walking down the catwalk complete with the most head-sickening camera movements known to tv. my favourite though is probably the russian version of nickelodeon. russian cartoons are dark and flickering, the colours always charred. and the subjects are equally grim – a puppy with cheeky, joyful eyes hides in a dark alley while a crippled old woman gets off a night bus into the snowy, deserted street. the puppy then launches itself from the shadows and viciously attacks the woman, dragging her screaming to the floor before scampering off with her handbag. another one showed a dappled doe frolicking in the snow, the winter sun casting bleak shadows over the animal’s joy before a hunter emerges from hiding and shoots the deer square in the head. touchingly, the animators lovingly detail the powder burn around the entry wound, as if searching for the mystery of the doe’s lost soul in the blackened fur.

i have been given a copy of winnie the pooh to watch when i get round to fixing up my vcr. it is not the disney version. by the look of the cover, winnie is a dark and mournful bear with cruel teeth and claws, while eeyore is a shabby drunk close to death by cirrhosis. if there is a tigger i suspect he will savage winnie in some kind of terrible cartoon cock-fight. the whole thing looks like it was directed by bergman deep in a ten-pill-a-day depression. this is what makes russian tv so very uplifting. there is a programme called ‘calm down’ which, in between shots of a presenter as happy as the sun, shows nothing but people drowning, houses burning, animals with two heads dead in a barn and other brutal stuff like that. i could not understand the title at first, but having watched the cartoons, all is clear: you are going to die, it will be terrible, but so what – get over it.

(as if to prove the point… i have been watching a russian version of ‘the 3 musketeers’ while typing this. they do not buckle much swash, it has to be said. instead, there has just been a 10 minute scene where one of the musketeers toys with shooting himself in the head. he keeps crying about something and symbolically blowing out candles until the room is almost pitch black. eat some jam, i shout at the screen. doubtless i will not find out what happens as this is on a channel which keeps strictly to a 2-hours-per-film schedule and if a film happens to over-run this because of adverts or because it was made by kubrick, then they simply lop the end off. just like life.)

russian illnesses...

2006-11-03T17:39:00.000+05:00

…are different from ours. they are more soulful. magnetism from the sun’s rays, for example, is a popular cause of illness here, leading to madness at one extreme and a general dispiritedness at the other. several of my students have also been ill due to the prevalence of a low pressure system. when i ask them what treatment they take for it, they reply dolefully that nothing can be done. because of this the weather forecast has a whole different meaning, and i often check it to see whether certain of my students will be talking the next day or just quietly weeping through the whole lesson.

if russian illnesses are different, then so are the treatments. i know this because i am sick. yesterday i woke up with a throat full of nails. concerned that i would be too hoarse to speak properly i texted one of my colleagues to ask if she could get me some throat lozenges for when i arrived. (this is not laziness on my part, by the way, rather that i have no idea what i am buying – c.f. the story about the mouthwash which turned out to be russian false teeth solution). half way through the first lesson, two of my colleagues asked me to step out into the corridor where one of them had what looked like a small plastic fire extinguisher. try this, she said, it’s better than that western chemical stuff. what is it? i whispered, wondering where my packet of tunes was. eucalyptus, i was informed. desperate, i sprayed it into my mouth, but apparently i was doing it wrong.
- not on your tongue, on your throat.
- (spray) eeugh?
- no, further back.
- (spray) eugh eeugh?
- no, no, no. put your tongue down.
- he’s not putting his tongue down.
- i know.
- (spray) eeugh?
- no.
- here, let me do it. stick your tongue out. no! not that far! there… (spray)
- no, his tongue was still up. let me have a go.

the corridor is a busy place and soon a small crowd had gathered to watch, offer advice, and generally eat picnics. however, with one of them more or less holding my tongue on the floor with her foot, and the other forcing my upper palate against the ceiling with her elbow, my two colleagues were finally convinced they had found the right angle with which to douse the fire in my throat and set about liberally spraying me in eucalyptus. had there been a stray gang of koala bears roaming the area at the time, no doubt my demise would have figured on the ‘unusual crimes’ section of ‘crimewatch’, but, as it was, i merely ended up with the unnerving feeling that i could smell the australian jungle somewhere close by.

of course, it didn’t work, so this morning when i woke up with every joint in my body wracked with pain, i was very clear in my text about the need to supply me with industrial strength lemsip. i want to sweat paracetamol, i said, nothing else will do. however, my boss decided that she wouldn’t let me come to work in case i developed ‘angina’ (pronounced ‘angeena’) which is some terrible russian throat disease which can kill you if it rains, or something like that, and so she promised to bring the medicine to my flat. two hours later, with my head pounding and my limbs aching and my nose running, my boss turned up at the door. i have your medicine, she said. we decided that that western stuff is no good for you so i got you this instead, she went on, holding out a fancy paper bag. please not more eucalyptus, i inwardly prayed, but no – it was half a cup of raspberry jam and a small container of baby food.
- that looks like half a cup of raspberry jam and some baby food.
- yes. raspberry jam contains the same chemicals as aspirin. you put it in your tea.
- i put jam in my tea?
- yes.
- you are a hippy.
- i am not a hippy. 150 million russians know this.
- and the baby food?
- i wanted some. it’s very good for you. i will leave you half.
- thank you.
- you are welcome.

needless to say, i am now fully cured and am currently working on a paper for the lancet about how to cure gout by putting marmalade in your coffee.