The Gallery #17: Emotions

Week 17 of Tara's Gallery, and this week it's a double-header, also appearing on Sleep is For The Weak as part of Josie's Writing Workshop. The prompt is 'Emotions', and bound to throw up some humdingers of both photos and posts, I would imagine.

So what's my chosen emotion for today's piece?

Amazement.

Because sometimes I look at my life and I can't quite believe it's me that's living it. If someone a few years back had said that normal, staid, shy and probably a bit boring me would be living in Moscow, and what's more, had chosen to do so of my own free will? I would have told them straight; not a chance. I'd visited this country over the preceding 15 years, so I thought I had a pretty good idea of what it would be like. It's too cold, I would have said. It's too far away. It's too complicated, it's too Russian, I would have said. It's just too damn hard, I would have said.

But when the chance really came up, what did I actually say?

Yes.

Which is why, when I was sitting in traffic this afternoon and this view came into sight, I felt that I had to record the moment. Not a view a suburban Londoner who was never intending to live in Moscow would expect to see on her way home from the bank, is it?

It certainly fills me with amazement.

Note - look hard (with a magnifying glass) and between the two buildings you can see St Basil's Cathedral. Well, you can if you ignore the dirt on the windscreen of my car, that is... (And no. The car was not moving when I took this, officer. Chance would have been a fine thing...)