I'm not a Photo-Blogger, but...

There's something about taking a photograph with a 'proper' camera.  We're lucky enough to have a fairly decent one (although it is now 4 years old and in my more day-dreamy moments I do imagine replacing it with something more up to date), and I use it quite a lot.  I love the experience of using it.  The weight of it, the satisfying feeling as you press the button.  The fiddling with the lens - to zoom in, or not to zoom in?  To use the flash, or not?

But recently I've been experimenting with the Nokia N8-00 which I was sent 18 months back to give me the chance to review an app in Russia which - unfortunately - so far hasn't worked properly here.  What has worked though, is the camera.  It is, quite simply, awesome.  And whilst it isn't a 'proper' camera, having it to hand, seeing a photo-opportunity, pointing, and shooting has changed the way I can take photos when I'm out and about.

I particularly like the way it works for me in the Moscow metro.  There's a grainy, action quality to the pictures that, when I look at them in black and white (and yes - I freely admit it - fiddle with the brightness & contrast a little) gives them a vintage, almost reportage feel that I love.

Like this one, that I took in the rush-hour at Park Kultury, today.

(Click on the photo to enlarge it)

On being reminded of how to find the lighter side of life

As I mentioned in my last post, my parents are staying with us.  This is the perfect way of being reminded that stuff you think of as normal and not particularly funny is, in fact, not everybody's normal and actually, is pretty amusing.  Well, to people who don't live with small boys every day, anyway.

This evening was a case in point; we skyped with my sister, and it became clear that my parents had been in touch with her by text and email during their visit here, sharing stories they thought were funny and which I just considered everyday happenings.  The following story - which I was a part of - was told back to me, and blow me if it didn't seem a great deal funnier in the retelling than it had whilst I was in the middle of it*.

It was bathtime.  I was trying - unsuccessfully - to get my children to come into the bathroom and get undressed.  After asking them reasonably a couple of times, I yelled that they should come into the bathroom nowRightNOW, and amazingly they did.  As they walked in I wondered aloud why it was that they had ignored me the first few times and only responded when I raised my voice, to which Boy #2 answered "Because we're pooh-heads, I suppose."

Well.

I guess at least no-one's going to suggest that they heard that insult from me...


*Which is, of course, precisely why I started The Potty Diaries nearly 5 years ago - to find the funny side in stuff that would otherwise drive me crazy...

Who said visitors go off in 3 days?

My parents are visiting us here in Moscow at the moment.

There's nothing like showing people around to reinvigorate your interest in the place that you live, don't you agree?  Since they arrived on Saturday, we have visited the Moscow Botanical Gardens, seen the ecto-plane and submarine berthed not far from where we live, and taken a stroll down the Old Arbat (once upon a time the hangout for the artistic community of Moscow, now a somewhat less glamorous strip of souvenir and coffee shops).  We've taken them to a friends for dinner where they were royally entertained, showed them around the Boys' school, and my father has made a new - Russian - friend who this morning took him to an abandoned airfield to see old helicopters and dead airplanes in their final place of rest before they are retired to the scrapyard.

We've made plans to see the 9th May parade tomorrow, will throw in couple of art galleries, a walk through Gorky Park, some listening to nightingales, and a train ride or two to entertain the anoraks in the family (I'm looking at YOU, Boy #2 and Dad), and before we know it, it will - much to our dismay - be time for them to leave again.

At which point, I imagine they will be delighted to get home again, for a bit of a rest...

The kids are alright

It has to be said that Russians are not universally perceived as having a caring attitude.  A friend told me recently that when her father slipped on the ice and broke his hip here a few years back, the majority of passers-by simply stepped over him, assuming he was drunk.  Certainly, the Muscovite air of purpose, of ‘get out of my way’, can be overwhelming when you arrive here for the first time and are looking around you with the panicked eyes of a deer-in-headlights.

The customs officials who greet you at the border are cold, the waiters are brusque and rude, the shop assistants clearly have better things to do than attend to your needs, and anyone in an official uniform is downright intimidating if not scary.

And yet...

Arrive in Moscow with young children in tow, and the situation is completely different.  Strangers will go out of their way to offer them a seat on the crowded metro or to show your family the way to the correct office to get your immigration forms stamped.  Elderly museum attendants will – once they have overcome their innate suspicion of children not clad in snow-pants in Septbember – smile benignly and ferret around for cards giving you a translation of the legends on the wall.  And the dreaded queue systems... well.

Not long after we moved over here, my sons (then 4 and 6) and I found ourselves in the old Sheremetyevo terminal, trying to check in for a flight.  It was madness.  There were no staff on the 3 desks assigned to our flight, the crush was getting tighter and tighter, and the minutes were ticking away until the plane was due to leave.  Then, when only 2 check-in staff arrived for the 3 desks, whatever space there had been between aspiring passengers disappeared as the mass of people surged towards the open desks.  It was not a comfortable situation. 

Suddenly, almost out of thin air, we found ourselves surrounded by an honour guard of babushkas.  They pushed and fought their way to the front of the business class queue, having formed a sort of cordon around the boys and myself, and carried us along with them.  Any foreign business-class traveller green enough not to know the score and to question their right to do this was firmly put in their place as it was pointed out that I had young children with me and that they should be ashamed of themselves for not stepping out of the way without being asked.  Needless to say, I was not travelling on a business class ticket.  Needless to say, when faced with my security detail of formidable babushkas, the woman on the check-in desk passed the three of us through without comment...

I have to admit that over the last couple of years, I’ve become accustomed to this preferential treatment when I have the boys with me.  Indeed, I now walk straight to the front of boarding queues in airports, and shamelessly seek out the diplomatic channels with the shortest lines at immigration (although the introduction of the ‘pen’ system at Domodedovo will probably make that unnecessary from now on, thank heavens).  So when recently arriving at Heathrow and dealing with a small boy desperate for the bathroom, with not a working loo in sight and immigration lines of record length I had no hesitation in walking to the woman at the entrance to the empty Fast Track lane and asking if I and my sons could use it to gain quicker access to the toilets which I knew were just on the other side.

To say that her face was a mask of horrified surprise at my request was an understatement.  Go through the Fast Track without the official right to use it?  Just because my little boy needed the bathroom?  The answer was an unequivocal no.  Instead we were sent to the back of beyond – my younger son’s legs crossed as he walked – to find a toilet that was open.  And I was left asking myself where on earth I had thought I was flying into...

It certainly wasn’t Russia.

This post was first published on my other blog 'Diaries of a Moscow Mum' over at The Moscow Times Online

Silent Sunday

Living the dream, people...

Recently, our washing machine started to have an unpleasant, damp sort of smell about it, so I made a call to our building manager. "I think it may be leaking at the back," I told her, "but I can't pull it out to check because it has the tumble dryer on top of it."

"Don't do anything" she replied.  "I will send the engineers over to check it out for you today."

In due course, the house was teeming with 'engineers' (handymen, to you and I.  I've written about them before, here and here).  The washing machine was not the only job that needed doing; I also wanted some lightbulbs changing (in our contract we are expressly forbidden to do this dangerous job ourselves, although - sh - I have been known to just do it and not mention it) which took not one but two highly skilled workers; and a shower curtain rail fitted, which needed another 3 guys - one to do the work and 2 more to give instructions and check out the contents of our bathroom cabinet.  With the two extra guys who turned up to check out the smell from the washing machine, that made a total of 7 engineers in the house all at the same time.  Such is life, in a city where 'full employment' is the name of the game.

My Russian, by the way?  Still crap.  So as you can imagine, communication was difficult - but we managed.

After half an hour or so, Engineer Guys 6 & 7 (Washing Machine Detail) came to find me to explain what the problem was.

Now, I have to issue a disclaimer here; Moscow is pretty dirty.  Not generally in a 'dog poo & rubbish on the sidewalk' way (although I have written about that too), but more in a 'lots of open ground which is bare earth 7 months of the year, dust blowing around, too many cars, and power stations in the city' sort of a way.  People wear indoor and outdoor shoes, and it's the absolute height of bad manners to visit someone's home and not take your outdoor shoes off the moment you step inside their front door.

So I have to admit that whilst I was embarrassed to discover the cause of the smell was - according to the Washing Machine Detail - dirt inside the detergent drawer of the washing machine (BAD housewife, PM), I was not completely surprised.  We gave it a good scrub out, and they left, telling me that the building manager would call shortly to explain what would happen next.

The moment they were out of the door, I put the empty washing machine on it's hottest wash and went back to supervise Shower Curtain Rail  Detail upstairs.

Very shortly, the building manager rang me back.  "OK PM, the engineers have told me the problem and are going to get something to sort it out. They will fix it."

"But I thought it had been fixed.  We washed the drawer out, it seems clean, and I'm running a hot cycle now just to be sure."

"No, no.  It needs a very special chemical to fix it.  They are checking if we have it now and if we do they will come back later to finish the job, otherwise we will send someone out to buy it and they will come back tomorrow.  Do not do anything..."

Intrigued, I took her at her word.  Later that day, after the Lightbulb and Shower Curtain Rail Details had left, the Washing Machine Detail returned.  After the building managers' comments about a special chemical, I had been expecting Powerful Medicine.  Possibly, I thought, I might not be able to wash clothes for a day or so whilst the machine was being attended to.  I would not have been surprised to seem them turn up in chemical suits with face masks and have them ask me to vacate the premises whilst they sealed the utility room and dealt with the problem.

This is what they turned up with.

Oh, and by the way?  The washing machine still smells...

I love comments, but...

Don't get me wrong; I love it when people comment on my blog.  More often than not, I reply to them (well, 'working from home' as I do, any opportunity to have communication with the outside world is welcome), and it's good to build up a dialogue with people in this way.

But I take exception to spammers using the comment box of The Potty Diaries to scatter their website address all over the internet.  Sure, there's a link automatically included on your name when you comment, and that's fine - more than fine, it's part of the fun of blogging, checking out where people write themselves and what they have to say - but for those people who appear out of the blue and say something like 'Great post. Here's a link to mine' with no justification or aim other than to drive traffic to a completely irrelevant and unrelated site, I have a message.

I can always hit delete - and I will. So please don't waste your time, or mine.