The Photo Gallery 229: One Day in May

This post is for Week 229 of Tara Cain's Photo Gallery over at the Sticky Fingers blog.  Today's title is 'One Day in May'.

If you have any association with Russia you will know that May is all about Victory Day.  This year, since it's the 70 year anniversary of the end of World War II (or, as it's known here, The Great Patriotic War), the authorities are pulling out all the stops.  The main roads into town are flanked by flags, all municipal vehicles are sporting them, and right-thinking patriotic citizens have their cars and/or collars adorned by black and orange ribbons.

(More of why on my next post.  I originally put the explanations in here but it overwhelmed the photos, so decided my thoughts on this celebration deserve their own airing...)

In the meantime, here some photos of what Moscow has looked like / will look like on Saturday, pulled from my files and which I've taken over the last 5 years here.

2010 - our first year as family in Russia

2012 - the year I discovered the superjet graveyard just down the road (now replaced by a shopping centre.  I preferred it before, frankly).

2013 -  we couldn't go to the celebrations, so petrol-head Boy #2 was forced to watch the planes from the back lot.

2014 - the wild dog who'd lost her way stole the show for me...

Making the best of it...

Welcome to Snot Central.

The Boys and I are all recovering from fierce colds - again.

It drains you of enthusiasm, having a cold.  It particularly drains you of enthusiasm when one son appears in your bedroom at 3am crying from head pain due to backed up catarrh in his sinuses.  Throw a Husband travelling out of the country into the mix, along with wide-scale closures of the roads into the centre of Moscow (ruling out an easy drive to the only English-speaking clinic that you know will be open on what is actually a bank holiday) so that the tanks and hgv's showing off military hardware have an easy run for their parade down to and through Red Square, and you have a rather less cheerful Victory Day - today's holiday - than might otherwise have been the case in Potski Mansions.

We certainly didn't manage to make good our plan to go downtown to watch the parade on Tverskaya, much to Boy #2's disappointment.

But - this being Russia - Putin's brag-fest wasn't only visible on the ground.  All this plane obsessed boy - the one not suffering from head pains due to his cold - had to do...

was to go outside, and look up...