Be careful what you wish for - weather-wise, at least...

For the last couple of weeks, as the daytime temperature in Moscow has vacillated somewhere between 6 and 12 degreesC and the final few leaves have clung stubbornly to the trees, I've been thinking about writing a post entitled 'Winter? Bring it on...' or some other such nonsense.

It was going to be all about how I don't particularly enjoy Autumn and Spring here in Moscow.  Sure, the beginning of the former and the end of the latter are pretty and have their own charm, but on the whole the trees are bare, the grass is beginning to thin out showing the bare earth beneath, and everything is just so unremittingly... dreary.  Plus, there are those difficult wardrobe choices.  Heavy sweaters, or layers?  Duvet coat to roast in, or sassy jacket to shiver in?  Hell, you never even know which shoes to wear - boots, which will feel so heavy by the end of the day but keep out the rain, or late summer sneakers, which aren't quite so full-on but will result in cold feet? - or indeed what the changeable weather is going to bring.  No, I thought to myself, once Winter properly bites, life is much simpler; it's cold, get on with it.

Well, Winter has bitten - at least by British standards.  We had proper snow - about 15cm of it - on the car when we woke up on Sunday morning, followed by freezing rain throughout the day (such lovely conditions in which to see Red Square, as we did with some friends who are visiting us at the moment), and since then the temperature has hovered around 0degC.  We have unearthed the boys' snow pants; found, lost, and found again their hats, gloves and scarves; and I'm sitting here looking out of the window as a mixture of hail, snow and sleet falls on the crusting of ice on the roads and pavements.

And as it's not even November yet, this is the warmest it's likely to get until some time next April.  In fact, before too long, 0degC is going to seem like some impossibly tropical temperature as we shiver down in the minus teens and below.

Bring on Winter?  What the hell was I thinking?

Apologies for absence...

Notice how the frequency of my posts has fallen over the last few days?

It's the result of a perfect storm of visitors and school half term.

See you soon...

PM x

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

So I've committed to showing some of my photos at a very low key art fair in a couple of weeks time.  You know - the type where people might actually pay money to buy pictures that I've taken.  I must be bonkers, putting myself on the line like this but I suppose it's one way of keeping myself entertained...

Interesting how having that kind of deadline can focus the mind on just how few images you actually have in your portfolio - so yesterday I went out and took some more.  I still don't have enough - but it's a start.

Silent Sunday

Thoughts running through my head...

... on discovering a grey hair in one eyebrow this morning.

• Is that what I think it is?
• What the...?
• No, I mean, what the...?
• You have got to be kidding.
• Where did that come from?  It wasn't there yesterday - was it?  Or has it been there all week, all grey and wiry in plain view and - oh, the horror - everyone else has noticed but nobody has wanted to tell me?
• I'm too young for this shxt.
• Should I pull it out? *Reaches for the tweezers*
• Should I leave it?  *Puts the tweezers back down*

• Blink.  Breathe.  Take another look.

• Shxt.  It's still there.

• I'm going to pull it out.
• No, wait!  If I pull it out, will 2 grow back in it's place? 
• I don't care.  If I leave it, it will just get longer and longer and take over my face.
• OK, I know that doesn't happen with my other eyebrow hairs but this is new, this is alien.  I have no idea how this blighter might behave.
• I'm going to pull it out.

• But - is that sensible?
• I mean, am I going to pull out all the other grey / white hairs as they appear?  Because if I do, eventually I will be left with no eyebrows at all...

*Pause for reflection*.

• Get a grip, woman.  It's one eyebrow hair.  
• I could dye it...
• No, don't be ridiculous.  Dye all my eyebrows for the sake of one grey hair?  I don't dye the hair on my head and there is a lot more than one grey hair in there...
• Yes, but this is different. Somehow.

• Pull it, pull it, pull it!

• There.  Doesn't that feel better?

• Stop checking, woman!  It's gone.  The sneaky little...

Tell me, blogosphere - at what stage should I give up the fight?  And how do you deal with this particular indignity of aging?

Reality checks...

I'm sitting here listening to Lily Allen sing 'Oh my God I can't believe it... I've never been this far away from home' and sympathising.

For various reasons, I'm feeling quite a long way from home myself right now.

Russia is a capricious host; most of the time I feel reasonably assimilated but now and again, just when I've dropped my guard, she throws in a curve ball to remind me that I'm not in Kansas anymore*.

This morning, for example, I was driving on a busy road and - ironically - just congratulating myself on how well I was negotiating the famously aggressive traffic, when some (expletive deleted) in a shiny black merc swerved out from behind me into the lane I was pulling into, missing me by centimetres.  He then pulled the same trick on two cars in front of me before repeating the process back across the highway as he drove into the bus lane to disappear into the distance with, thank god, no harm done.

I dearly hope that he was also accompanied by sound of shutters clicking on some of the newly installed Moscow bus lane cameras that should charge him 3000r (approx $100 or £60) a pop for the pleasure of using the traffic-free lane, but something tells me that that sort of money won't mean too much for this driver. Such is life in this city.

I've also been struggling recently with another reality check that often slaps me in the face when I'm not expecting it; the casual racism displayed by far too many of Moscows' residents, many of them highly educated and who should ruddy well know better. This is top of mind after a couple of incidents over the weekend, hence this outburst.  I should probably keep it to myself but after all, this is my blog and I need to say this somewhere: how the hell, Russia, do you ever expect to be treated they way you want to be by countries in Western Europe when you persist in treating people of any colour except white as somehow 'less', and as objects of suspicion if not outright derision?  Sometimes, living in this country is like watching a playback of some of the worst parts of 1970's Britain.

There is racism everywhere to varying degrees, I know that, and the racism here is based on the fear and ignorance of a previously mainly homogonous society adapting to a more global outlook, but that doesn't make it any more acceptable.  It's manifestations and the stupidity it is based upon, along with those who exploit that, makes me angry.  Actually, it makes me spitting mad, whilst of course the people who are on the receiving end of this kind of behaviour are far more dignified about it than I am, rising above it and simply getting on with their lives.


*Obviously a reference to Dorothy's words to Toto on her arrival in Oz.  But you knew that...

When your children still think you can do ANYTHING...

The Boys' school has a used book fair on at the moment.  The basic premise is that the children comb through the shelves to find books they don't want anymore, and take them into school where they exchange  them for 'book bucks', which they can then swap for - you guessed it - more books.

So - an opportunity to rid ourselves of books that are too young a reader-age, and to get new books more appropriate to the Boys into the bargain?  Fantastic.

Obviously, we forgot all about it.

This necessitated a last minute rifle through the shelves and some hard decisions about which titles we loved too much to give away, even if they were way too young for the Boys these days.  At the final count we managed a total of 20 books to swap - many of which, it has to be said, had been acquired at previous book fairs and which I was only too happy to see go (Transformers or Pokemon, anyone?).

The Boys were delighted; this gave each of them a total of 10 book bucks to spend.  The only problem was that, having left it to the last minute, a lot of the best books had already gone and so the selection to choose from was somewhat thinner than they might have liked.  This meant that when he had chosen the books he wanted, Boy #2 still had one book buck left over.  He decided that rather than saving it for the next fair, he would - dear heart - spend it on me.

This is why, when I collected him from school the day before yesterday, he made me a gift of this book.

I like to think of it as evidence of his lofty ambition for me.