THE ANGLO-RUSSIAN MARRIAGE

ENDEARING IMAGE!

The lady in the chair was actually waiting to attend a different wedding but I thought she was wonderful.

THE WEDDING

It was quite an enviable opportunity to attend a wedding in one of the wedding palaces here. I have watched enough brides come out of them!

The wedding itself was very lovely. Very similar to any civil wedding in the UK, except conducted in Russian. I hope David knows what he is getting into! He seems happy anyway and he signed the contract regardless. The inside of the building was quite lovely and the room of the marriage was elegant. During the service we endured some really sentimental recorded music and the service was only interrupted by the gentleman in front of me who had a very old camera which made a really noisy wind back noise after each photo! Everyone noticed (probably not the bride and groom!).

After the service we were taken to the reception by bus, saving us a long and icy walk.

The photo shows the brides parents holding a bread with a dish of salt, over the top of a beautiful embroidered cloth which is probably an heirloom. The idea is that the bride and groom take as bigger bite as possible to decide who is the boss in the household. I think it's traditional for the bride to take a modest bite, although I don't suppose they do that these days. They then take a piece of bread and dip it in the salt and feed it to each other. Really, that was all that was different from a traditional wedding reception in the UK, then everyone got really drunk and danced etc. ditto!

WINTER WONDERS

This was a glorious clear, cold evening and the photo opportunities made me late for meeting up with Mike. Who could resist this though?

MUSHROOM PARTY

We enjoyed last Saturday night at the home of a work colleague of Mike's. Last autumn Mike had the opportunity to go mushroom hunting with a gang from the office, this particular chap being the expert only collected porchini, and a big basket of those he had found. He invited us on Saturday to enjoy risotto a la porchini. He had boiled the mushrooms and had then frozen them. Gosh! I didn't know that was even a possibility as I have only ever enjoyed porchini either fresh or dried. We enjoyed a couple of bottles of excellent Georgian wine which was a great treat as, naturally, Georgian wine is not allowed into Russia. This was very generous as the said gentleman had only a couple of bottles brought in from Ukraine. Of course he hadn't realised that he was not allowed to bring it through.

He had a wonderful flat, the first flat I have been into belonging to a local, albeit a rather privileged local. He did warn us, however, that he had been having trouble with rats since the Restaurant had opened beneath him. I kept my feet pretty much off the ground for the entire visit.

This guy also had the most impressive private library, probably, in the City. During the early 90's there had been a charity to gather up as much reading material, mostly from USA as was possible and send it to the literature starved Russians. Somehow, he had acquired a huge number of these books, some of real historical interest. He also had some magazines dated from the 60's which were, according to him, published and printed in Russia and sold, legally, through the news kiosks. They were in Russian but were all about the wonders of living in the USA. I think he is quite wrong about this. I think these were definitely printed in the USA and smuggled into Russia to be sold quite secretly. After all, they were would really make any Russian very envious of the lifestyle outside of the Soviet Union and why would they allow that? I was in Russia in the 70's and I know people had hardly any information about anything outside.

We enjoyed looking at some childhood artwork which included a 'City of the Future' containing glorious Soviet slogans! Really that brainwashing business started very early.

A FEW WINTER CITY IMAGES

I particularly love the ducks who have found a nice patch of water in which to swim!

The birch wood is on one of the city islands but looks a million miles away!

The sunrise was taken from my sitting room window at about 8.45 a.m.!

The ice on the canal in front of the Church of the Spilt Blood is clean of bottles and garbage, which is unusual!

IS HE REALLY GOING TO SIT ON THAT ?

I SAW A GHOST TODAY!

WHO IS PETER THE GREAT TALKING TO? MORE TO THE POINT, WHO IS THAT LURKING IN THE BACKGROUND?

IT'S BEEN A WHILE BUT I AM BACK!!!

TWO OLD LADIES

I was moved and uplifted earlier this week to come across two wonderful old ladies. Not content to sit around in their homes during the dark, cold winter days, they were out busking! These ladies clearly had a combined age of about 160+. They were both wearing red hats and warm wool coats. Perhaps they are sisters, their harmony was great as they sang traditional Russian folk songs and one of them was wearing a yellow plastic container around her neck to collect the money. I don't usually give money to buskers but I was extremely generous to these ladies as I thought they showed such spirit! They probably sing all the time at home and realised the possibility to 'cash in' on their pastime! They made my day and I made theirs!

I wonder how long it will be before such enterprise will be shown by our own British pensioners, struggling along on their 0% interest on their savings. Not even funny.

NEW TROLLEY BUSES

Things have changed even in the short time I have been living here. All the battered old mini buses that used to clog up our main roads have been banned from use and have been replaced by beautiful new buses. This is making the main shopping street of Nevsky Prospect much, much cleaner and safer. Good things DO happen here!

ON THE OTHER HAND

I thought I was being sensible crossing at a pelican light this morning but hadn't accounted for the fact that big, dark windowed, 4 x 4's park on the crossings and don't think anything of backing into pedestrians crossing! I nearly got caught, but I will be looking out in future. I really think people in cars assume that the pedestrian is some sort of inferior being, seriously!

SNOW

At last I can report that the weather here is now worse than the weather in the UK. Thank goodness, I thought I might start to be considered a fraud as every time I speak to my son in Newcastle the weather has been considerably colder and snowier than here!

I can confirm that the river and canals here are well iced over and I have seen people walking on the ice on the main river, crazy! I think the swimmers are still swimming at Peter and Paul. It takes all sorts.