Genteel Genderification*

A feeling of  something-not-quite-right-ness has been following me for a while. This time it could not be put down the jars of pickle and honey covered in dust and with a sell-by-date long expired in the shops. Nor an odd word here or there. Something that has changed in my behaviour. My friend pointed it out quite beautifully , 'You have become a girly girl. When you got here we found lots of interesting topics to talk about. Then something happened.'  I haven't stopped reading classics or  discussing philosophy or racing men in the swimming pool. However, I have started to talk about boys, as 'boys', as they would be sung about in a pop song, especially the song 'Boyz Boyz Boyz'. This is through the awful influence of the some of the so-called glamour girls  that perambulate down streets of dear St Pete.

I suddenly realised that I had been indecentally exposing myself on the streets of St Pete when one friend told me.'I would feel  naked without make-up if I had your complexion. I feel naked for you.'. I was forced to attend Russian make-up workshops where intricate layers of mystic creams are spread on, each with it's own softening, glistening, perfecting, eye-widening or clarifying function.  All with the intention to bewitch, enchant, ensnare. The precious Russian husband. After the eye-liner, shadow, lip-stick, foundation and  magic creams my face was perfectly Russian. 'My goodness, you look like a prostitute!' said the friend concerned with my bareness. 'I'm afraid to walk through the streets with you now. Please wash it off before you walk home.' Like the men trying to be Marilyn Monroe-esque in 'Some Like It Hot', my attempts at the Russian brand of femininity are clearly doomed to failure.

Men strut  around  with the prize-bull awareness that they are men in a city with a surplus of  beautiful, glamourous women seeking a husband. A foreign colleague said , 'I looked at myself and realised I had two options, I could either join a gym or go to Russia.'  Some Russian women get excited about foreign men - there's too few Russians and 40% of those are alcoholics  -in a way that Russian men just wouldn't bother getting excited about foreign women. 'Our women know how to dress perfectly and look after the family. You'll never see a Russian girl with laddered tights'.

 It is common for foreign girls to get an inferiority complex and for men to walk away with relaxed indifference. A common chat up line/friendly conversation starter is , 'Are you really English? Are there actually other  beautiful girls in England? I thought they were all ugly.' On the contrary, English men are apparently unfailingly cultured and handsome.

When Russians  are accompanying (it's easy to get the feeling that  you are being accompanied)  a woman they act  the man with perfect courtesy; holding doors, carrying bags, paying entry. When you are a stranger they sometimes simply shoulder past you on the street. I've been nearly catapulted by puffer-coated, high-speed men clearing their path along icy streets,  

Jeans and trainers are (thank goodness) are  rarer than in Europe. I barely touched a pair of jeans until May. Constantly wearing dresses must  have a feminising influence on the brain.  They require more attention to posture and comportment than trousers or jeans. In jeans you can  tear around and perch your derriere down however and wherever you wish.

While in Russia, I had a noticeable lack of  male friends and flocks of  lovely female friends. To counter this perceived lack and provide some humour, my farewell to Russia was a moustache party, male Salvador-Dali-esque dress obligatory, 'That way we'll all be men and counter the gender imbalance!'  The twist in the tale occured when some-how, due to various holidays, forgotten invites, random encounters of cruise boat musicians, friends of  friends, and an unpredictable French roommate , the party had far too many  real men.  'You'd better not leave,' I said to some remaining women as the XY content of the party dangerously dwindled. 'Or I'll be left alone with all these men!'

*This entry contains many generalisations for the sake of simplicity, the fun of gross cultural comparison and humour. Of course, the situation between men and women and such in Russian is far more complex than can be discussed here.

Visa'd - Debushka, You are not flying

Russia was quite adamant about not letting me leave. In a more aggressive, inhibitive way than the statements of  beautiful friends and acquaintances 'You have to stay.' Here, the phrase was pronounced in a very different tone.

At the check-in desk there was no problem. Everything was clear and the stewardess only smiled at my slightly delapidated visa. The fact was that when I was given some flimsy green sheets of paper I had no idea that they were actually needed for leaving the former USSR.  I whimsically carried them around in my handbag in case of being stopped by the police. Who knows, one day I may have been mistaken for a young man from a minority group? My handbag underwent multiple and marvellous adventures through various different climates and met a variety of art utensils, squares of chocolate, cosmetics and fiddling fingers. As a result, it looked a bit like a used tissue. Although, I assure you, I never in fact resorted to using it as such.

After check-in, I was extremely relieved that my bulky baggage passed right through so that I wouldn't have to wear several soviet dresses, a kinky bulgarian dress with heavy metal buttons, jeans and hefty snow-proof redneck hunting boots while declaring, 'For all I know it could be very cold in England'. It wasn't Stansted and no-one cared about the weight restrictions.  I nonchalantly handed over my Visa to the little hut-like office. The woman inside frowned , 'Step aside, Debushka.'  I'm not impressed or amused. I'm the rule book without annotations or illustrations or comical scribbles. Her entire face was as smart and pursed as the navy blue uniform. Alas, as I stood reading outside the office another girl asked me to step in. 'I'm already being seen to, thanks.' How friendly and young and annotated she sounded! Alas, it was too late.

An official looking man, the epitomy of officious and average, stepped in and they spent a long time discussing my Visa.I risked popping my head in. 'I know it's a bit messy but look; here's all the photocopies,' I attempted to say in Russian with a sweet smile. No-one listened. The man went away for a long time while I stood too exhausted to panic.

'This way, Debushka,' he said when he returned, motioning towards the check-in desk. 'You need a new visa.'

'Will it take long?' I asked, looking at my watch. 'I fly in 40 minutes.'


'Debushka, You are not flying.'

'I don't understand.'

'You are not flying.'

He took me to the flight desk and handed in my ticket. 'This young lady isn't flying.' Brutally, They struck me off the list. I objected. 'I have to fly today. I start work today.'

'It's simply impossible.'

Then, realising the gravity of the situation,  I tried to explain about something that had happened to my bag in Dacha (expat party place, especially for young irresponsable foreigners) and how my poor visa was returned defaced. A girl stepped in and translated for me. It was still quite clear that I wouldn't be flying. The customs official explained that the serial number wasn't clearly legible. There were two girls behind the desk who kindly but firmly said, 'I'm afraid that there's nothing we can do for you Madam' . I calmly persisted in standing there and requested the number of the consulate. The calmness was assisted by the three hours sleep I'd succeeded in attaining over forty-eight hours of farewell parties and missed bridges. After a couple of tries I got through to a consulate, 'You need an emergency visa.' The check-in girls quickly became interested and made an effort to help me;  Russian coldness  melted into Russian warmth.

'The flight's twenty minutes delayed. You might still get on.' They ran off behind scenes and came back, 'That visa's not possible for multi-entry visas (meaning I had several bits of green paper rather than just one).'

I phoned again , 'Well, you need to speak to the head of customs.'

It was clear I wouldn't get this plane.  'Will my flight be refunded?' '

I'm sorry we don't do refunds.' At first I was devastated, only wanting to get back to England, be in England, work in England and leave the sort of place that required visas to let you leave it. I dreaded dragging my bag back on the marshrutka and saying 'Here I am again', to all the people I had melodramatically Dasvydanyed.  Then I began imagining all the minimally funded adventures I could have if I stayed. Camping at a concealed lake with an abandoned banya, drinking tea in Cafes, travelling around Russia, teaching privately for a few weeks, finding a camp in Russia to work at. It was all impractical of course.

Here, they brought me a lady  from British Airways with a smooth Moscow accent (defined by excellent, slightly Americanised English); slim, perfect and Moscovite. From a past era of  glamourous airports. She said she would try to deal with the problem and perhaps my ticket would be refunded.

We took my bag to the British airways office in a corridor by the airport.

The lady phoned a friend some-where official and handed her to me 'It may be possible to get this sort of visa.' No, that wasn't possible. 'I'm going to have a meeting with customs.' 'And if that works will I get a free ticket?' 'I'm afraid they refused.' She went away to speak to somebody in customs. I waited for a while in the office chatting  to her colleaugue who spoke no English who made me a cup of emergency tea.

She returned briskly, 'Customs have agreed to let you leave the country at 3 o clock exactly. But you have to hand in your whole visa.'

'That's fine. I don't want it'. I just want to leave your cruel  country with visa OCD, and never come back. 'It won't cause problems if I did perhaps  want to come back some-time?' Of course I want to come back really, now forewarned with the knowledge that those ugly green bits of paper should be kept in a plastic cover, with a pocket, in a Emma-proof safe. However, I can't decide whether fate wanted to give me a second chance to stay longer by making escape a challenge or whether it just wanted to take all of my multi-entry visa so coming back any-time soon would require effort , planning and paperwork.

'Not at all.'

'Tickets?'

'We will go to the office and ask about them now .'

They printed some  tickets and handed them over easily.

As everything kept yo-yo-ing from 'maybe' to 'no' to 'yes' and back again  so frequently I could see the red yo-yo before my eyes I decided not to be entirely relieved yet or phone any-one. I went to the workers cantene, to the disguised within a Soviet building (we are not so far from Moskovskiy Prospect) t above the airport and enjoyed a thoroughly Russian meal; buckwheat and fish, an the indispensable soup and a Greenfields Tea sachet. A  sort of Last Supper.

Now, having a little bit of time on my hands before I was accompanied to customs I thought I should buy my saviour(BA lady) a little present, such as chocolate. I heard this sort of thing is actually expected and is equivalent to a bribe. I should've had some Whisky in my pockets for the customs official. However, I would be too afraid too offer a bribe for fear of offence and ridicule. In any case, it seems to be a male domain. At least, I've never heard a woman telling anecdotes about bribery. The lady told me to keep the chocolate for my friends back home. She handed me over to customs. This time the unsympathetic customs man smiled a little and told me to have a good journey. Ice melting.

 Oh well. I waited for the plane and started chatting with some English tourists who had flown over for the white nights and found the city beautiful but not intimate..'So I was actually supposed to fly this morning and it seemed like the perfect thing as I got a job right near Gatwick airport so I decided to just fly straight to work.  Wait a second, this does go to Gatwick doesn't it?'

'No, this is for Heathrow.'

'Oh -'

With three hours sleep out of forty-eight; a ridiculously snotty cold; a dress that is too warm for the szauneric airport; an expired sim and two phones that just about work between them; the wrong airport; a suitcase full of impractical things; airportial price inflation the adventure continues       ...............

Unnofficial Taxi Drivers or Stanning without Seatbelts

Public transport in St Petersburg is a bemusing and difficult thing for non-Russians to accept. There really is no legal public transport after midnight. No metro, no night buses, no night trams, no Marshrutkas. It is supplemented by unmarked, completely unregistered taxis driven by immigrants which dissolve magically from the flow of traffic when you wave your arm towards the road. It's called car-catching. Post metro closure, they flip into the bus bays like dominoes 1,2,3 if you so much as hesitate near the edge of a main drag. If the price is unsatisfactory, the door slams and up pulls the next taxi.  This can happen several times until some driver offers a low enough price - one girl I know travels every-where for 150 roubles.

Theres a lot of risk involved in a young woman jumping into a car with a stranger yet many women use this service casually and  habitually. It says something about the strange Russian attitude towards trust.

For a long time,  all of seven months,  I have remained very English and mostly tried to dissuade friends from going any-where near the taxi, insisting that we walk through the snow and cold. The other day I became relaxed enough into the Russian way of things (de-Europeanised enough) to catch a car on my own. In the middle of the day and in the middle of the town, admittedly.

 The catching was rather difficult as I was quite shy and hesitant about the catching, holding my arm out rather pathetically in a space that was probably only for buses. I moved along and a ' ' pulled up. 'Marinsky, 100 rubles, possible?' 'To the Marinsky, 150.'150rubles  is the standard price for any-where in the centre, although taxi drivers will often try to charge foreigners a lot more. I only had a hundred in change. 'Well, if a hundred is all you have, jump in.'

'Finnish?'

'No, English.'

We started along the road and after a couple of polite questions,  then the Stan story began. This is customary, at least it happens in most taxis I get. Reminiscing about the home-land with other strangers adrift in this great city.

'I'm from Tajakistan where there are beautiful mountains. I've been to Germany, Budapest, Romania, Lithuania. We speak Russian very well. The Soviet Union was very strong. There was a strong war and 3 millions of our men went to fight the Americans in Cuba. Strong, strong' Here he mimes shooting a rifle. He loves English language music and the radio is playing American golden oldies; 'Killing me softly' and country. 'I can't understand the songs but I love them. It's very fine music. I feel it here.' He taps his chest. In his soul.'My son speaks English perfectly. He's a lawyer. I only learnt German at school.

Mermaid in a Pickle Jar - Russian short story

This story was written in collaboration with several couchsurfers and a colleague.  It explores that old Russian stereotypes - ; pickles and vodka frame the story. These subjects were chosen by Russians without my influence. I only added the mermaid.



Человек должен выпивать 3 литра воды в день! Это норма согласно теории. Потомy что человек состоит на 90 % из воды, а может быть и нет. А может быть, это вовсе и не человек, а огурец.

"Ну, и неважно какой - всё равно", - сказал Миша. Ведь он же будет огурец есть, и таким образом огурец может стать человеком.

Миша подумал об этом, и банка стала открываться.

Там, в банке, он увидел рycалку и влюбился в неё. У русалки были прекрасные зелёные волосы, а на носу нелепые очки. Миша подумал, что с такими очками она уж точно учёная дева, академию закончила. Он и не подозревал, что за этими очками скрываются жгучие очи морской красавицы.

Как она тyда попала, в банку?

Возможно, потому что американский президент охотился на русалок. Он сказал, что русалки опасны для цивилизации.

Русалка тоже влюбилась. И именно поэтому она решила навсегда исчезнуть с глаз людей . Так что мы их больше никогда не увидим, разве что после пятой стопки.

The Drunken Pianos

As I walked towards Nevskiy with a vegan, teetotal Russian friend (almost a freak of nature in this harsh borsch-some shampanskoyed tsardom but that's another article)we encountered a crowd of inebriated men hanging around.  They jumped out on my friend with a plastic beer bottle, in  a gawkish, harmless way. On Nevskiy another man wandered by disposessedly and the vegan said, 'There are lots of strange people here.'

I whispered confidentially, with beautiful British sarcasm and worldly wisdom , 'You know, that's because they're pianos and people act like that when they're pianos'.

You may be surprised to learn that I hadn't intended to say exactly this. There should have been something more to do with beer and the resulting consequences of consuming it and less to do with musical instruments, as lovely as they are. You see , пьяный (Piyaniy) and пианино (Pianino) sound more or less the same to me; all in all, the drunken P softens up a little and the a is slurred to ya and then a -no is added on but these -n's and -kas and -shkas suffixedly suffuse themselves all over Russian.  In short, what's a vowel or too between an Englishwoman and the Russian language? Negligible.

Of course, these subtle differences only seem subtle when you're a foreigner and not very au fait with the language. To native speakers they are as humiliatingly obvious as the difference between sheep and ship - which so many learners of English cannot distinguish so that students often travel to France on a sheep or remark that there are lots of ships in Wales - or artery and armory if I change about the same amount of letters as needed to switch 'Piyanaya to Pianina.

I composed a song which only makes sense in Russian because a drunk piano is in no way such a flowing  exquisitely attired creature as a пьяное пианино (Piyanaya Pianino.)



пьяное пианино
что ты делаеш, что ты думаеш?


композитор - он оффисиант
ты закаcашь шостоковичый виски
после шампанское чайковскый

ты играeш кандинский

пьяное пианино
бесстыдное да чудесное







Plastered Piano
What are doing, what are you thinking?

The composer is a waiter
You order  your Shostakovich with Whisky
Then Tchaikovskian Champagne

You play Kandinsky

Plastered Piano
Unbeatable, yes wonderful

Clair-Obscur in the Telegraph Office

Paperia - Illustrations for a fairy tale

In some measured inspired by the amount of wasted, squandered and scorned  scraps of paper involved in EFL teaching; especially to young learners this fairy-tale is about a world made of paper.

Smoke your Hearts Out - a free-writing fragment

In the outside corridor of the Galeria, there is a flurry of life. The workers and consumers and loungers and students from the nearby college stand under here. As I walk along it  there is a symphony of cigarettes, as they are raised in the air like the violin bows. Smoke is ubiquitous here, Much cheaper than such unwholesome pursuits as swimming. Clubs drown  in smoke and menus have a whole page dedicated to tobacco products . They are smoking their hearts out.

Smoke your Hearts Out

Here you'll find a closer sort of cafe

There are bar stools and fags across the way

Here amongst mahogany we proffer hearts

And sanguine delicacies such as strawberry tarts.

Hearts constructed of plastic or ebony

Decorated like mobile phones from last century

In the Bar of Vaporised Hearts, it was smoky and dark like any other bar but here the punters dipped long tubes into their own heart or the heart of others.

I sat  in the bar, smoking my own heart. I pulled the pipe our slowly , drawing the melancholy out and then took it into my mouth and let the remainder drift listlessly into the air. It was a limpid smoke, with only the slightest hint of blue. A man to the left, with the most exrcruciatingly beautiful shadows on his cheekbones  was blowing coal black smoke and it made me shiver. I looked at him. It wasn't the shadows that were beautiful but the bones that formed them. He caught me looking at him but continued to smoke and read a journal. From here, I couldn't see what it was. About rocket advances, I assumed, as that's what most men on London  tend to read if they read anything.

It wasn't. I looked closer. It was a Dickens.  I'd heard about that myself, and people say London wasn't so very different then. I showed him my own book of Robert Browning, a fancifuller sort of Victorian nostalgia. 'Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,

May gaze thro' these faint smokes curling whitely ..' I read huskily, distractedly, as if to myself. He looked up through his black smoke.

Writing in Russian - Poem to a chewing gum wrapper

In a bistro, I  restlessly began chain writing poems on pepper packets.  Upon  reading them  to some Russian boys the next day, they handed me some 'good' chewing gum(Wrigleys cyclone) for their further amusement. This is what I wrote on the packet:

Я выпотрошила твое еластичное сердце
У тебя будет просто угрюмая некрасивая кожа.
Жила была жевачка моя
Сияла как капитализм
Потом лишенный как феодолизм

To my chewing gum wrapper

I  tore out your elastic heart

Now you have only morose  skin, not quite red.

Once upon a time you lived dear chewing gum;

Now that Capitalist shine

Is dulled to lack, Feudalism.

Proletariat bay or Champanskoe and Pets in the Fontanka

There was no need for a heavy winter coat this Satuday weekend and I strolled along in a  Soviet summer dress - with thick tights and fleeced lined boots admittedly - admiring the waters of the Fontanka, newly unveiled from snow and ice and shimmering with  the beautiful sunshine which scarcely appeared for the whole of winter.  Spotting a bay, I layed my coat down not far from a group of  quiet revellers  and prepared to enjoy my victuals of smoked trout, rye and parsley ( easy food to grab from a corner store). As I rustled my plastic bags a lady from the revellers  asked , 'Debushka, Shampanskoe?' I hesitated just a little ; cheap soviet champagne has more ethanol than grape but it's sweet enough to be pleasant. It was mostly a case of accepting a social contract so I said, 'Yes, thankyou..'

'You will?' I think they were surprised I agreed to the  alcoholic fare.

'Just a little.'

'Beer or Champagne?'

'Champagne.' They poured me a plastic cup and asked if I was alone; well, I suppose it was more of a statement as I clearly was on my own, not being availed of any invisible friends at this minor stage of alcohol consumption.

Now I noticed the composition of  the group; two middle aged ladies and two young men in their twenties, all in indistinct mud coloured clothes, of the sports-wear type(that would be from Walmart or ASDA in America or England), the sort of people who are more concentrated on the metro as you head towards the poorer outskirts.

Of course, they were curious about what I was doing in St Petersburg and asked why I would teach in Russia when the salaries must be much better in the Uk. I explained that it was interesting and I wanted to learn Russian and the salary -rent differential made it more or less the same in both countries anyway. 'She's here for the interest.' They repeated to the boys who were further away. Clearly it was a little bit of  a puzzle to understand my bad Russian. They tried to give me a chocolate cake roll in that babushka-ish manner which is almost aggressive, when you making sure have everything you apparently need is like fighting for a point in a game.





As I quietly ate, two women plodded along to the bay with  a german shepard cross and threw it into the river. The poor thing looked sligthly stunned and automatically waded through the water in self-preservation from the freezing water  moving towards the other side and unsure what to do. My champagne companions reprimanded the dog owners and for a while they were all beckoning the dog back and had to heave him out of the water after moving the little picnic aside. As he grateful leapt from his owners arms onto the bay he spilt the beer and spread water.  There was a lot ot tut-tutting  about how cruel this was to the poor pet. 'Petersburg! In April.'

The sun went behind the ever-near clouds and with it the temporary warmth. They were worried I would be ill and a middle-aged man who introduced himself asDima put his  big rain coat around my shoulders. I tried to protest that I was sitting on my coat but clearly I needed to be helped by this gentlemen of the gutters.

Then a questions I often get asked at market stalls, 'How old are you?'; 'Are you married?.' They were sure I looked nineteen and assured me that there were plenty of good men in St Petersburg ,' but not Dima here, he's too old.'

I left to go to an exhibition . They insisted on pouring me some more champagne and it splashed against my dress as I walked. I wanted to pour it in the Fontanki water as a beautiful symbol to extend symbol because the name Champagne carries a certain glamour to it which can't be dispelled by its ethanolic reality..  It would be dirt into dirt, chemicalised substance with little relation to grapes into the polluted river, and glory into glory, the royal drink tippled at Operas and Birthdays and New Years with the name pronounced as if it really was champagne and then the river which had its role in so many murders and  love affairs.

I met a teetotal  Belorussian friend  for the exhibition and told her how pleased I was to experience this display of the warm Russian hospitality - out there in a the temporary home of a bay - which travel guides are always chattering about. She couldn't empathise, as she  would never accept cake or champagne from people because she doesn't want either. 

Two Cafes along Nevskiy

Two Cafes

Firstly not far from Gostiny Dvor I stop into a Konditerskoe, Sever. Something along the line of a tea-room without the doilies and pots of milk. If  only I wasn't sensitive to cream. This place is very sweet and cremeux and extremely Nevskiy; pearly white walls and ceilings  are asunctous as the condiments around. My pink dress harmonises perfectly and especially my pink hand-bag with nine pink flowers blooming from it.

Opposite my table, a mother and daughter share  cakes, a cup of desert and a pot of tea quietly and seriously, as if this  was a ritual or a chore. Not an excuse for conversation. An old couple sit at my table and again they are very calm and quiet. I 'm quite lost in the banter of War and Peace.

I walk down Nevskiy and make a small  but most significant left to Pirozhee where's there's a selection of pies and dairy based food. The sign is red and yellow rather than polar white, marking it as a cheap and cheerful place; although in Russia that is rare. In fact, it's more cheap and mildly sour-faced.(Incidentally, I learnt from my English text book that these colours induce hunger whcih is why they are used my so many places encouraging the super-size meal rather than degustation. This is just one of the many incidental facts that cling to the consciousness of ESL teachers).

Opposite, what a hauty little lady admist the down at the heel muddy brown and beige and grey faux marble decor  of the Pie cafe, sittting below a chinese vase full of lilies(the only beautiful thing in the room) which seem to emerge from her hair like an ornament.Adolescent and shining with long blond hair and a florally embroidered coat. Her babushka sits matt next to her in a raincoat almost the same non-red as the tables.

A contrast from the beauty of Sever. There was the perfect place to read Tolstoy; every surface and conversational lilt was cremeux and amiable. The drawing rooms and carriages fitted perfectly well into those enamelled surfaces. The cinnamon and pumpkin soup I was supping was the perfect dish to sample from the menu of a society dinner.

Here, with my sirniki(curd cheese pattacakes), the yellowed pages of the book look dirtied  and disparaged by the tasteless table. Perhaps the faux-marble is supposed to be luxurious or mayorial. Are the walls purposefully the same colour as the metro building?

Just now the babushka has started selling yellow flowers outside the lily window so that now there are three layers of flowers, with the coquettish embroidered coat at the forefront. The layers of a nineteenth century painting.

To the right are cows buttocks. Images of farms where all this curd cheese and cream and condensed milk are supposed to come from in a wholesome and  rurally photogenic way. A boldly printed poster of a cow being milked in no way convinces that these products are hearty and honest and whole. The inherit poverty of the processed white flour negates such a possibility.

Walking along Nevskiy; a fantasy

I want to get horribly intoxicated on a cocktail of Soviet Champagne, a big cuban cigar and Shostakovich and then walk out on Nevskiy and blame everything. I'll blame the collapsed marble seat outside Gostiny Dvor for it's laziness; I'll blame the snow for not sticking to it's convinctions but giving in and melting into water;  I'll blame the beer cans for lying there on the road; I'll chide the crumbling dirty facades for  not taking proper care of themselves; I'll blame the paving stones for holding me down here on this one urban street with not much happening instead of lifting  me up and taking me some-where sublime. How beautiful the sky  and the network of rivers below would be.

 I'll sit on the metro and  I'll blame the reflections in the dark windows  for showing me only the masked faces of people and not revealing their soul or translating their conversation.  My elation will well up into melancholy so I will blame all the people for  sitting so indifferently and not sharing  my emotion and the metro for taking me some-where too slowly.

After this magnificent shedding of responsibility I'll want to feel in control again and I'll make my sincere apologies to all. I'll explain to the marble seat that it was I who kicked the support from under it; I was jealous of it's solidity and the way it conspired with all the lovers holding hands. So I'll kiss it's marble surreptitiously when I think no one's looking. I'll gently lift the beer cans and bury them  reverentially in their tomb and then I'll lay on the road to better understand their  degradation; thrown down they lie helpless against kicks and scornful steps to avoid them.  To the snow I'll admit that I joined the universal chant against the Snow Queen  telling her to go away, come again another day. I beat it with my hunting shoes and called it malicious and avoided it. I'll empathise with it's tears (it is transforming into whole canals and lakes of tears across the town) and cry into it. I'll know that it is only myself holding me down and pinning the paving stone under me. To make amends I'll draw the towers and fortresses and parks it will never see in chalk across it's granite.

Out-furrification

Without furs;synthetic fabrics and
 big hairstlyes

With the advent of spring, hats and furs have vanished from all but the occasional babushka. They are safely stored away for the  next season. I am now outfurring the Russians with my 40s style furr hat from a charity shop. It is clearly from an era before the invention of affordable synthetic thermal clothesn so I don't feel an English twinge of guilt at wearing a small fluffy animal on my head. If some-one pats me on the heat I feel like a wood-land creature or a cat. From the way it moves on my head it really feels like my own skin and I feel tempted to purr. When the hat is not on my head - my real hair wants to capture the rare and glorious sunbeams -  it is my little pet and I occasionally stroke the tactile furr. Then I carelessly stuff it in my bag for convenience because for is not something I have ever aspired to own or adore. It needs restictching anyway.

Despite all moral considerations, aesthetically and experientally it is a dissapointment to no longer see the furrs.. They were glistening, shocking, sensual ornamentation; from an illustrated Snow Queen fairytale, inveterately Russian, nostalgic; significant, massive, ideal;savage, luxurious; flocculent. They were so evcoative as to give me  nightmare flashes, imagining the animals still alive and biting viciously, imagining them being skinned, imagining wearing one and the lynxs or other sharp-teethed creatures writing into life and savaging my hair in revenge.. However, so temptingly feminine as to make me want one.

Standing on the metro

Standing on the metro writing, one hand on the safety rail when the train jerks. Some standing freestyle, some half leaning against the door. A babuska  in front of me reads with a studied stance, the feet almost in the en garde position of a fencer.  Adebtly keeping her balance without the handrail as she must have kept it during more buffeted times. I nearly go flying when there's an an unpredicted jolt. Perhaps that spot tucked in the corner of the door and seats is the ideal one.  Her thumb and forefinger are so tensely paused over the page that I wonder if she is reading at all. Perhaps she feels that I'm observing her of perhaps she always feels discomfort in public. I remember moments like that, where my hands were gripping the book but I was scanning the same page again and again without registering anything, too aware of things around me. The page moved and now she has the book completely, gripped against her body like a teddy bear or a seatbelt. A Canon printing paper package covers the book: protection or to hide what is being read. I've often seen the babushka generations with newspaper or magazine covers to their books.

In the other corner, a girl leaning against the seats and holding her grey cloth hat in one hand. Extremely run and slightly grey. I thought there was something bizarre about her eyes, a disease which gave them a white plastic film, but then I realised she is wearing white eyeliner within black just under her eyes. Her style  hasa lightness of fabric and flair which is Europeanesque.; fishnets;long cordoruy coat; wan and pale;fishnet tights; governess boots. I think she was cut and pasted here from a Russian translation of Gormenghast.

When a seat is vacated, this girls sits down and sleeps. The 'ethic minority/scapegoat' next to her (the disaffected immigrant herds from Kazakhstan, Uzbekhistan etc that are mercilessly castigated by Russians distinguishable generally by their shortness and darker, Asian skin) turns flagrantly to smile at her. The whole thing gives the affect of a puppet nor automation turning it's wooden head with a n unsettling clockwork smile(unheimlich). Then he smiles at me when he notices me watching him. Contravening the no-smiling-without-a-very-good-reason rule, especially not in public at strangers.

Soviet Twins

Two men with identical black berets sat next to each other on the metro. They had the same shadowed face, the same muted clothing. The same way of looking deferentially at the floor as if they were peasants and the feodal lord was some-where or the factory master. One got off without speaking to each other and I realised they didn't even know each other. They couldn't have looked more like painted workers from a Soviet poster.

Ancient Babushka with a Tall Fur Hat

Blusher and pink lipstick forced onto the most minimal of lips. A fur hat is the only moisture in this shrivelled creature and even that seems dried and has none of the  fresh-from-the=slaughterhouse lusciousness of the coquettish hats the younger girls wear. It is stiff and starched. Perhaps it dried with age along with her pink lips and cheeks.

Eyptian without the desert

The Staccato of Stilettos

Yesterday,  I was painfully attuned to the high-heels on the semi-defrosted streets, in the sort of way a graze is very sensitive to a drop of acidic lotion. A girl in tacky delicate  block heels, the sort that have only rubber height and no beauty of form, was walking unevenly before and behind me as I alternatively relaxed or speeded up my pace, enjoying the puddles in my clumpy trekking boots from a hunting shop in deep America. The advance of the heels , tak tak tak, sounded like a child cutting an awkward shape with slightly unwieldy scissors. From the other direction, the more steady, clip clip clip of a secretary’s scissors.

At the Pavlovsk park, in the company of my friends, a girl was wearing  precarious stilettos which leaned slightly on the ice, destroying any continuity of line and therefore parading the ridiculous rather than the feminine. Some  of us were worried what the stilletos would do to the rubber dinghies we planned to sled on. Nonetheless, she stalked on ahead of us like an inelegant clumsy flamingo.

There are many girls who resemble large exotic avian creatures stuttering around their cage because of their long thin legs which walk with such precipitate awkwardness. Many are extremely thin but their body fluffs out like a bird from flaring coat and bags.

Others are patently women(and not girls trapped in unflattering mimicry), or the Feminine, wearing delightfully statuesque heels and walk quite magically and naturally in their leg extensions.

Beauty Convention

A beauty convention . My friend got free tickets from her hairdresser. To get there from the metro you need to walk across a frozen lake; such a contrast of the savage and the altar of the artificial. Inside were boutiques with a strange mixture of products, not necessarily suited to a beauty convention; honey beer, Kvac, Cider, beeswax . Not far from these traditional market products was an ultra-modern tan-spray machine, being used (demonstrated) by young generic  bikini-clad girls and photographers in suits . This was placed incongruously next to an esoteric stall of essential oils and health books.

On the main stage, spread out like painters canvasses but more orderly, was a beauty competition on the theme of fantasy . Behind each stall was a fabulously decorated woman; a dress with a pom-pom skirt in play-school colours; hair curled into a cylinder and fixed with some very powerful hairspray or perhaps glue, like  a wooden honey-comb scraper or moulded from the interior of long thin ribbed bucket(she had to hold it up with her arm).; an onion.

By the main stage was a body-painting competition inspired by Dali. Nude women with fabulously painted bodies and surreal hairstyles curling in the air. It seems this kind of decoration could only work with these Russian models, given their strawberry facial structures and long Rapunzel hair.

Some of the models were clearly amateur and the dowdy presenter of a hair-dressing master class berated them models, ‘They’re young. They don’t know how to walk. We choose this music for them and they walk like that.’ She was very deputy-head style .

It was fascinating to see the mixture of extravagant and tacky (cheap stilettos, leopard skin) people attending the convention.

Moscow free-write

I got to Moscow at 7am on a night train and the first image I saw seemed to be St Pete train station; the same large rectangular room, the same statue in the middle, Then out in the streets instead of the 'boom, crash, wow!' and bold colours and rough rude glamourous Moscovites of the communist capital, of the site of battles who's parliament sounds so very much like 'gremlin', there were quiet becastled streets and polite people dressed modestly in jeans and flat shoes. The sun seemed to rise, athough it had already risen and was merely emerging slightly from cloud cover.

Me and my Russian friend walked on and on down a straight straight street reminscent of Mosckovsky prospect(as one may expect) but could only find the same inspid banal chain establishments restaurants, russified  versions of the Costa coffee concept, as in St Petersburg. Oh, and a Starbucks and Mcdonalds to mark how far Moscow was from it's anti-capitalist past. Then we spotted a My-My, a Societ style cantene mentioned in the guidebook and sitting down to soup, sirniki and and a rich cheese and mushroom dish to accompany post night-train coffee we wrote without limitations our impressions of Moscow.

Moscow. What is there, but towering skyscrapers and primitive Latvian castles squatting be hind the train station; a mirror image of St Petersburg and you can drink coffee in the St Petersburg Café and take the metro to Mayakovskaya or Puskinskaya (semantic shift in operation)? The main problem is walking for a very long time with a heavy bag amongst Moscovite towers and the side-streets are not full of squats (skvots) unless you coud say the side-streets are squatting and ALL THESE PEOPLE (what people, what metropole? I can’t see any.) have space to move through the boulevards. Café is all she wanted and it’s the word she proclaimed loudly and proudly and angrily, holding her arms up to the Slavic gods. ‘Café, café.’ There were no cafes , only bars and late night dives and then Mcdonalds. The stars were unsympathetic. The little known god of Coffee Houses however peered down from his barista’s ledge in the sky, near the moon, and took pity on this unglamorous Moscow night, in the civilised light. Suddenly, in this industrial town, a café fell from the sky and inconveniently blocked the entrance to Mcdonalds. The goddess of tearooms forgot her long-running dispute with the Coffee god and laughed seraphatically at this triumph over fast-food. The muscovite, who   was  wearing   jeans   even  though   she   was   long out  of her teens, strolled into the café which boasted an excellent selection of wholesome cakes and ordered the special brew before blowing the café to smithereens and emptying the pockets of a few groggy customers. She had been inspired by the ribald diction of pulp fiction and this divine intervention was a lucky twist of fate.

n

Beasty Bistros

Tea-Spoon(Russian fast food)

What does my teapot see?(White, standard teapot. Boring)
A fine glitter - Christmas

Lights - some well coated passers-by and cars

The number 47

Orange plates, squares of orange that could be a modern bar.

What doesn’t my teapot see?

A man in the corner asleep. The amused, embarrassed staff gathered to discuss the situation and sent a young man to gingerly wake him up. Now he is eating food which was clearly not bought in the café and gazing out protectively from under his puffer coat. Then he walks out, weaving to one side with his hands in his puffy trousers.

A Canteen - social sample


This 24 hour cantene  right in the centre of town harbours  basic Russian food  in the Soviet style; that is, if you want honey or jam, or any sort of extra,  it costs a lot more.

Today I ate baked fish and rye bread, a cheap and basic meal, in the Stolovaya by Dosteyovsky metro station. I couldn’t finish it all. It was very dry , as anything superfluous such as butter  is an extra and extra costs extra, funnily enough. I scribbled down the motto of the communist poster on the wall(Live well, for a good life - how ironic is this tobacco stained room) , a yellow background and blue bottles and wondered that I’d chosen the ugliest perspective for my contemplation(driven by an urgent need to write  in the warm rather than a need to eat) and too exposed to grey on every side.

 I had walked on and on through the different landscapes of the Stolovaya until I reached the furthest one, furthest away from every-one and nearest to the  outside world. The furthest too from observation. Then I pushed my plate away and began to write a fanciful story about icicles all the time wanting to floss my teeth because there was fish stuck in the back, but thinking that it would be very impolite and many people would stare, I  carried on writing. So while I politely refrained from flossing a young man with scruffy red hair came over to my table and sat right opposite me. He pulled my plate towards him and began eating the scraps of fish left on the bone; parts I’d left for inedible. Then he methodically ate the dry bread, sitting right in front of me but not looking at me, only at the food. I nonchalantly carried on writing while absolutely shocked and quite losing the thread of my story. Then really feeling that this was pointless and uncomfortable and I really wanted to de-fish my teeth anyway, I began to pack away my bag and the scavenger got up and wandered away unsteadily to another table. It is difficult to tell if he was only very drunk, and had run out of money but had food cravings, or was homeless and poor and drunk or slightly mentally unstable or on some form of drugs. It is useless to conjecture. I felt the dark emotions issuing from Dostoevsky -so many ignoble characters -in there today.

The Only Park

I found a beautiful park which is unlike any of the other parks in St Petersburg.. It is bare and lovely. Unpretentious and radiant. The ruffled layers of white snow are the only decoration.  It’s possible to change direction in time to crossing paths with any-one, so that the most delicious snowy solitude is possible.

This park is delicious because while all the other urban parks have high-heels and ice-skating rinks and ticket booths and music stands and statues and artifice in all its forms this has none of those. In once section  abandoned iron-railings, de-rooted and at an angle, gape from between the trees.

There are specific views which could belong to a rural postcard, so you can believe you’ve suddenly wandered into rural St Petersburg, a wooden stables leading to a country road and a pack of motley dogs, a poorly  maintained copse. Outside the edges of the postcard though, you would see merry red and white stripes of a factory chimney, a strange species of tree branchless tree. At the end of the winding road, suddenly massive blue and grey triangular buildings imposing their joyless colours onto the skyline like monstrous lego blocks. Everywhere there are tenement blocks and building works on the edges of the park. That hardly matters., they are only glinting their on the edges(how long I wonder, before they encroach more upon this space, though? ).

There are a few babushkas and old men in their tough beaver hats, walking briskly and the odd sporty person with walking skies. There was an unkempt man just standing there on the edge of the path smoking.

In a copse, a man had cleared a hole in the snow and made an impressive fire. It was amazing to see fire in the snow, in the woods, in the sun,

As I walked on through the park I thought the sienna trees and the miroitic snow, beautiful velvet shades, and the sunshine would go on forever, long after the railway bridge. I could almost imagine myself walking out from under a dear disused railway bridge in the English country side, to see wild horses and  and lovely  gentle skies (the English sky seems so gentle and small now, as terrible and storm-filled as it can be) and wild flowers making a mockery of the scattered remains of the track.

But there were only  heartbreaking insipid flat blocks, another residential area. The only way to preserve the illusion of a borderless forest is to weave round and around the paths, within the frame of a Maurice Denis or a Klimst, so straight and ordered are these winter trees and there in the distance glints and thunders the factories of modernism.

Illustration

Pionerskaya - walking home one evening, across the Supermarketerially lighted streets I seemed to see a troupe of yellow cats following me. Not literally of course, but quite potently in my minds eyes they were denouncing their absence from my stories. These straight streets of ice and snow piled high high high  and reflective rectangular towers  piled higher were their stalking ground.

The yellow cats were out hunting in a pack and their coats were shining lemon curd, their eyes muted stars (some strange in-between colour) .  They turned to me all together.

‘You’ve never written a story about us/
You’ve never even thought of us
Nor a song not a word
We mellow yellows
Slink as ghosts
Along the margins of your pages.’

Their purr was deep and angry and slightly in discord so it seemed like some rough avant-garde orchestra.

‘Red cat blue cat
Did you forget the third
Primordial summerial cat.
Where did green cat come from
Don’t you wonder?

Today the metro lights were malfunctioning, giving only a gloomy glimmer of light, so the people in their black outfits with white faces seemed to be from a  carravagist painting. The clair-obscur, the rocketerial zoom of the metro made Russia seem even more like a strange dream, a nouvelle of the vaguely absurd played out under curved ceilings.

Re-encounters

I wondered in a previous blog if I might see the same people when I get the metro, which is always at disparate times of the day.

Yesterday, I remarked the same woman as I saw around two weeks ago. I think it was perhaps a couple of days after I went to the all night-party and was focussing on specific details as is easy to do when tired.

I particularly noticed her because she  walked in a strange inhibited way. How I imagined chinese women who had theire feet bound would walk. She wore a white shawl aroiund her head and white shoes. THis time I noticed that the soles of her shoes were strangely sloping platforms, which explained her slow careful walk.

A week later;  I saw her a third time too.

Wagner, Tristan und Isolde at the Marinsky Concert Hall

A concert-hall performance , without stage action in the bare environment of a modern concert hall, Homegenous wooden walls in relief, the sort of insipid memorial hall decor which neither offends nor inspires no-one. Even the people who are dressed smartly lack 'eclat' in this flat setting, because it is an Opera but not the Opera.and therein is a great difference. The seating besides gives no encouragement to the great sport of people-watching. So the atmosphere is altogether more academic than the Marinsky prorpre.

Isole was a died blonde prima-donna, appearing in a long Operatic black dress, blood-red for the secind act and black widow lace for the third. She acted nonetheless, with prima donna guestures.

Tooalyetee

Russian toilets are epitomised by a Belorussian friend’s statements ‘Toilets are just for getting what’s needed done as quickly as possible.’ I’d noticed the lack of luxury and architectural importance placed on toilets. This very friend, in a spacious flat with  plenty of extra unalloted space has a closet-like toilet, where there is barely space to fit in; windowless, jammed between the door and the coat rack. It shares its’ space with a cupboard of household miscellany. Clearly, the architect when designing the layout of the flat thought something along the lines of, ‘We’ll stuff the toilet out of the way by the door  in the minimum space possible and leave all the interesting space for other rooms‘. No big windows, no fluffy mats, no coquettish or trashy toilet paper holders.,no decorated tiles , no fresh air or light. A space dedicated to the over-and-done-with-ity. The English pink fluffy towel attitude goes more for the position of ’ its necessary so it may as well be made as pleasant and fluffy and disguised as possible.’

I realise some of this comes from the habitual separation of bathroom and toilet, a practical thing in these flats where there’s often a whole family or two. Wheareas in England toilet often shares  the more respectable bathroom space,

I walked into the grandeur of the Belorussian Opera - not as luxurious as some more important Opera houses, but still leaning towards a certain degree of magnificence - and was glamorously preparing to lament with the princes and princesses of a Tchaikovsky ballet when I discovered hole-in-floor-toilets. Reminiscent of roadway toilets in provincial France. There they were in the heart of ornamental civilisation and all these Opera-goers in their elegant tailor-cut dresses and smart suits go to the toilet in the same way as a Provincial French peasant or workman.

A similar shock was encountered on the Electrisichka St-Petersburg - Viborg, a two hour thirty minute journey. After my satisfactory experience of long distance trains, I was quite prepared for the journey, and I drank a teapot’s worth before getting on the train. ‘I brought a face mask with me., ‘ I imparted to my travelling companion. ‘Where will you wash it off?’. In the toilet basin , of course. ‘What toilet basin? ‘You must be joking. There’s no toilet on Electrishika.’ ‘No toilet at all?’ So I didn’t need the mint teabags I packed either. I asked the train official, just to double check and she laughed.

Now this is generalisation, and there are some interesting toilets with concessions to kitsch if not to light, air, space and windows. One toilet in a restaurant, off Nevskiy, has a  toilet with mirrors on every surface but the floor. The kind of toilet you should go to just to visit.

White Cats in Petersburg (Free-writing)

Who embroidered the chair and where? Some say it was made of Russian hair sold by the gremlins born in the Kremlin and those ind, decent Russian markets. Others suggested and expounded that the red roving carpet, winding like the Neva in islands from balcony to grand staircase between the tables, bookcases and pedestals was dyed with the blood of a thousand bears  Others that the colour is from cranberries collected at gloaming by witches (your average babushkas).

Aloysha likes to stroke the hair because it was filched from beautiful girls. Their halo of  silken femininity castrated by their poverty. Other times he hates the chair and spits on it because the hair came from the poor; beggars, prostitutes, the wayward and more. As his mother and grandmother before told him, the poor are only paying for their sins (when committed who’s to know; in the space between conception and birth?) or was it their father’s sins and fathers sins. Something like that.

Then Alyosha wonders that his father was not considered sinful . Clearly, since Alyosha lives in such a lovely  grand mansion. (Expansion of space. You know you are a lucky race. Though limited here to those 49 Islands. What’s to fear from spreading out - there’s land out there  though no-one wants to live with the bears, or what would we wear?).

The carpet worn threadbare and fire burning secretly, in a neglected corner. The chandeliers silent, no longer singing a blazing song, only a discoloured hum. Each candle in disharmony with the others, latent with memories reposing uncomfortable  in the far-away forgotten night. These candles spoke and caressed  each other with their flames every day  for a century or more and have nothing more to say, have exhausted all topics and avenues of affection. Alyosha the boy stares at them sometimes and traces his finger around their baroque curves, blows air kisses to an angel. The chandelier is indifferent and cold, because he is the 100th , the 1000th, the 100,000 boy to pass under their candles and they are all alike..

Alyosha takes the white cat in his hands and strokes it, ‘How many lives have you had, my dear?’ How many lifes, kitty.’ The cat remains mute and still as china, so ungrateful it doesn’t even deign to purr. Furious, Aloysha grabs the decorative sabre from the wall and smashes it against the cat so that it splinters into myriad pieces, spilling dry white blood, white intestines over the carpet.

Misha, Alyosha’s own white cat, Alyosha’s darling jumps down from the fire ledge and begins to lick the sugar, . She is not made of clay and her tongue winds precariously around the sharphostile edges of  her china cousin's corpse.

She slits it on a sharp corners and and yowls just as Alyosha scoops her up. Seeing the blood drops Alyosha holds her tight in one arm and ruffles through the draws for sellotape or a plaster to bind the grazed tongue. There is only miscellany, letters,  old kopecks and combs, a pack of cards, a ball of wool. White Cat wriggles from his hand. Soon she has disappeared into the corridor and is yowling in the dark.

Alyosha walks back and forth and almost cuts his foot on the china. A pertinent revenge, it would have been. He only wanted to destroy the cold china cat and not harm his Misha, his dear white kitty.

A plaintive mewing rises up from the carpet , like the last whisps of smoke from a dying fire and for a moment Alyosha thinks it is  the shattered china  calling to him. He stares in horror and frantically begins looking for a dustpan and brush  in the caretakers cupboard. He can’t find it there and what is it called anyway?He’d never used one.  Amongst the high shelves  all he finds is a broom taller than himself and in the corner yellowed sheets of a newspaper. He pays no attention to the date inconspicuous in the corner which showed the paper was from 1789 (and that date - what did it mean to him , just a few granny’s grannies ago where perfumes were even stronger and food even more insipid).

 and vroom vroom vroom plops the cat shards in the paper and into the bin amongst sweet wrappers and orange peel. He still hears  a faint mewing and in horror takes the bag and throws it from the balcony into the garden below. The remnants spread out and some of the china fragments fall into the lake.

Night Trains

The Russian trains felt further from European culture than I've been since seeing Petersburg and I felt elation draggin my suitcase through the grand staircases suggesting a previous century of elegant travel, towards the bulky soviet trains.

The trian was decorated with icicles, some filthy black.

'Well, it seems you got the best seat,' says my friend.sarcastically as she deposes me safely to my alloted number. I worry when I see I have a single seat and small table for my 10 hour nocturnal jouney. Fortunately, the whoel structure cleverly folds out into a bed. The problem isI've got on a side bunk near the door to the toilets

. The 'Platskart' has rows of  cosy double bunks pointing to these exposed side bunks, adjacent to the window. The family near is

I’m considering venturing beyond the mysterious train doors, identical tohose gritty grey cantene-style kitchen worktop, to sea whats behind them. Perhaps it won’t be the den of inequity  I imagine - a long pub style interior, chestnut brown and worn reds - with a small buffet, stench of testosterone and cheap tobacco, gravely voices discussing women - and the women they discuss are at once objects and godesses. - and football. Or perhaps they don’t talk in there - maybe it is the metro over again - but sit and stare at the floor and chain smoke.

An image evoked by the slovenly male arms opening the doors before disappearing with a clear click, again and again. So often, that it seems like a revolving doors. They dissapear for a long time.

--

After the noise has died down and most people and in bed, I look in. Behind the  doors - a small rectangular space, a man crouched on the floor smoking..Kitchen worktop on every side. Colourless flat.That’s all.

From the train at night disparate bestial sounds - it is a cacophony, a primitive music. It seems the people have been possessed by the small furry animals they wear; purring in some corners, mewing on others.. Then desparate smokers coughs, reptilian. These Russian trains are an excellent advertisement for non-smoking.

Return Journey

On the train again; fourth long distance train journey in five days. This train has significantly less smokers. No heavy coughing and constantly agitated doors.

I can see feet from every angle. Some feet stick out from under the cover, bare. Others are mummified in the covers.

This whole train thing is very un-English. Designed for a country of hundreds of millions, of proletariat and freezing cold exteriors. Privacy is not something included with Platskart; women sleep adjacent to men. A group of rough men are opposite me today. The sort of unpolished masculinity which spits out like fat from a roasting spit, burning and staining your clothes.

I’m in leggings and a black studded gothic top, a I feel very aware that this is a  kinky sort of get up. Yet I don’t in reality feel threatened. There is the unsettling bit here  reassuring dress that however saucily, teasingly you dress no-one is looking. You are probably the hundreth saucily dressed girl they've seen today. This open place with the strict train stewardess is not an environement to feel threatened in. In the morning she reprimands  the strong bulky young man who fell asleep, beer in hand, on the bench without putting down any bedding. ‘Kak spal!’ . ‘He slept like that.’ Tut tut. She is a matron and these grown up  unshaven men are naughty school-children to her.