I’m interrupting my usual stories for a flashback to something else.
I spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe during the cold war. I even struggled north towards Moscow, but the cold defeated me.
So what the heck possessed me to try and get to Moscow in mid winter? I had heard about Napoleon’s lunatic attempt to conquer Russia. It just isn’t possible.
It all started with a concert at the Royal Festival Hall. I was in my late teens and attended the first London performance of Dimitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto Number 2, with Roger Swan, a schoolfriend. The one thing that stuck in my mind was that in one sense the music was very percussive, and I thought the composer was the right man to put his creative mind to work on a concerto for percussion. In those days we didn’t have such pieces of music, and I thought it was about time that was rectified.
I managed to cobble together a suitable sum of money, and blagged my way to Paris. For some peculiar reason I was convinced that Moscow was due east of that city. Pete Chapman, our geography teacher, obviously failed to get it into my head just how far north Moscow is, which is why I ended up instead in Kiev.
It’s seriously cold there in winter. I’ve subsequently had several brushes with the cold in that part of the world. On two occasions I have nearly died of cold in Bulgaria. The first time was rather serious. For some reason I went onto the tiny balcony of my hotel in Varna. I could not see out of the window because of the thick frost. The wind blew the door shut. It was only then I discovered there was no outside handle.
Let me put it like this. I was dressed for indoors. A gale was blowing. The temperature was close to -20 degrees C. (Alright, I later found it was only -16C, but you try sliding down a drainage pipe in that temperature dressed in indoor clothes and with no gloves.) I was three flights up. But at ground level I ended up sitting in a pile of snow on a shed. I then had to climb a fence, and make my way round to the hotel entrance. I wanted to die, and strangely, warming up was quite painful. I was given a glass of vodka, but couldn’t hold the glass. My fingers had died.
Some years later I went to look at property in Bulgaria. This was in february, but this time I was prepared. I survived by drinking Russki chai, literally Russian tea. It’s the only thing that keeps you warm. Russian Tea is of course Vodka. I used to regularly get through three bottles a day. And during the cold months you dont get drunk on that quantity. The alcohol serves the essential purpose of antifreeze. Without it you simply cant function..
They have really nice indoor fires in that part of the world. The fire itself takes up an alcove and heats water in a radiator that ranges round the three walls of the alcove, and that produces some really useful heat.
I was morbidly fascinated by the waitresses. They wore miniskirts, and their legs were ashen-white. It made me cold just to look at them.
You can take it that a white christmas is not something I look forward to.