Today (which would be Wednesday) I have been stalking butterflies around Baddersley Clinton gardens. Bumblebees were incidental.

And then this evening not only did I lose at Trivial Pursit to my mother, but even my father got more pieces of cheese than me. Horrors! Horrors!

I have been meaning to say for ages just how much I adore this Marauders picture. And now I have said it. (I am also obsessed, but have been obsessed for a few years now, so might as well just give in to it.)

* posted by nat 12:18 AM

Tuesday, July 29, 2003

Moscow was wonderful! I had an exceptionally social time, I had an exceptionally good sightseeing time, I had an exceptionally aimless wandering time; a proper, proper holiday.

The Kremlin was a bizarre yet fascinating mix of history, Red Square was shut, St. Basil�s covered in scaffolding, GUM a dazzling mall, the Kitay-Gorod a fascinating maze to wander; the Arbat was always a melee any time of day or night, the British Embassy was several rounds of G&Ts (and fighting crime), Jess� apartment had big high walls and a brooding, stately air, Rosie�s was compact and modern and came from Ikea (who got further than the Germans did�); the Pushkin had Troy, the Tretyakov had Vrubel (oh, my!), VDNKh had a glittery-gold fountain and various gorgeous pavilions (Karelia, Armenia, Ukraine), Gorky Park had pedalos; Krylatskoe had failing hang-gliders and kite-flyers, the Olympic rowing stadium had sunbathers in comedy pants, the Banya had one sauna that wasn�t hot enough and a banya so steamy the wood burnt me through my towel; Abramtsevo had wooden houses far out in the woods and wedding parties, Kolomenskoe had eerily beautiful whitewashed churches and wedding parties, Kuskovo had small stately houses in a grand park � and wedding parties; Georgian food is spicy and beautiful, Uzbek food delicious, garlicky and piled high, raspberries and wild blueberries available in plastic cups on street corners for puddings; the ballet was beautiful, the bars trendy, the menus misleading and the company always a delight.

I cannot be bothered to type up my diary (half of it is social anyway, and thus dull to anyone but me) but I have scanned a page in - from Kuskovo � as a token gesture. If you can read my scrawl, and follow my flights of fancy, that is.

* posted by nat 4:35 PM

Monday, July 21, 2003

Moscow is fab! (Apart from a) it's horribly expensive and 2) the evil bureaucracy, but we all knew about that.)
Off to wander through parks and look at churches, as the weather is gorgeous. Jess has gone back to England, as have a few others, so it's just me and Rosie (and a few others) now, loose on the town - woohoo!

* posted by nat 10:13 AM

Tuesday, July 15, 2003

I am very excited. I am even packed.

So this will be the place that started it all. This will be the place I looked at, time and time again on the television when I was little, and I knew I wanted to go there. And I have been trying to go there for a very long time, it has all been plans, some foiled; I was close three years ago, all the way to a train station queue. But now, I have a Visa, a ticket, and an assurance that somebody, when I get off that plane, will be standing there waving my name on a piece of paper. And it might even be in Cyrillic - "You can read that fine though, can't you?" Jess said on the phone, earlier.

I did want to learn Russian, for a very long while. I never did, really, several false starts, strange letters to north of Archangelsk, and then I struck on Prague - a compromise, a mis-hit, something of its own completely, I will never be quite sure - a two-week beginner's course, via Czech, in Olomouc, way back when, seepage from SSEES, and those two weeks in Petersburg, where of course, I learnt most. It comes and it goes, and now it's going to come back again.

Maybe I had better not quite believe it until I'm there. I've wanted to do this since I was ten. I'm going to Moscow...

(So what if I am still running a temperature?)

* posted by nat 11:46 PM

Monday, July 14, 2003

*drifts back a week or so*

I got my Russian Visa, gatecrashed Centre Court at Wimbledon in time for some hilarious Over-35 men's doubles, then came back up to home and tried to do very little for a few days. There was a barbecue in our back garden, it was very typically English as the sun appeared for about 3 minutes and it was freezing cold. I made Tzatziki and then left it in the fridge. So we ate it the next day instead.

So we went to Barcelona, my mother and I. My mother did her bit by booking a very nice, very expensive hotel bang at the top of the Ramblas, and then she spent the rest of the week going "Well, what do you want to do?" and then complaining if we tried to go more than 500 metres without stopping to sit in a cafe, which admittedly is not altogether a bad idea, as you get to drink lots of Orxata. (In general, if something in Catalan has an X in, it is very good, for example: Xocholata, Esquedeixada, Rebaixes) I did my bit by bringing lots of lovely English germs along, recycling them round the aircraft air-conditioning and then catching them several times over. Apparently it was +30 most of the time but I kept complaining it was cold and did keel over on Saturday afternoon, at which point mother dumped me and gleefully rushed off to El Cortes Ingles and went shopping.

That aside, we did have a fantastic time, and I was let loose with a camera on the top of Montserrat, where I spent most of the time chasing butterflies, and on the top of the Casa Mila, where I spent most of the time staring down other photographers on the other side of the roof as we each waited for each other to get out of the line of the next shot we wanted to take. We also got into the swing of eating out times, managing to sit down for dinner at the very respsectable time of 11.10pm on Saturday night.

I am now trying to clear my sinuses from yet another plane journey, doing some washing, and then on Wednesday morning it will be off to Moscow. Woo!

* posted by nat 8:08 PM

Thursday, July 03, 2003

So after getting up at 4:30am this morning, driving down to London - well, technically being driven, I suppose - arriving outside the Russia Consulate at ten past seven to find I was well over fifteenth in the queue, and then sitting here in the rain and the cold and the grey misery of it all, at half past ten I finally got to go indoors, paid up ludicrous sums of money and was told to return tomorrow afternoon.

I stumbled up to Lancaster Gate and defrosted at Shirley's; helped mother and her rewrite a few children's reading books, then wnet off and met Ness for lunch, we went to The Windmill, again. Then back and up to Jo's to collapse on the sofa, watch a bit of tennis, eat some rather fabulous broad-bean risotto (mmmm!) and discover I've caught a rotten cold and snivel everywhere.

A very hot shower is calling me, and then bed.

* posted by nat 11:05 PM

Wednesday, July 02, 2003

Yay! Kat phoned me to say that the telex number is through, so I am off to the Russian Consulate at some ungodly hour of the morning on Thursday. My mother is taking me because I mumbled something about maybe driving down, at which point she instantly jumped in to stop that happening. Parents are so predictable. (Yay!) Anyway it all works out with final work on her book-database, plus of course there is Wimbledon on Friday, which I am still sulking about.

So today we took ourselves off to Stratford - eventually - and shoe-shopped. I have to do this in Stratford. I *nearly* bought a pair but they were half a size too big so I shall be scouring other places now for the same model. Mother managed to buy some sandals, however, so all is not lost.

Then we went to see Taming of the Shrew at the RSC. I adored the angle they took on it - basically that Katherine falls for Petruchio quite quickly, about halfway through the wooing scene; but unfortunately, all the way through, he is really still in it mostly for the money, and the challenge, and the power trip, and completely misses the fact that she is head-over-heels in love with him, and pretty much gives in quite fast and will do anything. It's very neatly done, and the whole production is just chock-a-block with tiny little details from everybody - I had fun. Hopefully we'll fit in time to get in to see The Tamer Tamed, which is the sequel, before we shoot off to Barcelona.

And I managed to drive all the way home with not too many hair raising incidents - well, apart from when a lorry tried to overtake me and I put my foot down and whizzed ahead of it and then got chased by it almost all the way home, and I spent most of the time freaking out, which did not please mother one bit., as she kept pointing out all these potential accidents I could be having. Which helped me a lot (ha!).

* posted by nat 2:19 AM