Cold Feet.

Ana's mother came to visit at the weekend. We weren't sure what to show her in a town where we are running out of ways to pass the time ourselves, but Nadezhda Vasilievna wasn't expecting a grand tour; she has chased me from her living room sofa in Popasnaya often enough to know that I'm not at my most energetic at weekends.

She arrived after a gruelling sixteen hour train journey from Luganskaya oblast' as fresh as the home-made smetana cake under her arm. Within seconds of stepping into our flat she had emptied the contents of two bags of food onto our kitchen table and set about preparing brunch: plates were fetched from cupboards, chewy black bread, chicken, potent cheese and ham were cut into thin slices and placed on them. The choice of which tea to drink with our buterbrodiki was fiercely debated. Then we shared the cake between the three of us, and I dipped my own slice in a portion of Nadezhda Vasilievna's home-made raspberry jam.

After I had put on enough jumpers to be allowed outside we went for a stroll along Khreshchatik. I bought a collection of short stories by Evgenii Grishkovets and a navy blue turtle-neck sweater, both of which made me feel old. On Sunday I went for a walk on my own, from the bronze Lenin statue opposite Bessarabskii market along bulvar Tarasa Shevchenka until the University. Warm in a winter hat, scarf and two jumpers, jodhpur boots marching over the soft, powdery snow and with Ana's MP3-player for company, the three hours on my own let me clear my head.

Six months in the capital, Nadezhda Vasilievna noticed, has turned both myself and Ana into cynical, nocturnal coffee addicts. And the flat is too cold. It's hard to believe that she belongs to the same generation as the women in shops whose passive nastiness has sunk my mood lately. She has a kind smile and positive words for every occasion, symbols, perhaps, of life in the countryside; the claustrophobia and injustice of Kyiv seems to suck the decency - the humanity - out of people. We walked her to the train station on Sunday evening, promising to think about her invitation to visit the rest of the Kovalchuk clan in March.

Rhythm and blues

The feel of the city around me is wearily familiar: the clattering of $100,000 Mercedes' wheels over cobbled streets; the clicking of stilettos or pointed leather loafers; the taste of Puzata Hata's apple-filled blinchiki with strawberry jam; the melodies from Swan Lake playing on the Teatralna metro escalators; the immaculately dressed businesspeople and modern charm of vulystya Chervonoarmeiska; the monotone murmur of passers by, punctuated - often - by loud, precocious American voices; the run-down, eerie neighbourhoods lit only by weak, yellow street lights; sips of hot juice as I run an evening bath.

When I thought I couldn't feel any more tired, a bout of 'flu found its way into my system. A headache turned into a fever which left my body feeling as if it had gone eight rounds with both Vitaliy and Volodymyr Klichko, and sent me to sleep on a toilet seat at work with a thermometre under my arm, having only gone in to loosen my tie and check my temperature. When I woke up the mercury read 38.8, which didn't give me much choice but to go home. After stumbling back to my flat I didn't get out of bed for two days.

It was my fourth bout of this 'season sickness', which seeps into those with run-down bodies at the end of every autumn and the beginning of each spring; the dull grey skies and cold air, it seems, wreak havoc with tired bones.

Ukraine's knack for frittering my nerves makes me grateful for each moment of calm. Like watching a blizzard from the comfort of a warm office, snowflakes the size of 5 kopiyka coins hurtling sideways across the rooftops outside. Or stretching my legs across the wooden bench in my kitchen and perusing the half a dozen borshch recipes in the cookery book which Ana bought for me. Or sitting at the back of an empty cinema with Ana, watching the midnight séance of a horror film.

Or live outdoor music. The first present which Ana ever gave me (and the first words of Ukrainian which I ever heard) was an Ani Lorak album. As her beautiful voice distracted me from my Russian homework, the idea of recognising the neighbourhood in which I work in one of her videos, let alone rushing to one of her concerts after work, would have been far-fetched.

But two years is a long time, and, on an icy evening on Kontraktova Ploshcha, hurrying along slippery paths in tipsy penguin steps trying not to spill our drinks, we followed our ears toward the stage where the little lady was braving the cold to treat a crowd of thousands to her most well-known songs. We were far from the stage, so far that all we could see of Ani Lorak herself was a bright white fur coat jumping up and down in the distance, but danced without bumping in to anybody.

We went out the next night, too. One of Jared's many projects during his two years in Kyiv has been the setting up of a café for the members of his church and international students, where they can get together somewhere warm and safe every Friday night. He rents a cosy hall in Lybidska, which has an atmosphere somewhere between that of a youth club and an amateur theatre.

We were introduced to Masha, a sweet girl in a bright pink jumper, Jo, an effervescent Australian, and Mickey, an American who I had met when concussed at the start of winter. We chatted and played a children's card game, getting up between rounds to see Lyuda, who has turned a corner of the room into a café with tea, coffee and home-made cookies on sale for a couple of hryvnya each.

Later the real card games started, and many more people arrived, but we had to leave at 9; we were an hour from home and the Lybidska neighbourhood is - like everywhere far from a metro station in the outskirts of the city - one of shreiking trolleybuses and dirty, dark paths, the type of place which makes me squeeze Ana's hand a bit tighter.

My new hat

Lukyanivska market has settled down after the hectic New Year's evenings. One afternoon I wandered for an hour between the narrow rows of colourful stalls which sell sweatshirts, jeans, children's toys, cups and saucers, slippers, thermal socks and frilly underwear, kettles, school notepads and all sorts of bric-a-brac - with each stall home to a seller sitting patiently inside.

Eventually I found what I was looking for. My light grey ushanka is a soft leather helmet, with a lush, half-moon shaped patch of synthetic fur at the front and two more at the sides which cover the tops of my ears. There are 'poppers' at each side, which transform the ear muffs into flaps that tuck into the collar of my overcoat and reach down to my jaw-line when it's very cold. The inside is padded with the same soft grey fabric, so I can walk to the supermarket dressed for an Arctic expedition. With the temperature falling again to minus 6, my ushanka takes the sting out of the wind.

It wasn't the most sensible purchase, but it's so unique that I couldn't bring myself to leave it hanging on the market stall with the other, less spectacular hats. I bought it for a harsh winter that will not come this year: no sooner will I have walked the smell of its' last owner's cigarette smoke out of it than the weather will become warmer and it will be time to tuck it into a cupboard somewhere and search for a spring hat.

Hats seem to be a rite of passage in Kyiv, with each generation's heads being kept warm by a different style; spotting the trends has become a passtime as I scamper from crowd to crowd on my way across the city, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of Kyiv's furry forehead fraternity.

Young people are fond of practical woolly hats and baseball caps - sporty for boys, sequinned for girls. Sophisticated middle-aged ladies wear either elegant black felt bonnets with complicated patterns in white stitching, or large cream-coloured berets; old comrades perch fluffy grey, brown or black, birthday cake-shaped shapki on top of their heads, or scruffy caps made of leather of felt. The babushki wrap themselves in a colourful headscarf or two.

The 95th kvartal

Russia influences Ukraine perhaps more than any other country. For a decade there has been a stalemate between them: Ukraine has tried to integrate and communicate better with Europe (it has finally joined the World Trade Organisation) but cannot separate fully from Russia because of its dependency on its oil and gas.

Vladimir Putin shares an uncomfortable, "I'll show you who's boss" relationship with President Yushchenko; Putin had wanted his ally, the Donbass brute Viktor Yanukovich, to become Ukraine's prime minister before the 2004 Orange Revolution; the poison scars on Yushchenko's cheeks are a legacy to the Kremlin's reaction when it didn't get it's own way.

This week, Russia threatened not just to cut off a quarter of our gas supplies if the Verkhovna Rada didn't pay an outstanding bill with GazProm, but to point missiles at Kyiv should Ukraine break away from Moscow even further by joining Nato.

The foreign press is writing more and more about Ukraine's relationship with Russia. When I lived on the other side of the border I learned that the people patronise Ukraine, as if it was still a Russian territory. In Ukraine they shrug their shoulders and try to balance both cultures.

I have never witnessed any hostility against Russia, but ill feeling towards Moscow has grown lately. The Saturday night comedy show, 'The 95th Kvartal', has been brave enough to make fun of the conflict, and even to mock Putin himself. The presenters also dressed up as members of a 1930s kolkhoz ('kollektivnoe khozyaistvo' or Soviet collective farm) and told one-liners like "if we're a kolkhoz, at least that only makes Moscow a village".

Cold feet

Siberia, Turkmenistan, Helsinki: in my unhappy moods lately there aren't many places where I haven't wished to travel to. I have spent more time reminiscing for the Chai Yurt in Kazan this week than I have ever actually spent inside it. I have even started to miss my own culture, as my patience with the one around me grows as thin as the wafer on top of a Café Leonardo ice cream.

This fortnight has been the first in which I've doubted whether I really want to be here: I have put up with one supermarket idiotka too many, and I am beginning to throw tantrums more often than is healthy. Over an evening drink at Gloria Jean's, Jared hatched a plan for a road trip in the spring. We both have friends in Finland, and - judging by the exhausted way in which he kicked his work shoes under the wooden coffee house table, and sat yoga-style on the soft brown leather sofa, nursing his cappuccino as if taking the last sip would open a trapdoor back to the office - we're in similar need of some rest and a change of scenery after a very long winter. I hope we can work something out.

When I first moved to Ukraine I was shocked at the sadness I saw in some people's eyes. Now, I wonder whether they see it in mine.


Next diary: Harry Potter and the Source of my Inspiration.

---

---