Sofa so good.

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Another early wake-up call this morning. I had enough time to have a bath and shave before breakfast, which was a huge plate of hot sticky vegetables and a lot of yoghurt. Then Marina Ivanovna went to work, leaving me some instructions. I turned off all the lights and shut the door to the kitchen using wads of newspaper to stop the cats getting in. Then the brown and white one opened it again with his head and they all came back to sleep on the radiator. Every time I picked one up and carried it to the hall the other two sneaked in again behind my back, a sort of weary slapstick comedy. As I was locking the front door the fat grey one scampered underneath my feet and hurried down the stairs, so I had to run after it leaving the flat open. Luckily I caught it and took it back, otherwise I might have found myself homeless again!

I feel more peaceful today and in a working mood. In Viktor's lesson we discussed the characteristics of an 'average' Russian. As it is most of the group's last week at the language school I thought we would be more talkative than usual, but in each break today we went to the sofa to find a good place to sleep on. Those who were awake talked about how good the hockey was last night. We have tickets for tomorrow night's game too, against Metallurg Magnitogorsk who are top of the Russian league.

In Olga's first class we read and translated a passage from a novel, about a girl who is convinced that the gentleman her mother is forcing her to marry is in fact a reincarnation of her pet cat. It was from the same period that Daughter's Lesson was written, so a lot of the words reminded us of our lines from the play. In the second half we talked about our reading habits, and Olga confessed to reading fashion magazines between Pushkin and Dostoevskii!

My second loan form is completed and ready to be faxed to England. I asked Valentina Ivanovna to do it and said it was urgent. "Jonathan I'm not allowed to send faxes, I'm only the secretary. You'll have to wait until tomorrow morning when Boris Aleksandrovich is in the office. Or you can post it."

It seems Russian assisstants can give massages but not messages.

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Photos

Riding school.
My new neighbourhood. The riding school where myself and the girls rode before the snow.