This new year I bumped in to Dyed Moroz on his way to deliver presents to a house in Kamenets Podolskiy
Passport control
After the Polish border next came Ukrainian passport control. A fat young man leaned through the door. He waited for his dyed-blonde female colleague, then started to have an argument with her about who should look at my passport:
"This one is your compartment."
"What are you talking about, I just did that one!"
"But we each do every second one, and this one is yours"
and so on... Eventually the blonde pushed him out of the way and demanded my passport while he leered fatly, blocking the doorway.
She held my passport up and made me turn my head this way and that
"Pokhozh?" I asked, to break the silence and trying to turn on charm.
"Ne ochen'" she snapped back "you should have curly hair. And glasses."
"I have lenses, and that was ten years ago."
She snapped my passport shut, harrumphed, and swept out.
A little later they passed on the platform outside and their voices floated through the window "what are you always getting at me for?" whined the fat one "you're always complaining. You're meant to do one, then I do the next one." Her answer, delivered with projecting chin was aggressively indecipherable as they disappeared gesticulating into the darkness.
31st December - Irony of Fate
Ryazanov, the director, makes a cameo appearance
The Charge of the Light Brigade
I received an email from Sveta:
"On my last holidays I was in Sevastopol. I really wanted to reach the place of the battle of Balaklava of 25th October 1854 and to find the memorial to the cavalry of the Light Brigade, so I even asked Luba to make me a red poppy to take with me there. And I found it! I thought that Simon hadn't seen this spot, so I tried to make some kind of images just in order to show what is there just now. I don't know how to photograph, and it was also rainy and windy, but even so I will show you what turned out.
The valley itself is now covered in grape vines, and the obelisk is among them. There isn't any path to it, and the obelisk itself is overgrown with dried thistles. But the place of the action itself is very recognisable. I attracted a ton of mud and burs to myself, but I'm really delighted that I made it through! Now they too have a red poppy, and maybe one day I will be able to show you this place too."
"P.S. Just a few words more to the story.
The next day in Crimea I went to ride horses with my friend a Crimean cossack not far from Sevastopol and I told him the story of the Light Brigade. As I was wondering how it was even possible, we found quite a similar hill and mounted it galloping. So I had a better idea what was it like, when you feel you are assaulting a wall and meet cannon fire from the skies..."
Image by Roger Fenton, 1854
Image near to the same spot by Sveta, 2014
Image by Sveta 2014
Image by Sveta 2014
Image by Sveta 2014
