The sound of silence

This is our second winter here. Its snowing more this year than last and temperatures go from a warm - 2 to a cold -23 or more. The weather behaves like a woman in a shoe shop, unable to make her mind up. The winter here is refreshing after the oven like temperatures of the summer months, where you are either smoked like a kipper or slowly baked by the intense dry sun. The air is crisper and you can forget the pollution and dirty traffic, the air as it seems to be frozen and chilled.

We live in flat, like millions of others, high up from the street. Our flat looks out on the back of the block, we face the back, not the street and road which is why we chose it. You don't hear the hum of the traffic so much apart from the Police cars making their annoying farting noises and 'whoop', 'whoops' to get the driver in front of them out of their way when they are late to get their weekly bribery cash payment.

What get on my nerves in this winter wonderland within the city, is the snow cleaner's. About three men, with moon shaped faces, probably from Uzbekistan, (See link) scrape away at the snow on the road at the back of our block of flats. They seem to appear like goblins from nowhere, at anytime, on any given day. I think they live under the building in a cave. They spring into life wearing their bright orange and yellow viability jackets at 10.30 pm at night or at 5.00 am on any time. They scrape the ground with wooden snow shovels, clearing the snow, even if the layer of snow on the ground is less than a centimeter thick.  As we lay in bed on a Saturday or Sunday morning we are woken by this sound of scraping, it sounds like nails on a blackboard to my ears. We can't shut the windows as the heating cannot be turned off in the flat (a subject I have complained about before). We have to stuff ear plugs into our ears to try to sleep. I suppose the 24 hour culture, where rest is not obligatory on weekends is not the normality nowadays. When I was a kid, everything was shut on Sundays and no one worked. Days now long gone, except in quite back water nowhere villages.

I don't know who pays these men or how much they earn? But snow clearing is their daily life. In the summer, you see the same men outside, although in the summer they sweep rather than shovel snow. As soon as a single leaf hits the floor, its swept up in seconds. They appear with witches brooms, to sweep the leaves or any grain of dirt that falls on the ground. I feel pity for them, since I doubt they earn very much money and they are long way from their homeland, but they annoy the shit out of me. I wish I could send them away as they disturb our sleep but I say nothing as it would achieve nothing and it would be cruel.

I expect the snow will be gone in a few months and spring will arrive in a day, the next day it will be full blown summer and we will cook and I will long for the snow again and to hear the sound scraping. Seasons here change in the blink of an eye. Peace and clean air have never been so important to me since we moved to Moscow. They are like an unreachable dream and a fantasy way of living, where the air is fresh and clean and you can only hear the birds singing in the trees as you lay comfortably in bed on a Sunday morning. The sound of silence and healthy living, can be worth more than any gold.