Grumpy old man

My feet are playing up again. Same problem as last year (my feet hurt) only this time worse. Sorry to get graphic and intimate dear reader but your world would be meaningless without reading about my feet. Yesterday, like a fool, I took junior with me to a doctor here in hot humid Moscow. The clinic has a translator. She is a fairly attractive women but has a face that looks like its sucking on a lemon if you get the picture? She speaks fairly good English but does not know all the medical terminology or medical problems that are common to many in the English language. Try telling a Russian doctor you have IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) if you can I'll pay you! I have tried twice and failed both times even after printing off wiki and putting it all into the Russian language. At times, I feel like a grumpy old man and probably am fast becoming one living here, especially in this relentless heat.

I have eczema and very hard foot skin. Luckily for me, linguistically eczema is said in almost the same way as in Russian.  My feet resemble that of a tramps who has been walking around the city without any shoes on. Not a pretty site. The other day, after a bad itching session, my wife thought it would be helpful to put that pink stinging disinfectant onto my open foot wounds. Perhaps it was out of spite or she needed some cruel amusement but lets just say my screams could probably be heard in London after she had applied the lotion. This is why I went to the doctors.

We went to see a dermatologist that could have been a taxidermist by the way he behaved. I went in with junior as I could not leave him alone at home although I was tempted.  The doctor seemed more interested in filling in my personal details and in putting the consultation price on the bill, than at looking at my sore feet. Maybe he wanted us out of his examination room as quickly as possible as junior began to take everything of his desk and stuck the doctors pen up his nose while the sour faced translator, translated god only knows what to the doctor. The doctor looked at my feet without touching them and asked me if I was stressed, I replied 'of course I'm stressed, I'm married!'. The translator cracked a small smile and the doctor suggested I drink a vodka at night before going to bed, which would be fine but I hate Vodka. He prescribed me more pink stuff to put on my feet and some allergy pills. I went home and applied the pink stuff and took an allergy pill that knocked me out cold for a good nine hours sleep. I woke up the next morning with pink feet and a banging headache although ironically not due to drinking any vodka.  This strange thing is that I went there to get eczema cream but left the doctors without any cream. Typical.

It's so hot here in Moscow that I have been wearing sandals to let the air caress my foot wounds. I have been hobbling around the gardens at my part time job, looking after child X. The nannies in the community look at me as if I had just escaped from a Soviet mental institution as I push child X around in his pram with my bare ugly pink feet. You could not make this shit up and I don't trust me.

After I left work today, I went to a local park on my own to get some alone time to unwind (see note). My own nanny was at home looking after junior. I went to a park, found a tree with long droopy branches to hide under, took my shoes off and lay down to get some shade from the sun and took a nap. To imagine you are in nature within this mega city, a park is the closet one can get to revive the spirit and wash the city soot away. I gazed up through the leaves coloured as the sun danced through the branches making the leaves different shades of yellow that shone like yellow leaves of fire. My feet were on fire due to the shoes that I had wear to drive to the park as they rubbed on my feet wounds, trainers (sneakers) cook your feet especially in the summer. After a while, I fell into a fitful sleep under the branches of the droopy tree. When I woke up, I had ants in my ears and ants in my pants. I sat up, not knowing where I was, who I was and I felt confused and dazed, which is not so unusual for me. I reached for my trainers and they were gone. Perhaps stolen by some tramp, who thought I was a tramp. Just my luck.

I drove back home with bare feet, back through the thick Moscow traffic to my flat. Driving without shoes on like a bare foot hippie, is not so easy. Luckily, my trainers were cheap ones, so no loss there. The heavens opened and it poured down with rain. The consolation prize today is that the city is now slightly cooler although my feet still burn. I expect I'll have to go back to the doctors again and demand antibiotics or Vodka or both.

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The holy land

Dear friend, three weeks ago, I went outside one day into the back yard of the flats where I live in Bikini Bottom aka Moscow . I saw about four scruffy men with missing teeth cutting up bits of tarmac on the yard road surface. They were using a kind of road cutter. They cut out strips and pieces of tarmac and piled the lumps up in a big untidy piles by the yard entrance barrier. This pile is still there. The men did a few sections and then left. Then the next week they came back one afternoon and cut out some more chunks of road surface adding the pieces to their ever growing mountain of tarmac. The cutting machine was put to work again. One cut up the bits while the other men sat on the fence smoking watching their colleague work. They left. The next day it rained heavily and all the holes filled up with water. This week they came back again and did a bit more road butchery and then vanished.

These men did not arrive in company uniforms or have a truck or a pneumatic drill. They just had a few shovels, a steel pick and an old cutting machine. They arrived suddenly and left suddenly, like leaves on the wind. 

Three weeks have now past and all we have outside is the holy land but it ain't 'holy' in the biblical sense, more like a giant road mole has eaten the road for breakfast. I don't have any explanation for this action. Why should I care? I don't own the land! I care because it looks a total mess. What annoys me the most is I don't understand why this has been done? I read somewhere once, that all land in Moscow is owned by the state. If this is this case, then it's the cities responsibility to fix old and damaged yards at the back of all flats. Perhaps their solution is to hire the cheapest possible workers and get the whole city done on the cheap? In the United Kingdom, all road works are repaired by city contractors, all yard work is paid for by all the flat owners and done by professional workers. I have noticed this road carnage at other flats in my area in Moscow.

I was once told if you try to understand Russian logic and Russian methods, you will go mad and will need a psychiatrist. Perhaps the best thing is to look away and don't try to underhand? I'll continue to live in the holy land, analyze life and watch and wait and see what happens, who knows dear reader, I may end up at a psychiatrists chair before I know it or before I leave Russia? See holy land photos here.

Note for any non native speakers. The holy land is a play on words. Holy meaning sacred or religious, holy also meaning full of holes. English humor or an attempt at humor! 

Life in the hen house

I have been mixing with women and now I am working with women, with Russian nannies to be exact. I had always dreamed of being a male gigolo but instead I am a male nanny. My days have been taken up with trips to local parks to play in the sandpit with my kid. Now I have a nanny to look after my kid while I act as a nanny to child X. I refer to my small student as 'child X' to respect individual privacy. You may have read Russian bling. It sounds very ostentatious and exotic to have a nanny and when you mention the word 'nanny' you imagine women dressed as nurses in smart starched uniforms, pushing kids around parks in old fashioned blue prams with big wheels. This image is false nowadays and a nanny is affordable in Moscow. Many nannies are not qualified nannies but rather mothers in their mid 50's who now look after other peoples kids. I feel almost guilty having a nanny. As a big stupid, hairy man, I have managed to look after my kid myself at home for almost two years, now I pay a nanny part time to look after junior while I look after other peoples juniors! I live in the hen house.

I hired a nanny because I work teaching and looking after child X. It's very strange to be looking after another persons child while you are not with your own. You almost feel jealous and sad about it. Money is money and I am anyone's bitch for a dollar and hot meal. I look after child X, we walk around the playground of the private community, we play in the sand and I talk to child X. Mother wants child X to learn English. That's why I was hired. Child X is not yet two but never mind, since when was age any barrier to language?

I have never found it natural talking to very small kids whatever their gender or nationality. I feel an idiot. Today, I spoke to child X as I pushed him along a river pathway under a cloudy sky. I said to child X, 'one day when you are driving your Ferrari around Moscow in about twenty two years time will you remember your time spent with me?', no reply from the occupant in the pram in front of me, child X remained stubbornly silent chewing on an apple. I sing nursery rhymes to child X, I can only ever remember the first two or three lines of many classic English nursery rhymes so then just make the rest up. Incy wincy spider climbed up the water spout, down came the rain and washed the spider out, out came the sunshine and in came the rain, incy wincy spider went back to bed again. The rest of this and other nursery rhymes are forgotten in the mists of a childhood memory.

My situation is strange, I am a man and an expat spouse and looking after my own kid but find myself now looking after other peoples kids in Moscow Russia. Life sure ain't boring and at times certainly seems very surreal and unreal to me. I can think of worse jobs. I could never imagine sitting behind a desk all day, playing office bullshit games in the mad, false corporate world that drives our world. No thank you. Give me a sandpit any, playground, paint pot or football any day.

Russian nannies are all around me as I play with child X. Today, I took child X's jumper off and another nanny put it straight back on again as if it was the arctic although its warm now and summer time. I went back to child X's house today and child X had a wet nappy. The nanny looked at me when I handed X over to her as if he was covered in horse shit. The nappy had been changed by me, just fifteen minutes before I went back to the house. These Russian nannies are good and very caring but I think they spoil and pamper the kids far too much. Hose these kids down with cold water and send them to bed with bread and cheese, it worked for me so why can't it work for the kids of today?

I spoke to two brothers at the private playground the other day. They spoke good English, they go down to the play area everyday on small electric scooters. You can see about six of these scooters lined up outside the front door of their big bling house. They told me they are are two of six children and that dad has a farm in Bulgaria with lamas, sheep, cows and horses. I asked them if he was a farmer? They answered smiling at me as if what I had just asked was a joke and told me its one of his 'other' houses. Again, where and how do these rich Russians make their money? Apparently, their father speaks Italian, German and French. I have met many Russian kids who come from cash loaded families and yet many are not at all spoiled or rude. Many have excellent manners, are very polite and speak very good English. Their parents provide the best for them and guide them to be good intelligent kids. I have been pleasantly surprised when I had expected to meet only spoiled brats.

Although I am the only rooster among these hens, I sure ain't the boss. Don't mess with Russian nannies , she knows best and is the truly the boss of the hen house.

Note: Before I get hate replies my suggestion of hosing kids down with cold water and feeding them bread and cheese! It was a joke but really used to make a point about over protecting and over dressing kids in the summertime or anytime.

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At the checkout

Today after teaching a plump, rich, lazy Russian boy English, I went into a supermarket in Moscow called Seven Continent. My mission target was to get some vegetables and a bottle bitter lemon, hardly a big shop and an idea that I would later regret.

It took me less than five minutes to weigh and bag my battered and bruised vegetables and to get my bitter lemon, but it took me thirty minutes to pay for them. The queue, or as Americans call it the 'line' was a total nightmare. We will call them lines here. The lines at each till, were at least twenty people long. Each checkout till was divided by barriers. People stood in line with their metal shopping baskets on the floor, each time the line inched forward, people would push their basket with their foot along the floor to move down the line in the blind hope of reaching that Nirvana, the checkout till and freedom.

A woman with a bright gold coat, purple finger nails and yellow trousers stood next to me. She looked like so many stereotyped Russian women here, she looked like a woman not sure what outfit to wear when she got up in the morning or what fashion decade it was, so simply put on something of everything and went out. She hovered next to me scanning each line, waiting to jump in, waiting for her moment. I guarded my spot like wolf in the snow protecting his meat. After about ten minutes I snapped, my British constraint all gone, with a bony finger, I bravely tapped her on her gold shoulder and said in the only Russian I knew "HeT". She replied back "No" and stood her ground completely ignoring me. Eventually, after some time, she jumped in the other line next to me. The person in the line behind her said nothing and gold coat woman advanced in front of about ten people behind her to pay for her food, no one said a thing. Life went on.

I could feel my blood boiling as I stood in my line, listening to the constant but very annoying slow bleeps of the checkout till, bleep, bleep, bleep. These supermarkets bleeps, sound like an old tennis computer game form the 1970's. I spotted another woman in the far distance in front of me in my own line, she was speaking to a person in the line. Then to my total horror, she then just went in front of me and everyone else behind her. I can only compare waiting in line (queuing, spellings vary) in Russia to be like their driving on the roads. Lane and line respect have very little meaning. Share lanes, share lines, share beds, share wives. Why wait behind the person or car in front of you? Just go in front. No one will mind.

When I eventually reached the woman at the checkout till, I felt like a man who had just won the lottery. I wanted to shout at her 'put the food in the bag now woman!'. Typical of my luck, the paper till roll ran out so she disappeared for about three days to find another one. The checkout woman then returned, she slowly put on her glasses and blindly swiped my meat bread rolls several times that I had paid for before from the bakery below but had forgotten not to put them in with my other shopping. When they failed to produce a price, she looked up at me like a a wife who does not want to give a blow job but still continued to swipe the bread rolls, hoping to see a price come up, she reminded me of a zombie sheep. I think if I did that kind of job all day I would become a zombified sheep as well. I snatched the rolls from her and with shaking hands, I put them into my plastic shopping bag, paid in cash and left the shop screaming like a gay man at a wedding.

In some ways, I admire these Russian people, in my own supermarket experience here, they don't seem to get angry and just accept people jumping in front of them in food checkout lines with an almost blank, depressive acceptance. If this happened in my own country, in the much bedraggled and down beaten United Kingdom, people would get very angry, fights would break out and people would be punched or stabbed. Not so in Moscow, adapt, accept or die.

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Russian bling

I have been busy recently. I have been acting as an English nanny, surrogate father and English teacher to child X at a Russian family. I take the metro and am collected by their chauffeur. He drives very fast up the motorway while Russian songs that I don't understand, blast out of the radio from radio 'Dacha'. He races up to the back of cars almost hitting them and swerves to the left or to the right weaving in and out of other cars to get ahead. I grip the door handle and don't look ahead as its too scary.

Life is full of surprises for some, while others follow the mundane path. As for me, I have never followed the mundane. I have been a dish washer in a restaurant, worked as a top manager, owned an English teaching business and now I find myself teaching the rich in Moscow. I am grateful of this experience and for the opportunity to enrich life with many memories. Some lives almost seem like a fiction and mine is certainly no exception and thankfully so. Thank you life.

I will not say too much about child X, to respect privacy but also out of blind fear, as I would not want to end up as human tree fertilizer in some remote Russian woodland where the sound of muffled screams would not be heard.

Family X, live outside Moscow. The large community is gated, guarded and beautiful. Silver birch trees gently sway in the summer wind. Happy bling children with manicured poodles, walk along the perfect roads that lead to the capitalists dream and to the ideal. High perimeter fences traverse each property making them look like fortresses. Some have security cameras that look down on you with a loaded gun. Over the top of these fences you can just glimpse tantalizing views of these giant monoliths to capitalist wealth. Russian wealth of the most suspicious and ostentatious kind.  Some look like French chateaus, while others look like beautiful homes directly from a high glossy architecture magazine.

House X that I go to, is in a gated woodland, surrounded by tall trees. The warm summer breeze gently blows through the tree leaves casting shadows that dance on the manicured gardens below. The air is sweet and filled with the perfume of summer flowers, I feel peaceful being there, I want to live there. Gardeners busily sweep or bend down in the flowerbeds tending to the flowers, while I play with child X before we head down to the community playground. Nanny goes with us. Family X have two nannies plus me, we go to the playground together she watches me with suspicion not knowing that I am a father and a serial blogger on the topic and a childcare legend. A man looking after a child, how totally absurd. I can't tell her this, so I just accept the situation and the worried looks that I get from her, perhaps in time she will trust me? We cannot speak much but I try to teach her some English while X and I play in the sand or we look at picture cards of animals to learn English.

Every women you see with a child or children is not a mother but a nanny. A surrogate adopted paid mother or at least until little X and friends are packed off to an English boarding school. Many children within this community have two or even three nannies. These nannies work in shifts, like oil rig workers on eight day duty rotas. They are on-call to juniors every need, twenty four hours a day. These houses contain five to six car garages. Within each garage, hides beautiful gems such as a Bentley, a Porsche, or a Mercedes often all of these and more. These houses employ small teams of staff to care for the owners every possible need, they run like fine five star hotels. Cooks, security guards, gardeners, chauffeurs and cleaners keep the houses running smoothly. People glide silently past on Segways or in white electric golf carts on the private roads that run throughout the community, on their way to play tennis or have brunch.

How do these people get their wealth? Is it by organized crime or corruption? By genuine business and hard work? By luck? Perhaps business, crime and corruption are the normality and one and the same in Russia? I am not so much jealous but more fascinated by this wealth. Until I came to Russia, I had never in my life seen such wealth and probably never will again. It is a truly fascinating experience. These communities make Surrey in England look like the outskirts of Sao Paulo.

These communities have tennis courts, beach volley ball, football pitches and seem to be like an England of my youth, when a community and family still existed in England. Now in Russia, this suburban ideal comes at a price that you can be part of if you have the bling. If I was a very rich man, I would probably buy into such a lifestyle if it would offer my family peace, safety and happiness. Do you want to be a billionaire? or just a millionaire?

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