[winter] from russia with love

Strange sort of day - winter and yet not winter.

During the November to March period in this country, it's best if the temperature sits about minus 8 to 10, with forays down to 28 or 30 on occasions. In practice, especially in these latter years, it wildly fluctuates.

Warmer weather is not such a good thing. When there's a hard frost and the earth is rock hard, the snow ameliorates the harshness with its silent, slightly surreal, cushioning effect but down below, good things are happening.

The immediate beneficiary is the flora, which really does need a hard frost to regenerate next spring but lower temperatures also have the effect of rendering dormant all the nasties - sickness in the true cold is quite rare. Instead, there's an almost comforting existence outside and this, combined with the festive season, leads to a spirit of near-goodwill.

Today though, with it's near zero temperatures, the roads are slushy, making them impossible for drivers, there is sickness and crankiness, the sky is a dull grey, as distinct from its snow-threatening mode, which is much brighter - and the electricity is not good in the atmosphere.

This is a nation too, where the old and superstitious vie with the knew western direness. A young man will solemnly inform you that you must let your cat go in first when entering a new flat because cats have second sight. A girl will warn you never to let yourself be photographed because others will use incantations, in connection with the photo, to place hexes on you [last time I checked there were eleven on me from four women].

You never hand money to anyone in the evening and it's best not to do so at any time. It must be placed on the table and the other picks it up. You never shake hands in a doorway or sit at the corner of a table or conduct business across a corner. Not surprisingly, feng shui has some currency over here although being eastern, it is less popular - China is still the most immediate enemy and the U.S.A. seen as second.

The attitude to America is ambivalent - the culture of dire music, burger thinking, feminism and laissez-faire relationships has made huge inroads and yet politically, most Russians resent what America is doing in Kosovo, the Ukraine and in other places. The U.S.A. leadership, as distinct from the people themselves, is seen as the enemy of peace around the world, at odds with the average American who really believes his country is the last bastion of democracy.

It's hard to appreciate the destruction wrought on this country during the soviet era and the legacy in terms of the people who survived. A great slice of the nation was either eliminated or driven into exile. The intelligentsia as a class does not exist and the highest offices are held by a far more pragmatic class. There is an unreal proportion of fools, as there is in America today.

Everyone knows the jokes on the internet about the stupid bankrobbers, Miss Universe who's not sure whether her knickers are over or under and the proliferation of spam which presupposes a certain lack of nouse.

Bryson often wrote of this phenomenon and it's ably assisted by the dumbing down of education and lack of knowledge of the wider world. Well - that is just as much so here, now that education is breaking down and the new ignorance is mortifying.

You only have to look at the decisions drivers make on the roads to see a really brute mental sluggishness at large, all around. Not with all. Not with , of course There's razor sharp intellect across the strata but it's in a minority. Again - not a lot different to anywhere else out in the wider world, except that this nation has intellectual traditions and names of world standing in science and the arts. Old names now. Russians once contributed to the stock of world knowledge out of proportion to their opportunities but no longer.

We are now in the day of the global yahoo and I blame the west.

Women - I know I have an idealized view of women - savvy, smart, beautiful, chic, fabulously warm and liking to be treated as ladies - but the non-capacity of so many girls to be that now, as distinct from formerly, is dismaying.

This is the day of herd rutting and excess of substances, of clubbing in lieu of culture - not a bad thing every so often but the chav mentality wears thin very quickly. Such young people, especially the girls, cannot, simply cannot, carry out a rational conversation beyond an 800 word vocabulary, largely jargon. And their life concerns leave one seriously wondering.

What's more, there's a whole nation of them rising.

The majority wish to and some actually do pull themselves out of it and their parents expend huge energy and money on sons and daughters to "ejukate" them [I avoid this trap like the plague] but it's largely a losing battle. Another stratum - the self made businessman or woman - that's a different matter and these will do what it takes to become the cutters and dicers of the near future. Such people are driven and no prizes for guessing which stratum I target.

It's still a largely patriarchal society and the men are not going to relinquish this readily but already change is overtaking them. The educated women are taking over, not that they weren't always present.

This requires explanation. Yes, it is patriarchal here and yet there is a tradition that the financial institutes are for girls. Can you credit that? 80% of students at these places would be girls. So where are the boys? Either at the energy and engineering institutes or else wheeling and dealing and trying to make a fortune that way. The vast majority fail, drop out and their existence is then a question of scrambling around to survive.

Therefore, there's a certain lawlessness and the rogue males are everywhere in herds. I personally don't worry too much about the ever-present threat - if it happens, it happens and there's enough rogue male in me anyway to rationalize it for now.

You can be hurt here and quickly too.

Without your network, without a "krisha" or roof, protection in other words, you just don't survive, especially if you're foreign. You're judged by your krisha [which, by the way, no one calls it any more] and if it's good, there's a growling sort of acceptance that it's best not to touch you. But things can alter and wholesale changes can occur overnight so it's best to be constantly at the ready to fly.

It would be wrong to err by painting a picture of a dire, bestial existence, a Russia in black. This is simply not so. The west knows the warm hearts of these people, the friendliness once they know you're a friend and the fierce loyalty to the loyal.

The food is fresh and delicious, the Russian cuisine is mildly spicy and they have so many names for variants on foods which we have but one name for, e.g. jam. The efficacy of kefir or katik last thing at night, the knowledge of various meats and which combinations go best is universal. Even men know.

I put out a two jams the other day to have with the tea and the chap went straight for the one made by the grandmother. How did he know? He knew that varenye is boiled jam, that many berry jams are fresh and that the bottled commercial variety are preserves. The one he chose was a grandmother type. He knows which fish to buy and which to let be. There is a native knowledge here which I simply don't possess but I'm learning.

The women are stunning, the male's warm smile and big bear handshake is reassuring and there's a lack of ceremony which can be misunderstood. Hypothetical example - someone calls and a conversation would go like this:

"Did he arrive?"

"Da."

"Did he pay?"

"No."

"Right we go elsewhere. Tell him to f- off."

Phone goes down and new deal is made.

Truth is - I prefer it this way. You want to eat? Yes. How much? Second dish size [meaning a main meal]. All right - twenty minutes. Out come the meat and veg, followed by tea and sweets - and when you're done, you say "spasibo", often to no one in particular and then it's back to work.

If you don't happen to have any work, then you create it by getting out the drill and drilling into the neighbour's wall. [I swear I'm buying a kalashnikov and I'm going to gun that bstd down.]

I know everyone lives their fast life not dissimilarly, even in Britain but there is a perfunctory nature to it all here - again, that special lack of ceremony - which is clear and to the point. No frills - straight into it. Especially in sex. At strategic points around the city the phone numbers are sprayed on walls. You need it - just phone.

I had a discussion about this with some Russian men. Why on earth would you pay a walking disease centre for an hour's rutting, when there are just so many stunning girls around? The wry smile was no answer and when pressed, they said that it's instant, without complexes and without complications. Faced with an hour of unpressured release or going home to the shrill catalogue of defects read out to you night after night, a proportion of men take the road of less resistance.

Buying and selling encapsulates the mentality here - you're never "thinking of" buying anything. If you tell your friend you're "thinking of" buying a Sonata, he reaches for a mobile to make the call and expects you'll have the bankroll already in the coat pocket, ready to go.

To the Brits and to the Yanks I'd say that there really is a quite different mentality behind that beautiful Russian face. The face can fool you, looking so European but in fact the mentality is alien. But it can be lived with, with understanding and the longer you go on, the more you warm to it. The only question which remains is whether the Brits, Yanks and Russians wish to warm to each other.

That appears to be the main question just now.