Ping. Off I go. Another unknown street. And this is where you quickly see how thin your cloak of invincibility is. I’m walking along and a bloke approaches me quickly from the shadows by a shop. He looks like he’s on something. He’s in close and he says something to me. I reply английский and that’s obviously not what he wanted to hear. He immediately shouts “Fuck. Shit”. He starts hissing like a cat dragging his feet on the pavement like a bull. My body goes into distraction mode. My sphincter collapses quicker than the Titan mini sub, launching my butt plug with lightening speed across the road and through the window of a florist resulting in an explosion of glass and petals filling the street. I make haste and flee the scene before the flower police turn up. Still, these things happen. Nobody was hurt, bar a big bunch of begonias.
This city has a bit of a fizz about it to be honest. Like Moscow. There definitely bad stuff happening here. Lots of high end performance cars absolutely belting about and obviously above the law. I saw one just now. A police car was going along at about the speed limit and a white Mercedes went past him like a fucking missile. Maybe his flashing lights are just broken.
Wander about in the sunshine, watching the world go by. There is a park with some old attractions in. You can imagine that Americans wouldn’t get a thrill out of any of it but the Russians have balls for sure. Would you get on an old roller coaster whose repair and maintenance schedule is, I suspect, solely dictated by the intermittent deaths of its punters.
Anyway, tomorrow is another day, and another train. I just hope The Bitch managed to catch her train.
This was supposed to be a story about a motorcycle adventure. It’s quickly turning into the unamusings of a mixed up mind trying to self diagnose and treat itself. Walking round the edge of a bottomless pit and trying not to fall in.
Today is another hiatus. A stutter. A pause. Today’s train doesn’t leave until 5:30. Another 20 something hours 3rd class 1000 mile upper bunk journey to Yekaterinburg. More time to kill. If I was my old father-in-law I could easily waste a whole week sitting on the toilet, no problem at all, but I can’t. Mind control. Keeping the dark clouds at the horizon. Time is a fierce foe. You try wishing it away it just crawls slowly over you instead. I feel like I’m standing in front of one of these, and that’s days not minutes.. I bloody hope not.
My tottieometer has finally gave up the ghost this morning too. Russia, in summer, with diaphanous dresses and fierce sunlight has simply overloaded it with too many targets. I was walking back from a coffee shop and I could see one on the horizon. As we got closer the totteometer moved quickly into the red and by the time she was within 100m it just exploded in my hand. You can imagine the mess. I’m just going to have to go manual from now on.
I don’t take pictures of them anymore though. I know I’ve crossed into the creepy zone. Time and decomposition has reduced me to a rattly old bundle of bones loosely wrapped in a bag of wrinkled skin with a small sprinkling of grey on top. A human no woman under the age of 170 would look twice at. I’m like a pencil with a rubber. A thin artist’s brush that’s lost most of its hairs. Pointing a camera at young women nowadays will quickly get me onto a register I don’t want to be on, especially out here. I just have to let the adolescent male in my head run about trying not to trip over his tongue whilst the old bloke on the outside carefully walks the tottie tightrope and shows no interest.
I went to the gun shop for my rations. Walking about in leathers in 30 degrees puts a certain shine on my five foot forehead and the bloke took me to show me the things I should be wearing to reduce perspiration. Nice, but expensive Seeings as I’m unlikely, hopefully, to be targeted by a heat seaking drone, I gratefully decline. He asked me if I was riding alone too. “Da” I think he was genuinely surprised. I’ve not seen another foreign plate here anywhere except for the Mongolian bikers. Certainly makes me think. Maybe it makes me think what some of you are probably thinking too. But it’s too late now. The only way is west. Shit or bust.
Walk all the way up to catch the train. I’m like the bike, leaving a trail of water as I go. Sit down, I’ll have a read. Or maybe not. I’ve left the fecking bloody toss twatting tit wringing kindle at the hotel Back I trudge. Spend 10 minutes in the bogs trying to turn my sweat glands down. Everyone looks at me like I’m a vagrant. I’m a baggy bag man. Two plastic carriers in my hands. Stinking like a hostage thats been held underground for 3 years without a wash.
Get the kindle back, drip drip drip my way back and get on the train. This one turns out to be 2nd class. I wondered why it was twice the price but grumpy ticket nana was on such a roll I couldn’t stop her. This one is 4 berth cabins. 28 to a carriage rather than 50 odd in 3rd. Twice the price but half the fun.
And just like any country we see the difference between propaganda.
And reality
What do you need at 10:30pm in the middle of bum fuck nowhere? Smoked fish. Of course you do
And a couple of Nanas to see you through the night
Maybe I’ll have to order the special services nana I see disappearing into a cabin.
Still, eating Russian army rations (very nice by the way) at sunset on the Trans Siberian railway is a memory that I’ll keep coming back to I’m sure.
I do love sleeping on trains. Maybe it takes me way way back to being a small child and being rocked to sleep by a parent’s foot. The trains put a proper spurt on in the night and you can hear the worn wheels hammering along the rails. Shuddering and struggling to hold on. I have visions of the train leaving the tracks and our chubby nana flying through the carriage like a massive meaty meteorite wiping everyone out.
She’s a nice lady though, and gets some tough gigs on these trips. It turns out these army rations have the added benefit that the consumer produces food babies the size of tank shells. I sat and stretched to near breaking point this morning, sweating and growing like a wounded animal and gave birth to a pair of shiny 30 pounders, let’s calls them Ant and Dec, that flatly refused to succumb to the super suction of a Russian train toilet. They blocked the hole and it poured water in to make a concoction like a massive messy latte. The train’s motion made it like two year old trying to carry a cup of coffee full to the brim across a school playground. I tried various solutions but only made it worse. It was definitely Nana Time. She went in without any fear armed only with rubber gloves and a stick and beat Ant and Dec into submission with a satisfying “POP”. Big up chubby Nana