Get to Yekaterinburg. It’s grey and cold and the area round the station feels like Precinct 13. I’m often such an arrogant twat I just assume everything will be fine. That bad will pass me by. But sometimes, like this, I get a sudden reality check and all my antennas start emitting warning signals. It can be a bit disconcerting. At least it’s light at the moment. And it all adds to the turmoil going on in my head.
Last time I counted eggs someone dropped the whole fucking box on the floor. Lesson learned. I’m taking this “two weeks” the woman at the freight office with a small pinch of salt, but she counted the eggs, not me.
My Russian mate worked out the tracking link for The Bitch. I looked at it last week and it estimated delivery 30th-3rd. But I never saw the link move. She said it was due to be leaving 25th (last Friday). My inner voices have negotiated a very fragile truce between themselves. The worriers won’t break out and attack as long as long as nobody checks the link. What they don’t know they can’t worry about. It’s a very delicate agreement and my head aches trying to keep it. I’ll have a look when I get on the train tomorrow.
I borrow an umbrella from reception and go for a long walk in the wind and rain. I have to keep telling myself I have the means to get out of this place and back to my reality. It’s all that’s keeping me sane. Poor poor me
After dinner i need to run the gauntlet into the ghetto to get something from the supermarket. It’s not something I would usually do but I leave the phone and my wallet back in the hotel, take the big underpass and pop up into the bad lands.
Someone sitting on a railing motions to my risk to ask me the time, yes mate, you think I’m stupid? Get to the supermarket and they’ve blockaded the entry door, I’m guessing because people were running in to grab something and running back out. Never seen that before. So go in the out, get my stuff and queue. Bloke in front is so fucked and drunk he can’t work out why the music he’s hearing isn’t coming from his headphones. Maybe it’s because the cord (yes, this is Russia remember) is hanging round his waste and not plugged in to his phone. It takes him 5 tries to open his wallet, then at least 10 tries to get his card out. Then there isn’t enough money on it for the two bottles of vodka on the counter. She takes one off, his card works, and he does a weak, dribbly smile before staggering away to find a dark hole out of the rain. Fuck this. I’m increasingly feeling like a fish out of water, and I’m beginning to drown.
There is only one thing for it now. Porn.
Wake up and I find myself unable to get out of bed. I’m anchored by apathy. My brain not bovvered. My body in stasis and not obeying commands to move. The sky is grey. My mood is black. Why did I ever think this was a good idea? This is turning out to be a very strange journey indeed. I bet my long suffering wife is steaming too and that the garage floor is being dug up to either bury my bones, The Bitch, or both.
The primeval pang of hunger and Google’s recommendations of The French Baker 30 mins walk up the road levitate my body set it in forward motion. The fragrant and delicious coffee and cakes provide some sort of antidote to the apathy and I sit and make a simple plan for the day. I still feel like an animal in a cage, it just a fucking huge cage that’s all.
I think the main cause of my malaise is that on Plan A I would be at almost madness right now, bathing in self glorification, slapping myself on the back and worshiping The Bitch that took me there. It’s not as if I’ve never failed in my life but I’ve never missed a target by this wide a margin and it’s put a big puncture in my self confidence. One that at my age I may never properly fix.
When I drained the system on The Bitch the other day, the colour of the water from the radiator was a different colour from that in the jacket, and that leads me to believe the water pump needs an overhaul too. Not a big or expensive job and one that, obviously, I wish I had taken the time to do before leaving. When I do that, replace the radiator and both thermostats she’ll be ready for anything. But will she and I ever get the chance.
Wander about the city and realise that Russia is becoming normalised for me. I’m getting a bit desensitised to it now. Just Russian people doing Russian things in the Russian rain.
his city is where the Romanov royal family were slaughtered. There is a monastery a few miles out where there bodies were originally buried. This place seems to imply some sort of connection too. I’m no historian and in reality the whole world is a graveyard but it’s still interesting to pass by places where such significant events have happened.
I need another shave. I’ll ask google as usual. I asked someone in a shop yesterday and he recommended the same place. Only i didn’t know Google had a Danger-safety scale you could set on searches. Mine was set to ‘prepared to go unarmed into a danger zone’. That’s probably why I ended up at a hotel situated in an open prison. And the barber is the same. Turn off any arterial road and head into the darkness. Graffiti everywhere and the state of general deterioration increasing with every step. Not a place to stand about with an expensive phone taking pictures. I’ve left my wallet in the hotel again though. It’s probably fine. All my radars have increased their refresh rate but there are no red lights. There is a bloke standing outside the barbers smoking. It looks shut, but he is the barber and he lets me in and sits me down. He’s way too hairy for a Russian. “Türkiye”. Of course he is. He’s a professional though. No fucking about. He glides the razor round my face and I can nearly feel it touching. He’s done pretty quick and obviously wants to stretch it out a bit. He says something I interpret as “you look like you have two big vases of dead flowers in your nose. Would you like me to remove them?” Ok. “And your ears look like a 70s porn bush”. Oh really? Better sort them out then. It’s the usual hot wax earbuds for nose but for the ears he goes full Viking. You know those fucking great burning touches they carry at Viking funerals that they throw onto a burning boat? Well he whips one of those out suddenly all I can hear and see is a flame as big as my head and my (filled) nostrils are registering a smell like when your cat accidentally jumps onto burning gas ring (Just me? Ok then). He dusts away all the siringed hair, pulls the two furry toilet brushes out my nose and scrubs my face with puddle water mixed with gravel. Works a treat. Worth every penny. And now it doesn’t feel like there is a field of corn blowing in the wind every time I breathe through my nose.
Now, I’m not generally a paranoid bloke but I think I’ve been targeted by the RLSS. That’s the Russian Lesbian Secret Service. I first saw these two outside the bakery this morning, then I saw them again later in a shopping mall a couple of kilometres away, and then they walked past me again this evening outside the hotel. Maybe they’re part of the KGBTQ+ task force. I’ll have to watch my step.
I noticed a building in less than perfect repair just up from my hotel that appears to maybe have a helipad on the roof and possibly the remains of a transmitter. I can only speculate as to what happened there. They probably just had a really really big party that got out of hand. These things happen.
Fuck I’ll be glad to get out of Yekaterinburg. This miserable, grey, wet and cold place. Go back to the bakers and buy a big sugar rush but it’s not enough. Fuck let’s please just get out of here.
I’ve got 5 hours to kill at the station. It’s like a turd covered in human flies. Loads of obvious non Russians begging and staring at your bags. Lurking and watching. It’s a fucking god awful place to be. It’s such shame. These beautiful old buildings deserve better than to be floating with human pond life.
