It’s a beautiful day
here. I’m sitting in my lounge with the sun behind me, my dog at my feet and
the fragrance of lilies from a nearby vase as well as lemon oil burning from my
pot on my shelf.
Sipping on a herbal
tea, I’m chilled. I was out with Waggatail earlier and though the roads were
awfully busy, so noisy, we managed to work together. Crossing over one of the
roads, was a challenge as there were parked cars with their engines on. Not
helpful when trying to hear if there are any cars coming… But my gal did it!
Two more sleeps
before my baby is home from his holiday. It’s frightening now days just how
many public places you can’t enter like the olden days, you would queue and
pay, not now, it has to be done in so many attractions where by you book in
advance and pay on line. Even today I was reading about a beautiful fountain
where you firstly have to pay on line to see, then book before entering the
country not to be disappointed. A fountain? What, are there walls around it? Oh
my,
I remember the days
when we went to visit churches coliseums etc in Moscow, I hated it as we used
to be guided past all the poor Russian people who had queued for hours to obtain
entry to for example see Lenin, and our guide would wave our passports and we
would get straight in. why, because we
were foreign. Oh, and we were guests of the Russian Miners Union. We were given
a driver and black car too; this would get us anywhere without being stopped
and interrogated. Again, a privilege. I was a child, I had no say, now I would
insist to be the same as the other people.
It’s a good job
looking back as my Mum couldn’t walk far or stand for long, that we did get in
without a wait, being in Russia was not always the best times, so at least once
a week we would do something like a tourist attraction. Mind you, after 33,
visits, we saw everything at least five times.
I was looking up our
old hotel in Leninsky Prospect today, it’s still there. Gosh I get shivers when
I see the name of the hotel written, or hear it in my case. I was shocked to
see it now has 11 floors. It used to have 15. Haha, it did say it was renovated
in 2016, may be the took some floors off? It was interesting to see that the
rooms now offer a so-called pantry? Well I know they have a fridge, they used
to have a TV, now you have to pay for it. The bathrooms sound a little classier
now, and they provide a hairdryer? Gosh, and, toiletries, wow, I remember we
had to take everything. Even toilet rolls. They used to have a square metal box
on the wall, with tiny bits of hard crackly to touch paper. Tiny bits of hard
sharp paper, the kind you would put behind a bit of paper to copy, Hahah, but
no other toiletries.
Even the towels were
so small, like what I would call hand towels. But we had to make do with those
as to take what we needed for a month plus in the early days we had to pay, or
my parents had to pay, access luggage as it was. So, to add heavy towels would
be a no no.
That hotel was my
life. from the age of nine till I was 21. Before that hotel, I would stay in
the awful dark, depressing hospital, that was dirty and their walls caved in on
me with cruel pain.
So, when we were
kindly offered a gift of free hotel stay thanks to the Russian miner’s union,
it was a light bulb situation. Firstly, even as a tiny child, I knew it gave my
Mum some comfort to know she had to find money to travel there and money whilst
being there, but at least her hotel stay was free and at least we could be
together, I wouldn’t be in a jail like before.
We made friends over
the years and it was there where I fell totally head over heels in love. He was
my boyfriend for just over two years seeing him for five weeks every six
months. Sadly, we ended what we had because of deathly threats back then. And
one year later, he was free, most Russians were free so if only we hung on a
year. But by then too late, I had made the next huge decision in my life that I
couldn’t go back on.
Looking back, it’s
probably best that we didn’t stay together, but tell my heart that at the time?
In fact, tell my heart for ten years after we broke up.
The hotel could be
the safest place and the scariest place. The Russian Mafia and KGB ruled it. I
was followed everywhere. But so many memories are in that hotel. So many. A lifetime
of memories in fact.
My heart is full of
the love I had for Moscow and the people at the time. But I also have a bitter
taste and pure fear. So, from one feeling to the extreme.
And finally, today Ivan Klyucharev was last seen at
the age of 30 in 2017. It is written that he was a failed Houdini trick gone
wrong. Ivan has just been found, after going missing two years ago, 80 miles
from Moscow. A passer by found him tied to a tree. He was a skeleton dressed in a hoodie. Gosh,
that is enough to give you nightmares for life, isn’t it? It’s said that a tent
with bolts, chains and various locks were found inside the tent nearby.
OK, I guess the moral of this story is, if you are going out
to train to do magic, especially if it involves chaining yourself to a tree in
the middle of a forest, then tell someone to alert the police if you are not
back home before midnight? And, tell them roughly what blooming tree you are
going to chain yourself to?
I mean, it must have been a remote place mustn’t it to be there
for two years and only now been discovered? Unless when he first died, someone
saw him and just thought he had been on the vodka?
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