Well, my friend Jason has flown home now but I thought I'd write about a couple of the things we did when he was here. Sadly, he'll probably be reading this web log too so I'm unable to embellish the truth / slag him off / bluntly lie. Never mind.

FIRE

On Wednesday we went to a gig advertised in the paper. A local post-rock band (yes, there are such things in Russia), that I knew through one of my students, was supposed to be playing. Sounded good. So three of us went after work - myself, Jason, and the girl from Portland (Julia), who is into that sort of thing.

Unsurprisingly, the venue was underground. I say unsurprisingly because not only is a) every place in Moscow underground, but b) this particular place was called 'Bunker'. That sort of gave the game away. Actually it looked like a converted wine callar more than anything. But obviously with more alcohol in.

The first band were terrible. The second band was pretty good. The third band were also decent. None of them, however, were the advertised band that we had come to see. Small details like this aren't important in Russia.

By this time we'd missed the last metro. Julia didn't want to get a taxi back on her own, and had the not-too-brilliant idea of getting a taxi first to her place then back to mine, so we could drop her off. Sadly she lives in the opposite corner of Moscow, about 20km away: we're not that rich.

The only alternative (apart from leaving Julia when she wasn't looking, which I suggested but Jason - in a rare attack of gentlemanliness - vetoed) was to stay until the metro opened at about 5.30am. Having to work the next day, I wasn't strongly against this plan. So obviously that's what we did.

Earlier that evening Julia had seen somebody ordering a very stupid drink from the bar. You know what a flaming sambucha is, right? Well, this was the Russian equivalent. Instead of setting the drink alight, the bartender sets the bar alight and you have to reach in through the wall of flame, grab your drink, and down it before your sleeve ignites or your arm combusts.

Julia suddenly decided that she wanted to drink one of these. And that she wanted us to as well. Thus followed a very stupid conversation with the barman as we tried to explain that we wanted the 'drink with the fire... flame... burn!' He eventually got the idea. So there were the three of us lined up at the bar in this bunker. The bartender puts down our drinks, and pours some sort of flammable spirit along the length of the bar. He lights it. Woof! Wall of flame!

To be fair, the doctors say that the scars should fade over the next ten years or so. Okay, okay, I'm embellishing again. None of us were burnt. But I didn't feel too good teaching the next day. Jason blamed it on that final shot of tequila. Perhaps it was off or something.

GOLOD

The new Russian reality show: 'Golod', or 'Hunger'. It's basically Big Brother without any food. Who will be the first to starve?

Talking of starving, can anybody tell me what happened to David Blaine?

Anyway, Hunger starts in the first week of November so I'll let you know more when I've seen it. Not too tempted to apply myself though.

THOM AND ME

I've got a poster on my wall I want to tell you about. It's of Thom Yorke, the squinty-eyed, ugly lead singer from Radiohead. But in this particular picture he's been (deliberately and obviously) airbrushed to remove all his deformities. It's a sort of comment on image and media. Fair enough.

But the thing is this. Several people have said, in all seriousness, that the airbrushed Thom Yorke looks like me. I'm not entirely sure whether I'm happy about this. You look like a freak, James, but a normal-looking one. Ta.

Well, I haven't written for a while. That's because I've been having such an exciting time recently.

First, not only was our flat burgled (wow!), by someone with a key (ooh!), but then I had food poisoning (gasp!) and couldn't eat solids for a week (wow!). I have spent my free time either on the toilet (flush!), or in a police station giving statements, in Russian, in triplicate (blyn!). Now I have lost my voice (croak!).

Wonderful.

Seriously, it was fascinating to see the long arm of the Russian law fully unfurled. I think that the break-in at our flat must be the most exciting thing that has ever happened as far as the Northern Tushino police are concerned.

Not only were we interviewed by two inspectors (bad cop - bad cop style) but then no less than six officers came round to inspect the flat. We even had the official police photographer taking pictures of the crime scene. I was quite tempted to draw chalk outlines of the stolen electricals in my room to help with their investigations.

THE MUSIC SCENE IN PORTLAND, OREGON

...is not as good as Moscow's, apparently. That's what I've learnt this week.

I met a girl from Portland, an intern at my company, who has a very similar taste in music to me. Willfully obscure, in other words. She'd been asking me to take her to 'a show', as she called it, for a while. Obviously I don't like socialising with young, attractive, interesting women, but eventually I succumbed and took her to see my favourite Russian band, 'Zveri', play on Saturday.

After taking the tram in the wrong direction, (oops), we arrived at 8.55. The band, unbelievably, came on at 9 on the dot, without any support - so we had to desperately fight our way to the front throwing small teenage girls hither and thither. That was fun.

Zveri, meanwhile, came on with a troupe of dancing girls and spraying big magnums of champagne into the crowd. That might give you a good impression of the kind of show it was.

Apart from that, my favourite moment was the encore. The crowd was shouting 'Zveri, Zveri, Zveri!'. After a couple of minutes the band came back on, but instead of playing anything, just started chanting 'crowd, crowd, crowd!' Well, that made me laugh.

And actually, it was just nice to have a night out where nobody got arrested.

In other news.

The weather is very Autumnal at the moment - lots of wind and rain. I quite like it. It's not cold at least. But the central heating in the flats came on on the 1st of October, so it is quite tropical indoors at the moment. The mosquitoes seem to like it.

We also have no electricity at the moment. It went off last night. I did look in the fuse box in the hall this morning but decided not to poke around too much for fear of electricuting myself - the bare, loose (and probably live) wires put me off for some reason.

I have a new student, a 14-year old boy called Alexey. He's studying at Advanced level, for the CAE exam. That's pretty impressive for a 14-year old, and more so as English is his third language after Russian and French (he's Russian but goes to a specialist French school).

So I have Alexey twice a week for individual lessons, an hour at a time. That's okay and makes a change from teaching groups. Plus I've never prepared anyone for the CAE exam before, so it's something new for me too.

But he's not the brightest spark. We were talking about suffixes, especially the suffix '-ish' you can add to make new words like 'thirtyish' or 'brownish'. I asked Alexey for some more examples. He thought for a minute before coming up with 'tunafish'.

So we went back to the beginning, and I explained the general concept in more detail. Once more I asked him for some more examples. This time he came up with 'tunafishish'...

THE THIRD WAY - POSTSCRIPT

I forgot to tell you anything about the club I went to for my birthday, being too busy relating the story of my friends' incarceration. In fact it was much like the places I used to frequent in Nottingham - small, dirty, seedy, unpopular. And that was just the clientele.

The DJ in this place, for the whole evening, played only David Bowie and obscure French pop, in rotation. Either he was being willful or he had only two CDs; I suspect probably the latter.

This place also did food - small Russian sandwiches (bread with salami). I'm only mentioning this because my friend Rich is a fat bloater and managed to eat 10 of them. Sorry, but this has to be written down for posterity.

My flatmate - the new one - got dragged off onto the dancefloor by a middle-aged woman, to boogie to Bowie and obscure French pop. My flatmate - the old one - got cornered in the, er, corner, by a group of much more attractive young Russian ladies. He stayed behind when the rest of us went off to rescue my Russian friends.

A brilliant recent example of Russian efficiency by my company.

Last year we had a slight problem with security: several teachers had personal possessions stolen from the staffroom at central school, a room used only by teachers. In short, there was a tea-leaf amongst us! So over the summer Language Link installed a bank of brand-new lockers along one wall, one for each teacher. Problem solved.

Two days after their installation, one teacher accidentally realised that her key could open not only her locker but also the one next to it. Hang on a minute - and the one next to that. And the one above it. In fact, it could open all of them. No, it gets better - every key could open every single locker! Now that's what I call security.

I went down to tell adminstration. "Oh yes," the administrator said, "we knew. We were just hoping that no-one would realise."

I have one great student this year, Sergei. He's only about 13, and studies at Intermediate level as the only boy in a group of girls. He has such an evil sense of humour. For example: we were revising transport vocabulary, and the question came up, 'What do you keep in the boot of a car?' My other students said the usual - 'a spare tyre, luggage...'. When they were finished, Sergei paused before answering, 'A body. Excellent.' Then rubbed his hands together.

Or another example: we were practicing 2nd conditionals, and I asked, 'What would you do if you were President of Russia?' Again, my other students came up with the textbook answers: 'Help the poor, build orphanages, stop AIDS, blah blah blah.' Sergei again was the last to answer. 'I'd go to war. I'd invade Finland. Excellent.'