THE STRANGEST SIGHT I HAVE SEEN TO DATE IN MOSCOW

It was 9.30 on a bright Tuesday morning. It was a novelty for me to be awake at this time, let alone in the centre of the city, but I was planning to visit the foreign-language bookstore to pick up some graded readers for one of my groups.

So I was walking along one of those mostly pedestrianised old cobbly streets in the Theatre District. Up ahead on the right was the bookshop, and on the left the map shop, which I also wanted to pop into. Only there was no way I could go into the map shop because of the large mob of angry citizens milling around outside it.

This was no ordinary mob: there were young men, old women, mothers with children. All of them were shouting at each other, pushing, shoving, gesticulating. There were also two middle-aged women leaning out of a high first floor window above the map shop - whether it was part of the shop or a private shop I really couldn't say. These two women were also shouting and gesticulating. There also appeared to be some kind of robe dangling down from the window into the street below.

In the middle of the mob there was a TV crew, complete with cameramen and reporter.

After a minute of this a police car pulled up. It didn't have the sirens on, and indeed the police officers seemed content just to watch the mob from a distance (which I was doing), while smoking (which I wasn't doing). It was only when one of the younger members of the mob started shoving a rather frail old lady that the police felt compelled to intervene. The young man, once he saw the police approaching, started quite hilariously to sidle off and pretend that he wasn't involved. However, Moscow's finest were not fooled. But as soon as they grabbed the man, half the crowd started shouting, 'It's not fair! He's not to blame!'

In the middle of this rucus, the two women in the window took the opportunity to pull up the rope that was dangling down from their window. As it ascended I saw that an incredibly large and full shopping bag was tied onto one end. The bag made its painstaking journey up the side of the building. Slowly the crowd turned to watch - even the policemen seemed to forget about the young man they had seized.

Oh no! The bag wedged itself under the window ledge and wouldn't climb any higher. Half the crowd shouted for the women to pull harder, the other half for them to let it down again. It was like some demented quiz show. The women decided to pull harder but - disaster - the bag split, raining down tins of food and items of fruit, mostly bunches of bananas, onto the crowd below.

The crowd were not to be deterred even by aerial bombardment from baked beans and bananas. Indeed most of them reached for the fallen fruit and started lobbing it at the window. The two women in the window responded with encouraging words - 'Come on! Throw it! You can do it!' but whether they were being supportive or defiant I haven't the faintest idea.

So that was when I was treated to the strangest sight I have seen to date in Moscow. Bananas pinging off walls, off gutters, bananas bouncing back onto policemen, into windows. It was an early morning theatre district banana fight. Fantastic! And I still don't have the faintest idea what it was all about.

*

So, I'm still in this crazy, violent city where metro trains explode and leisure centres collapse. What the hell am I doing here? What are any of us doing here? Why is Rich here? Gareth? Julia? Liz? Anthony?

Moscow is a fantastic place to be. I hope that the story I just wrote shows you that. If you still don't understand why I'm here, then I don't think there's anything else I could say to you.

JD.