Well, I haven't written for a long time. That's because nothing much has happened.

We are becoming slightly more international at our company, having acquired people from Sweden, Lexumbourg and France recently. The average scarf-wearing ability has increased noticeably, mainly due to all the French girls.

The weather is strange. We haven't had a big snow fall so far this year, and all the snow that did fall has long melted by now. So it's the first week of December and the ground is still bare. We even had some rain a week ago!

I'm going back to England for the holidays, flying on the 22nd of December. I love British Airways. Although I was taken aback by the level of security in their Moscow sales office - one employee, one customer (me) and three armed security guards!

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I have a 'prestige' student. Not quite on the level of Natasha Yeltsin, but I teach the Russian under-17 gymnastics champion... now all I have to do is try not to lose her.

Well, that's all. I did tell you that nothing had happened!

ROBBIE

Also, I went to the big Moscow Robbie Williams gig on Sunday evening. The perfect way to round off a holiday weekend.

Well, I was treated to the sight of Robbie a) speaking quite a lot of Russian, b) Cossack dancing, c) parading around with a big Russian flag, and d), saying "Fu*ing hell, I'm in Russia" about ten times. Plus he had his dad with him.

I went with Julia, and being American she had almost no idea who Robbie was. "He looks like a boxer. Is he gay? Surely he's not a singer? How old is he? Did he really use to be in a boy band?" But hey, she liked it.

KALUGA HO

We've just had a three day holiday weekend. I'd like to tell you which holiday we were celebrating, but even the Russians here didn't exactly seem sure. Perhaps something to do with the constitution? Or the revolution? Or both?

Anyway, we decided to get out of Moscow for a day or two so four of us took the train down to Kaluga, about 200km south of Moscow. In my first year in Russia I was working in Kaluga region but never made it to the regional capital. So it has been an unfulfilled ambition - until now. Actually, another reason we went to Kaluga was that we could get there on the electric 'local' train, rather than the book-in-advance overnight trains which tend to be pretty full on holidays. The local trains also cost peanuts - about one pound fifty all the way to Kaluga.

So we arrived in Kaluga. A very old city, with almost no Soviet buildings. It was disconcerting not to see tower blocks everywhere. There are even some wooden houses left in the city centre.

We totally failed to find a hotel to stay in. All except two were full; of those two, one only had one room left, and the other refused to let us stay there when they found out we were foreign. Seriously. So we did what any self-respecting young people would do and stayed in a club until the morning. Actually we managed to get a table so we just sat, ate and drank the night away. We also got into trouble for playing cards, which is apparently *absolutely forbidden* in Russian clubs and bars. Didn't know that.

As we tried to leave the club, we got accosted by some drunk Russians who made us drink vodka with them. I don't know why I'm telling you this, as it barely counts as an anecdote any more. My flatmate poured his vodka into a potplant though, as it was either that or vomit on some strangers. Which would have been a better anecodote.

When we finally managed to leave the club, we had the brilliant and not entirely sober idea of finding a train to an entirely different provincial city. So we turned up at the station only to find no trains but a big, warm, clean bus with a 'MOSKVA' sign. It seemed like fate. So we returned home. That was our very brief trip away - 13 hours in Kaluga!

A SERIOUS POST?

Never! Actually, I was just wondering how much you were getting in the western media about the whole Yukos / Yabloko scandal that kicked off here recently. It's pretty big news over here, and what with the Duma elections in December it doesn't look like it's going to sort itself out any time soon.

It also means that Putin will have almost no opposition on any level. As much as I respect him as a leader, it's still pretty scary. He's got the media sewn up pretty tight too; there was a big crackdown after the Dubrovka theatre terrorism thing.

Oh. The scandal did hit the rouble briefly but then, annoyingly for me, the government acted to shore it up so the exchange rate is still pretty unfavourable. Bah. I'm still waiting for the sudden collapse that will make me rich beyond my wildest dreams. Or at least let me afford a new DVD player!

WAR - WHAT'S IT GOOD FOR?

Okay, so one more Jason-related incident.

On the Sunday, Jason's last full day in Moscow, I took him to that most typical and representative of Russian cultural events - the Napoleonic battle re-enactment.

This basically involved shivering in the snow on a hillside about 100km south of Moscow, while lots of very drunk Russian men pretended to be very drunk Russian or French soldiers. The re-enactment was to commemorate the battle of Maloyaroslavets in 1812, in which the Russians, after having previously and rather cunningly burnt down their own capital city, got trounced yet again by Napoleon. The battle was a bit of a pyrrhic victory for the French, though, and it forced them to run home east rather than carrying on pressing south to the warmer, sunnier bits of Russia. The wusses.

Actually, as Napoleonic battle re-enactments go, this one was a bit of a corker. Not only did they have horses, and big cannons that actually went bang, but they had also put up little wooden buildings to torch whenever they got too cold. I did pity the soldiers that 'died' in the first five minutes of the battle and who then had to lie in the snow for the next hour and a half...

Another particularly fine aspect of this event was the running commentary. Some bloke in a van at the top of the hill had loudspeakers and obviously thought he was a sports commentator: "And the French are coming up on the left , oh but that's a bold move by the Russian cavalry..." Well, it kept me amused.

Jason and I also met up with some friends of mine from my first year here in Russia (who had told me about the re-enactment), so Jason got to meet some real Russians and experience real Russian hospitality. This basically involved forcing him to drink strange, nameless and incredibly syrupy spirits. I'm sure he was very grateful for the whole day. But hey, what are friends for?

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.'

THE THIRD WAY

I was my birthday last week. When we've gone out recently it has been as a massive group of teachers and interns, most of whom are Americans and (perhaps unsurprisingly) very loud, so for my birthday I decided I wanted to do something a little less... conspicous.

So only seven of us went out; first for some food - to the now famous pie place - and then to a club. The seven of us were myself, strange bearded flatmates past and present, two other teacher friends, and two Russian friends from Obninsk, Sasha and Uri. These last guys had got the train down especially and were staying at my flat that night.

Halfway through the evening, everything was going smoothly. Always a bad sign. We left the pie cafe and made our way to the metro station nearest the club. The club itself, I should tell you, was an alternative/rock club called 'The Third Way'. The place came highly recommended but only one of us had ever been there before and wasn't sure of the way. So, outside the metro, we asked a couple of likely-looking alternative types for directions. They were also going to the club so we followed them.

It was a little farther from the metro than we had expected, so pretty soon my two small-bladdered Russian friends had ducked into an alley to relieved themselves. My friend Rich stayed behind to wait for them, and the other four of us made our way to the club. We got to the club okay, and waited for the others to catch us up. There was no sign of them.

Five minutes passed, and we were starting to get a little concerned. Suddenly an out-of-breath Rich came puffing up the road.

"Your friends! They've been arrested!" he gasped.
"Bloody hell, not again! What for this time?"
"Pissing in an alleyway!"
"But everybody does that..."
"Not when there are two policemen standing six feet away..."
"So where are they now?" I asked. Every other time someone has been 'arrested', they have had to pay a bribe (sorry, fine) and then are let off.
"I don't know," puffed Rich. "They were taken off in a police van..."

Of course, it probably didn't help that my friends had Obninsk, not Moscow papers, and that one of them was originally from the Caucasus.

What could we do? My friends were staying at my flat, but didn't have a key. I wasn't sure they had my mobile number either. We could have gone back to the flat to wait for them, but then decided that they would either 1) be released, and make their way to the club, if they could find it, or (more likely) 2) be stuck in a cell overnight.

So we did what all self-respecting friends would do when their guests had been arrested. We went into the club.

And we did actually had a good, if slightly guilty, time, until about 4am when I got a call on my mobile.

"We've been released!"
"Great. Where are you?"
"Outside your flat. Where the hell are you?"
"Bugger... we'll see you in about an hour..."

To cut a long story short, Sasha and Uri had been taken to the police station, where they had had to pay a fine of 100R each, all they could afford. After some time, they had been released. Only they'd been released at a police station nowhere near where I live or where the club was, at 3am, with no money. Which was very considerate.

Another successful night out then. God knows what would have happened had we been conspicous.

Perhaps I should tell you a little about my new flatmate. As I've already said, he is a Welshman called Gareth. He also went to Nottingham Uni, the same as me. So far so good (apart from the Welsh bit).

Less promising, perhaps, are his Craig David-style beard and his musical sheep thong that he not only wears around the flat (!) but also takes to parties. In fact, he has a variety of thongs and novelty clothes generally. This is a man whose proudest possession is his 'Nobody Knows I'm a Lesbian' t-shirt. Second perhaps is his Watch Out Children: Maniac' t-shirt.

Also, he's not actually called Gareth but Andrew, mutch in the same way my previous flatmate called himself Anthony even though his name was Ryan. So a pattern is emerging.

VICTORY PARK

I went on a nice outing on Saturday, to Victory Park in the far west of Moscow. It's the place where a lot of the city's parades, celebrations and demonstrations are held. There's a parade ground, the obligatory military museum or two, and some park (unsurprisingly).

The metro station to Victory Park is brand new - it only opened this year - and it's good to see that the city is still being creative in the design of the metro stations. Victory Park metro has all the usual marble as well as two fantastically shoddy murals, one to celebrate Hitler's defeat and the other to celebrate Napoleon's. Even though I thought it was a draw. Never mind.

Anyway, the mural of Napoleon has to be seen - he's surrounded by his cronies, with cannon balls scattered at his feet, but the artist got the proportions wrong and it looks like he's enjoying a fun game of ten-pin bowling. It's even better than the statue of Pin-head Peter in St. Petersburg.

Sad fact. The metro station is the deepest in the world (it was built underneath wetland), and so it also has the longest escalator in the world.

Another great thing about Victory Park on a Saturday is that it is a traditional place for wedding parties to come to have their photo taken. Actually, I couldn't move for brides when I was there. Must have seen at least a hundred. Bizarrely, there was a man with a falcon who let brides take their pictures with the bird for a few roubles. There's one for the photo album - 'me in my wedding dress with a falcon on my arm in the middle of the park'.

OBO MNYE

In case you are interested, I passed the teaching course I took over the summer. I tried quite hard to recruit some of my fellow trainees for Language Link in Russia, but strangely enough, they didn't really seem that keen. I can't understand it, but they preferred to go and teach in sunny, safe places like Spain. Strange people.

I also have a new mobile phone, Russian stylee. Well, it's actually my old phone with a Russian sim card which should work out cheaper. My Russian friend had to buy it for me because - in order to buy a sim card - you need to show some official documentation that gives your address. And the only acceptable form of documentation is of course, a passport. Have a look in your passport - does it have your address in? No? Didn't think so.

The silver lining of this is that I can make a load of prank calls and my friend gets arrested! Sweet.

Anyway, I can't tell you my new mobile number here for security reasons but you should have had an e-mail about it. If not, well, I would recommend you send me an SMS but that's not really possible is it? Go and hassle my mum or something. Only kidding mum!

THE SON OF BLOG

Yes, I'm back in Russia again. I probably should have told you a week ago, but you know how it is. We've got no internet at the school at the moment - it was taken away when our director realised that 90% of our traffic was to either mingers.com or hotornot.com. I almost wish I hadn't introduced the other teachers to these sites now. But hopefully this situation is only temporary.

GARETH MARK 2

I have a new flatmate - a Welshman called Gareth. I don't know, I travel a whole continent to get away from one Gareth only to end up living with another one! Seriously, my mum suggested he change his name (my flatmate, not my brother) to avoid confusion. He was surprisingly amenible to this, until my mum volunteered 'Henry', an unfortunate choice (apart from the obvious) as it is the name of his much loved and recently departed pet dog!

Still, Gareth is working alongside me at Skhodnenskaya and is also working in Mitino - basically what I was doing last year. They originally wanted to put him in Khimki, where Patrick Ketchum got shot at and Rich was savaged by Alsatians, so I think things have worked out for the best.