FIVE GO TO SERGEEV POSAD, OR, YES I AM A BIG GIRL'S BLOUSE

I mentioned in passing that Gareth, Anthony Ian and I went a while ago to visit a friend of Gareth's, Marina, who had invited us to stay and look around her home town of Sergeev Posad for the weekend. SP is one of the towns of the Golden Ring, that historical region to the North East of Moscow. You may remember that I toured round part of the Golden Ring with my dad in May, though due to technical difficulties we never made it as far as Sergeev Posad.

Even among the Golden Ring towns, Sergeev Posad is special, in that it is the centre of the Russian Orthodox Church, and home of the Patriarch, head of Russian Orthodoxy. Think of it as a kind of Russian version of the Vatican City. But without a history of deals with the Nazis.

The three of us met up with Marina in Moscow (you may remember that Ian was having a nosebleed at the time), and took the train a couple of hours out to Sergeev Posad. Marina actually comes from the next town along, the rather less significant and dynamically named town of 'Farm' (in Russian; probably not many rural peasant farmers there speak English).

As it was already evening, we decided to head straight for Farm and look around Sergeev Posad the following day. Surprisingly, there wasn't a great deal to see in Farm and Ian had even stopped bleeding so Marina suggested a barbeque in the woodland by the edge of the lake. This is a typically Russian activity (it involves breaking things, burning things, destroying nature, meat, and drinking), so we gladly accepted.

Three of Marina's friends joined us for the barbecue and our first task, as dictated to us by Marina, was gathering wood for the fire. All Russians are expect fire builders and so Marina took charge of that, while the rest of us went back and forth lugging armfuls of firewood and worrying about snakes.

A much greater peril than snakes, however, in the Russian forest, is mosquitoes. They are big, they are hungry, and they swarm. Our barbecue, as I have said, was on the banks of an admittedly very beautiful lake and so with all the water the mosquitoes were even more numerous than usual.

I was walking back to the fire with an armful of wood when a particularly huge mosquito - about the size of a daddy longlegs, and this is not poetic license - landed on my hand. I gave a little squeal and tried to swat it with my other hand. This other hand, I had forgotten, was holding firewood so all I managed to do was hit myself on the head. I dropped the wood in a heap - the mosquito still hadn't moved - and swatted the thing as hard as I could. It exploded in a great splat of what I hope was my own blood. I must admit it - I screamed.

Gareth was nearby, also collecting firewood, and this is what he heard:

SQUEAL! I see the mosquito.
THONK! I hit myself on the head.
CRUMP! I drop the wood.
SLAP! the mosquito is dead.
SCREAM! I am a big girl's blouse.

I then come staggering out of the wood with my bloody, swollen, hand held out in front of me like a loaded gun.

"Bloody hell, James, what's wrong?" asks Gareth with concern.
"Mosquito," I reply.