the trip home

Summer madness must be getting to me – I have just realised the significance of this post’s title: the trip home. I wrote the title at the weekend to remind me to post some photos. Is this a trip back home to see my parents in the UK? To see my parents in Zimbabwe? Or to see MDF’s family in France? No – it’s the regular trip home to our flat in Kiev. Now that summer has finally flung its heady madness onto Kiev, I am beginning to see this place as home. Well, in a glass half full sort of way it’s home, until next winter when we will be hurled into the land of cold greyness, rubbish potatoes and no barbeques.

I took these pictures on the way back from Truhaniv island at the weekend – if they are slightly out of focus it’s as a result of excessive local fizz drinking.

To recap, here is where we set up camp – all that green and lots of trees on the island:

And here we are at the edge of the island about to head into Kiev.

Getting into town, we pass St Michael’s cathedral,

St Sophia’s cathedral,

and swing away from Khreschatyk, the main street which is closed to cars on the weekends.

We head past the Opera house,

down leafy Gorkogo,

over the cobbles and we’re nearly there.

Into our street and past the gap

And home sweet home!

I think I am starting to look forward to coming back here. That’s got to be a good thing with 2 years and 2 months to go.

the bbq rematch

This Sunday we re-enacted last week’s expedition into Truhaniv island for a bbq. Sadly enidd missed it last week as she was poorly – in her own words she was “barking like a seal with a sardine stuck in its throat”. So we promised to recreate the fun we had last week to honour enidd’s return to health. Well sort of, we all just wanted to fling another shashlyk on the barbie (Aussies) and get pizzed (Aussies, Brits and French). I took my camera this time so now we are going to have a very picture-filled post to make up for a lack of pics last time, with a story in the little miss moi tradition.

We thought we might check out the beach part of the island this time as enidd wanted to cleanse in the Dniepr. On arriving there we did a swift turn around as it was a bit crowded with men sporting budgie huggers (Aussie expression for too tight speedos) which could have been off putting when chewing on a pork shashlyk.

We headed to a patch of oaks and passed our original bbq site where I was horrified to see that our carefully buried biodegradable plates had been dug up and were sitting there perfectly intact. So much for tree hugging:

So we trooped on to a different site and set up camp:

Once again, the boys gathered wood and set up the fire (although enidd was good and gathered some logs in a brave effort to break the stereotype) and the girls (little miss moi, caro and me) set up the food, drank fizz and played with the baby.

We had some stunning food:
beef marinaded in curry spices with coriander dressing
pork marinaded in chilli, five spices, garlic and ginger
beef marinaded in soy, ginger, smoked pimenton and honey

whole roast peppers
teriyaki marinaded mushrooms (with a little dirt crunch courtesy of a fall off the grill)
flat bread lashed with coriander dressing and baked on the bbq

and salad with roasted onions straight of the bbq

The star of the afternoon was the enidd special – the lizz (or lezz) which was home brewed lemon grass cordial topped with local fizz. Sadly there is no picture as I was too busy drinking it to be concerned with photographing it.

Once again, in this land of pork and mayonnaise and where a decent potato is rare, we managed to craft together some amazing food. It’s not what you got but what you do with it, as I have been told on occasion.

A few indulged in post bbq exertion – football, badminton and tree climbing,

where even girlie girls took part in the footie,

and overheard was: “what are you doing?” “climbing a tree”:

I stopped my badminton exertions after 5 minutes as I thought my lungs would burst in the heat:

this is late afternoon…

heading back into Kiev…

I know we had a thoroughly enjoyable day because as the afternoon wore on, some of us became less upright,

and collapsed all together.

The view became this,

then the well known sock sniffing tradition started,

and some people preferred tongue sarnies to beef shashlyk.

So it was time to do a little jig and stamp out the fire,

drink up,

feed the remaining beer to the moles,

cover our tracks,

and leave – following the skodas and ladas. Those ladas are amazing – we were all tough in our 4×4s and determined to believe that only we could conquer the island, but the ladas

and the skodas just kept on coming.

But I bet they didn’t have a kit like this in their boot:

A Ukrainian first aid kit. Is the condom there in case you get caught short in the woods?

shashlyk tastic

The temperature hit 23C on Sunday and with the promise of a little sunshine a bunch of us decided to head out to Truhaniv island (a big thing in the middle of the Dniepro River that runs though Kiev) for a barbeque. ‘Braai’ or ‘barbie’ for those southern hemisperics. Being a silly numbnut I forgot to take my camera but I will try my best to describe the day. If you head on over to Little Miss Moi you’ll see some great pics because she is the clever one that took her camera.

There were many highlights and I learnt so much. We were on this island, camped out under young oak trees with not a soul in sight. Apart from the odd hiker/biker/semi-naked old people/pissed up skoda crammed with teenagers. We just had to find a spot to set up camp ensuring we avoided the numerous ant hills and making sure there were enough trees of sufficient girth to hide behind when nature came calling.

Things I learnt
1.Boys make fires, hog the bbq, talk taxes, play football. Girls lay out the food, put food on sticks, sip fizz, chat about recipes, babies etc. This is the way of the world and there will be no changing it.
2.Olga the Ukrainian dog fancier gives her famous world-championship-winning dog red wine to drink. This is good for its liver affliction. I am looking forward to demonstrating this principle in practice to see if I can be a world championship winner too. I heard this toward the end of the afternoon so if the details are sketchy, sorry.
3.It’s true that the toilet is everywhere in Ukraine. And I made full use of it.
4.Certain Ukrainians have an extraordinary lack of shame when it comes to exposing themselves in public – see highlights below.
5.Little babies can fall asleep when been driven up and down potholed, muddy, generally not suitable for cars (unless you have a Volga/Skoda/big 4×4) dirt roads. I was clinging on for dear life in the front and the little sausage was snoring away merrily in the back on his mum’s lap. I wanted to puke, the baby didn’t.

Things I gained
1 lovely plastic tablecloth courtesy of Megamarket’s household sexism range.

1 pair of filthy feet.
6 massive shashlyk sticks.

1 chargrilled frisbee. Chargrilled because it was used to dig up the dying embers to bury the biodegradable rubbish. Someone broke the snow shovel.
1 massive box of marinaded beef – bbq #2 is on it’s way.
6 cans of local beer – see above.
1 fuzzy head from Moldovan fizz.
1 suspicion that we had set up in a naturist spot – see highlights below.

The highlights
1.Fully embracing the Ukrainian ‘the toilet is everywhere culture’ I tuttied up against the side of a log (the fallen tree type) with not a person in site. Apart from my trusty guard making sure there were no sneaky perverts watching with cameras.
2.Finishing the above and falling knee deep into a hole filed with drying leaves. This was a sure sign that a dead body must be buried in it. Our attempt (my trusty guard and I) to scrabble back to camp and tell the boys they must investigate immediately fell on deaf beery ears.
3.Seeing a babushka walk past in her bra and knickers. It wasn’t that hot. (The weather and the vision).
4.Seeing an old guy trot past in his grey pants. It still wasn’t that hot. (As above).
5.Drinking Moldovan fizz. Lots.

6.Watching (from a safe distance) Little Miss Moi drive the huge 4×4
back home through the island.

7.Watching (from a safe distance) MDF and the boys (Little Mr Moi, The Man, Mr Olechko) making a fire out of sticks and providing the best bbq fire ever. This is after the – so who’s bringing the bbq? – discussion. I was told – barbeque, schmarbeque don’t worry about it, the boys will make fire with sticks. The boys didn’t use lighter fuel (ohhhh, noooo), because they used a stone and a stick to make a spark. Apparently.
8.Eating delicious grub – here is a photo of the loaded bbq , courtesy of clever Little Miss Moi:

randomness

I have been tagged (sadly it took me a day to figure out what this meant) by the lovely enidd who has persuaded me to do a ’seven random things about me’ list. I am struggling with seven, although I am sure if you asked my relatives to contribute they would come up with several randomnesses. So to make up the numbers I think I might implicate some of them. Because they are well, part of me really. And may go some way to explaining some part of me too.

My grandmother takes lots of pills as grandmothers do.
One day grandma swallowed her handful of pills and realised that she swallowed one of her favourite silver earrings at the same time. So careless. A handful of prunes and a few days later she fished the earring out using a colander. I know about this because she told us all about it over Sunday lunch. I promised to keep it secret.

I have experienced the Japanese health service’s pain relief policy.
I broke both my thumbs ski-ing. That was rather careless. One thumb had to be wired together again. Then a few months later the wire had to be removed. In the operating theatre:

doc: we inject local anaesthetic then we cut thumb and remove wire.
me: er, ok
doc: injects arm. Waits two minutes and starts cutting thumb.
me: eeek! That hurts.
doc: what? Impossible.
me: please please please stop.
doc: ok, we inject more anaesthetic.
doc: injects arm, muttering to colleague about these stupid wimpy ‘gaijins’ (foreigners). 2 mins later doc starts cutting thumb again.
me: eeeeeeek! it hurts!
to cut a long story short, the injection temporarily paralysed my arm but not the pain control nerve or whatever it’s called.
doc: ok we start again.
doc: cuts my thumb while the Beatles are playing on the stereo. The hell is soon over.

I am told that this was pioneering surgery and I was one of the first lucky ones to receive it – can there be that many idiots breaking both their thumbs??
I have been a total wimp ever since.

MDF and I both have the top of our middle fingers on our left hands slightly chopped off.
You could consider this to be very careless. MDF’s chop was when he was little, when his finger was shut in a door by his mother (tee hee. No it was an accident!); my chop was in the chain of a bicycle when I was little (sort of an accident – although I deliberately stuck my finger in there to see what would happen). These little deformed digits bind us together in an unbreakable bond…

I broke my leg going to the loo.
I’d say this was terribly careless. My parents and I were travelling in Zimbabwe when we pulled into the side of the road in the middle of nowhere for a loo break. I wondered down the hill to find a private spot and stumbled over a rock and heard a crack. Oh bother I thought, that was a bit sore. But I still managed to tutty on down, finish up and hobble back to the car and we continued the journey.

To cut a long story short it was five days before we got back to civilisation to see a doctor, who confirmed that the reason I was squealing in pain with a foot the colour and size of a blue football was because it was broken. Not because it was sprained which was the phone diagnosis given by another doctor in the middle of nowhere and who also told us to apply lead solution to the offending appendage.

I spent some time recently wading through chicken sh*t.
You could say this was extremely careless, but there’s a reason for wading through chicken sh*t. No, it’s not a euphemism for daily life in this part of the world, but a real job that I have been called to do on a few occasions. I spent time going onto farms making sure ducks and chickens were happy. Soon I will be looking at geese. Did you know that geese get a kind of goose gonorrhoea?

I won several drinking competitions with Japanese businessmen.
This post is inspired by enidd, who lost her drinking games with Vietnamese fisherman. I’m not sure there’s any significance in comparing these facts. I have a feeling that Vietnamese fisherman are a lot more sturdy than Japanese businessmen!

Finally, I love to take a pizz.
In careful measures, not careless ones:
- put a measure or two of Pimms in a long glass
- add several cubes of ice
- add fresh mint, chopped strawberries, orange, blueberries, cucumber or whatever you like
- top up with ginger ale leaving an inch gap at the top of the glass
- fill that inch with fizz
- stir gently
- drink – especially with like minded pizzed friends
- repeat process

If you would like to spout your randomness, send me a comment and I’ll tag you!

Update: Tiger Lamb Girl is up for some random confessions…

size really does matter

Hurrah! At long last, after lengthy negotiations lasting four months, we have had our giant satellite installed. It is is ridiculously, embarassingly big. That’s the price to pay for wanting French rugby on tap. I wish I could say that we can now get the said channel but this has not materialised. But as long as I can get Desperate Housewives I’ll be content anyway. I just hope we don’t get done by the planning police, because it does seem abnormally big just to be flung onto the roof. Well, it wasn’t quite ‘flung’.

It entailed a few recce trips onto the roof and several excuses for the satellite people not to go onto the roof (the rain, the wind, the snow, the wrong kind of snow, the melting snow etc) as well as the obligatory rip-off attempt. They did work some late nights though. To cut a long story short, a few days ago we had three giant Ukrainian men leaping through our living room window.

It was hair-raising watching them skid about the tin roof but it was a fiddly job after all. More impressive was the way the men all took their shoes off the minute they stepped across threshold. Such a civilised gesture in a sometimes uncivilised city. Or it might have had something to do with the fact that our lovely cleaning lady was glaring them down and daring them to touch her newly polished floors with their outdoor boots.

After this long, drawn out, terribly tense build up (for MDF), we were on tenterhooks awaiting some last minute hitch or hold up. I was given strict instructions to keep MDF updated with progress. I ‘phoned him to tell him the sputnik men had arrived. I ‘phoned to tell him they were on the roof. I ‘phoned him a while later with a progress report:

me: hello darling.
mdf: hi, what’s happening?
me: oh, nothing. Your satellite has just come through the living room in pieces.
mdf: WHAT???
me: your satellite. In four pieces.
mdf: oh my god!
me: well what do you expect, they can’t get the whole thing out the window so it’s in quarters.
mdf: bloody hell! Don’t do that to me again!
me: do what?

domestic wanted

A fair wind of interest (or rather a gentle breeze) has been stirred up since the domestics post and tiger lamb girl has thrown down the gauntlet. Yes, the search is now on for a domestic cleaner (the stuff, not the person) that has a picture of a woman on it. It should be on the market in your area, although a crusty old bottle you might find at the back of your grandma’s sink cupboard from the 50s will do.

tlg asked if there was a prize for the first discovery and putting it on her blog. I will say yes, but that’s the next challenge: who can suggest a prize from Ukraine that someone will really want? (it must be postable, mind. No, enidd - salo won’t do).

domestics

This is our new cleaning product. I love the French maid outfit; I suppose it would be called sexist to associate the woman with cleaning, but I find the brazen use of this image quite refreshing in a retro sort of way. Actually, there are dozens of other cleaning products in Megamarket, but this one really appealed to me because the picture was fun and it was cheap (the liquid). Most of the other products show pictures of toilets and ovens or have a big semi-clad muscle man on them. I suppose if he’s ok then this lady should be too, right?