In 1964, in
the international restaurant at the only campsite in Leningrad, I ate a small
piece of sausage, which the person behind the counter had taken off the counter
(with her sausage like fingers*) put into a saucepan of theoretically hot
water, pulled out, cut into four 2" long chunks put onto 4 flyblown plates
and put them onto the counter. She put her hand out for the roubles, which was
about £10 (a helluva lot of money in those days). It had so much gristle in it
that I could not finish it.
We came
across her sister driving a huge road engine, laying tarmac, arms as thick as my
thighs. This was in the middle of
Leningrad. I'd like to tell you the name
of the street, but because it was the cold war, there were no street maps
available, apart from one in a 1901 St Petersburg Baedeker my father had
purchased from a second-hand stall**. All
the road names were in Cyrillic script, without Latin equivalents... This 'great adventure' as my father called it,
started to turn into a film noire when one of the traffic policemen (loudhailer
on chest, red in face, brandishing pistol) got off his platform, shouting at us
to stop.....
We had been
driving the wrong way up a one-way street... matters were not aided by my
brother whispering "burn on, Dad, burn on!" while this bloke, now
almost purple with rage at these law-breaking capitalists sitting like stupid
oxen with total ignorance on their faces at his language. We were, in fact,
lying capitalists, because we could certainly understand the word passport, and
we had no intention of giving them to him... we made our escape by being
shepherded in reverse all the way back down this street by the by now furious
cop!
(A picture of a very similar dormobile)
Back at the
campsite after these twin delights, my mother decided to cook us egg and chips
in our battered old dormobile. One of the simplest, but most welcome meals we
had. But there was a catch: one of the
proscribed items listed on our visa was potatoes, so we had to dispose of the
potato in an open drain. There was to be more clandestine disposal before we would leave the Soviet Union, but perhaps another time.
*she looked
like a gurning Arthur Mullard, and you
could see tracks of all the food she'd handled and 'cooked' on her off-white
apron, her face set in a permanent scowl....
**Sadly this
was worth a lot more than he realised, in today’s prices £1,652!
