After more tearful farewells and many hugs in Sheremetyevo, I was once again alone on a plane full of Russians. We still had no plans, hardly any money, and yet for some reason we thought it would all magically work out for the good. This was actually Nastya’s philosophy. She often said things like ‘It will all work out; you think too much’. Perhaps I did. After Paris I wasn’t sure if we would see each other again. There were such long periods between meetings that I did lose faith a number of times. But as we were married and I was leaving Russia for the second time, I began to worry less about the future and employed Nastya’s way of thinking.
i. London’s Burning
About a week before I left Russia for the second time, two memorable things happened that are worthy of mention. The first being that Nastya bought us a toaster. This may sound insignificant but it was a huge life-changing moment for me. Nastya’s family had no concept of a full English breakfast, and toast was something that people ate in the mythical land of Wales while riding dragons. We had eaten meatballs or soup for breakfast most mornings and I was a little tired of it. So you can imagine how happy I was when Nastya presented me with a toaster, sliced bread and a jar of Nutella. The second thing that happened was the summer riots in England, which became a major news item in Russia.
I had been lying happily on the bed when Nastya bust into our bedroom and said ‘There is war in London.’
‘With who?’
‘With London.’
I got up and went to the living room to see for myself on the TV. Though I couldn’t understand what was being said I could see scenes of rioting and understood what Nastya had meant. I wasn’t surprised by the riots. After the MPs’ expenses scandal of 2009, it had seemed to me as though the air in Britain had been charged with anger for some while. Nastya saw this as an excuse to keep me in Russia. She said ‘You could apply to become a refugee.’ But I knew that wouldn’t be necessary, though I did allow myself to wonder for a second how nice it would have been to be given refugee status. Over the following days I followed the story online. Nastya was concerned the riots, which had spread out of London, would reach Wales. It never happened, and I sighed with relief because I love Cardiff. I’d seen it change over the years, and there were bad bits as well as good bits, but I couldn’t stand the thought of people burning it down.
Unfortunately, the riots gave the impression that the British had become so infected by greed they would resolve to become criminals in order to get the latest flat screen TV or mobile phone. On the surface it did indeed look that way, and I was embarrassed for Britain. What made it worse was the view that the people looting were the same people who lived on benefits, and were used to getting things for free. Almost everyone I spoke to in Krasnoyarsk at that time seemed to think that the UK had become infected by greed, and it was very hard for me to get them to look at the situation from a different perspective. What they did not know was how those people looting lived in a world where there were few job opportunities, where they could be dependent on benefits for a long time when they did not want to be, all the while being demonised for the simple fact that they had nothing to lose.
I explained that people receiving benefits legally were actually normal everyday folk, and that the welfare state was a very good thing. When I was growing up my mum had two jobs and my dad always worked, however as my parents didn’t make enough money for a bigger house they’d had to sleep on the living room floor for twenty years. And though they worked full time, they had still needed to claim child benefit; which I can say without exaggeration, was a lifesaver. Even then my mother had to miss meals, because she couldn’t afford to feed her children and herself. At the age of twelve, I went to study at Glan Ely High School. At the time it had the world’s worst reputation; apparently everyone who left there either became a dole-ite or ended up in prison. As I had done reasonably well in Junior School I was expected to leave High School with decent grades and leave all the other students behind. What happened was the opposite. Every person who I knocked about with during those years went on to do well, that is until the financial meltdown of 2007, yet Ely is often spoken of as the part of Cardiff where scroungers live. Perhaps there are a couple of people there who cheat the system, but when you listen to the news you’d think half the population were greedy benefits cheats. I find it difficult to feel hostility to people who cheat the system at the bottom of the food chain anyway, because I’ve seen first-hand what goes on at the top.
I actually worked in a British bank for five years and was witness to serious banking malpractice. I saw how customers who complained were treated better and given compensation if they had a savings account; how people with small incomes were recklessly loaned huge mortgages that they could barely afford; in my view the system that was supposed to prevent over-lending was actually designed to allow people into amounting huge debts that some would obviously default on. All this, and yet the man who ran the bank was at the same time the deputy chairman of the Financial Services Authority. The procedure for complaining about malpractice was that you were supposed to relay any grievances to your boss, who would then speak to their boss and so on. But how can you discuss such problems when the very man at the top of the company is also at the top of the investigating organisation? That’s why the riots happened. Because millionaires who steal millions get a slap on the wrist while poor folk go to prison for much less. The riots were caused by greed, but greed at the top of the food chain, not the bottom as it was widely depicted. This of course was news to Nastya who until that time had viewed the UK as a place much less corrupt than Russia.
c. Aeroflot Flight SU781. December 19th 2011. Moscow – Krasnoyarsk
When I had arrived back in the UK in August, after taking the National Express to Cardiff, I found myself in Wood Street just after 1 a.m. on a Wednesday night. I thought the streets would be quiet, but they weren’t. Cardiff was teaming with drunks. There were people smashing bottles, fighting, spitting, and the obligatory drunken women asleep by the side of the road. It was ironic that, coming from the former USSR, I hadn’t felt any fear for a whole month until I returned to my home city. I had arranged to stay at my friend Peter’s for the night because he lives on the Taff Embankment. With my laptop bag slung over my shoulders, I dragged my heavy suitcase across the Wood Street Bridge. It was a huge comedown after such a lovely day in Moscow.
Arriving at Peter’s house, I was dismayed to find he was asleep and hadn’t left the key under the flowerpot as arranged. I banged the door for 30 minutes, loud enough to wake him, but quiet enough not to wake the whole street. He didn’t wake up. After a few panicked phone calls I was rescued by my friend Torben, who lives close to the little Tesco further up Lansdowne Road. Not only did he get up to make a spare bed up for me, but he also made me breakfast and coffee. I woke the next day at 4 p.m. Good old Torben had gone to work, leaving me to sleep off my travel weariness. Before I left, I made sure to leave a bar of Soviet chocolate in his living room as a thank you. A small price to pay for such reliable friendship.