I recently uploaded a video of a bike-ride along the bottom of the White Cliffs of Dover to the Internet (search YouTube for 'Ashford ring road' and you'll find my channel). This was made possible due to an attachment I bought for a few quid that fixes a smart-phone to the handlebars of the bike, opening up whole new avenues in the field of amateur video.
Of course, the wartime song about the cliffs, made famous by Vera Lynn, is known internationally. Indeed, my Russian girlfriend is even familiar with it. However, my Russian language skills aren't progressing so well. I know the two most essential words of course - pivo (beer) and chai (tea), but the 6 'cases' which change the endings according to the context have proven a step too far for me. For example, in the phrases 'I give you a knife' and 'you give me a knife' the pronouns 'I' and 'you' change. If 'I cut myself with the knife' the noun 'knife' will alter, along with my pain threshold!
Then there's the male/female/neutral part to contend with. As any student of French or German will know, many languages attribute a gender to inanimate objects. In England, we may affectionately refer to cars or boats as 'she', but very little else. In Russian, a train is male and a station is female, so the name of the station has to be feminised too – our local one would be something like 'Hamstreetskaya'. Even numbers can be male or female – adin (one) becomes adna if talking about something female. So when I need one journey on the Moscow underground I have been told to say 'adna'. When I see the price (approx. 60p for any journey), I can then say 'ochin harrasho' (very good). So if you thought Russian was just about writing the Rs backwards think again!
To illustrate what a large area you can traverse for your 60p, Moscow is the 5th most populated city in the world. In contrast, London ranks 21st, yet it is still the most populated city in the rest of Europe (Paris is a contender, but due to the way its borders are defined it appears much smaller). This is interesting, as Britain is coincidentally the 21st most populated country in the world, yet we are the 4th highest spender on military matters. Draw your own conclusions there according to your sensibilities; mine are that this could be better spent on the national health service, education, railways, post offices (as opposed to privatising them), renewable energy sources (as opposed to tax breaks for 'frackers') - you know, things that might make life a bit better for ordinary people!
A little later I got into a number crunching session with my father, looking up various populations and areas whilst cooking an English breakfast. This was prompted by Mr Putin's representative's alleged comments about Britain along the lines of 'nobody cares what that tiny island thinks'. However, with Russia's area working out at roughly 70 times that of the UK it is hard to argue really, although I think he should be made aware that what the 'island' thinks and what our leaders think are not always the same!
Yet, I was surprised to learn that the world's largest country is only just over twice as populous as the UK with 140 million. Comparing this data with an atlas from the 80s, we noticed that the USSR had roughly 270 million inhabitants (compared to 240 million in the USA), so deduction tells me that the former soviet states that left the federation account for a whopping 130 million people, Ukraine being the largest in population terms. With all this mental arithmetic my dad forgot to heat up the beans, so I had to surround mine with sausages and lay an egg on top to warm them up.
Back to the subject of languages, sometimes I remark that English is much simpler that Russian, but I am informed that this isn't necessarily so. In Russian, there are three tenses – past, present and future; in English there are 17 according to an online source I checked.
It is interesting to hear my girlfriend's opinions on the local area too. The nearby 'market town cum international gateway' of Ashford has come in for a bit of a drubbing in the local press recently, courtesy of a regular correspondent opening up a hornets' nest! Whilst I cringe with embarrassment as we pass all the boarded up shops in the town centre (just how is building a huge out-of-town John Lewis store going to help this?), she always states that it seems a nice town. I recently went on a cycling trip and ended up in Milton Keynes. As a result I have to agree with her. Let me explain:
Having ridden the peaceful towpath of the Grand Union Canal, admired the flight of locks at Foxton, taken in the historic vibes of the Richard III museum in Leicester and fleetingly visited Rugby and Northampton (which claims to be the UK's largest town that hasn't acquired city status), I ended up following the canal route into the aforementioned 'new town' (maybe a 'not-so-new town' now that we are in the 21st century).
By now, the route was lined with a seemingly endless avenue of trees, which I'm sure bordered some very pleasant parkland, but you have to understand that I had just ridden around 50 miles and I was gasping for a drink. I suddenly realised that I wasn't getting closer to any kind of town centre, and the endless, equidistant, identical trees only enhanced this feeling of pedalling hard and getting nowhere. I had imagined an 'up and coming' marina, with trendy bars selling (I would expect 'overpriced') beer. Realising I was just going to get trees, I asked a schoolboy for directions to the nearest shop or pub (there was nobody else around), but due to the grid-structure of the town, his reply required a considerable level of concentration for somebody used to the concentric town model to take in. You see, in most UK towns you generally know which side of the centre you are, and pretty much all roads will take you to the middle.
So having followed his instructions, I discovered the shop to be an anonymous Tesco Express, and the pub was rather reminiscent of a place called The Nelson which was once the only pub on an Ashford housing estate that since gone 'dry'. It was also closed.
Having asked for directions, I found my way to the town centre. A teenager was pleading for his life in a subway while his similar aged attacker was growling like a wild animal. 'Should I call the police?' I wondered, 'Or is this normal here?'
With apologies to anybody living in MK, you can see why my impressions were perhaps not as positive as they could have been, and with both tyres now punctured, heading for the train station seemed the only logical option.
Until next time, 'dosvidania' and maybe one day I'll give MK a fairer assessment.
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