My kids, at our local comprehensive, go on school trips to Leigh-on-Sea. I went to a much fancier school, so I went on school trips to Leningrad and Moscow. The first time must have been in 1990. We were all going through dramatic changes; and so was Russia – not that as cossetted, self-absorbed 16-year-olds we were able to take much serious notice.
We joked, nervously, gauchely, ahead of our departure about the likelihood that an Aeroflot flight could be relied upon to get us there in one piece. We practised our rudimentary GCSE Russian: ‘Chto eto? Eto GUM!’ (What’s that? That’s [the department store] – GUM.’) ‘Gdye Dom Knigi?’ (Where’s the bookshop?) ‘Chepukha! Vzdor!’ (Rubbish! Nonsense!) And a favourite as we studied Russian’s eccentric tense system and verbs of motion in interminable double-lessons, ‘Ochen’ skuchno’ (Very boring).
I recall the scale, and the shabbiness, and the grandeur. How nothing worked
We had no idea what an alien world we were entering.
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