Ok, so this is a question that is profound, deep and meaningful: would you be happy learning your future? Would it make your life better, or worse??? Ooooohhhh, so you’d know how long you’d live, how your kids would grow, who they’d marry, which rehab clinics they’d frequent, all sorts of stuff. Or would that ruin everything. Holy shit, I’m getting hit by a bus crossing Ludgate Circus at 16.47 precisely tomorrow. Could you then avoid it? Or was that avoidance factored into that version of the future too??? It all gets a bit Terminator at that point, but we all love a time paradox. However, the future, knowing thereof; good or bad?

I only ask because in Russia they have this annoying thing at the traffic lights. A timer. Telling you, the driver, how many seconds the light will stay green, or how long you, the pedestrian, will have to wait til you can cross. Jaywalking in Russia, suffice to say is NOT AN OPTION!!!!! Because if the KGB monitor every crossing, which they do, and see a jaywalker, which they would, they press 2 buttons. One shoots the pedestrian, the other nukes his house. All done with really simple face recognition software and all data kindly provided by facebook, even though they don’t know it. So no-one crosses roads there illegally, ever. As someone who never normally crosses a road legally, ever, I’m not sure how others might view this countdown shit. But I think it bothered me. I’d rather stand there thinking: ‘can’t be long now, surely?’ than knowing its precisely 32 seconds until- 31 seconds until-30 seconds until I can- 29 seconds, cross the road. Because seeing ‘9’ seconds up there is a treat and seeing 92 is a major league bummer of proportions so big they could only be in Russia. I know, its not exactly the same as learning the precise date and time of some major life event, but its… similar.

Leaving now, which is a massive shame because we’ve had the most fabulous 7/8 days ever had in an East European city/cities. And Moscow is like the biggest secret ever, and it just keeps giving. Every time you think you’ve been really impressed by something, an even bigger thing comes along and kicks you in the gulags. To say ‘Russia has embraced capitalsim’ is like saying ‘the pope is thinking of becoming a christian’. And nowhere can that be more true than Moscow. Where you see Bentleys, Porsches, every Mercedes ever made that bears the AMG marque, and lots and lots of all of them. More Chelsea Tractors than Chelsea. And its a happy city. Even though the vast majority of its population appear anything but. Don’t know how that works, exactly, but it does.

Welcome home

A xxxx