hanging about

I have already noted my street cleaning tools obsession. Now realise I have another one - the very common tendency to see people working on roofs/hanging from buildings/doing building work in extreme dangerous places and ways. In the winter this mainly involves scary ways of clearing snow, in the summer months it seems to cover window cleaning, gutter replacement and - for some strange reason - knocking holes out half way up 12 storey facades.

So, let me introduce you to our window-cleaner. 

fluff-drifts again

I remember a conversation in my early days here, where I was extolling the beauties of a freezing cold but beautifully bright winter's day and V said 'nothing is ever exactly right in Moscow; it is either to hot or too cold, we are  very unlucky' - which I took as stereotypical Russian fatalism (something as which V excels, although mainly humorously.)


But it is that time of year again, when there is tree fluff everywhere - pollen spread by the many poplar trees. The weather is again beautiful - this time clear spring skies, sunny and warm (almost too warm). And, as if to support V's argument, it is somehow turned a little weird, as the ubiquitous fluff floats by, coating every surface both inside and out and gets in your throat and nose.