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one group of kids, while Ilya and half a dozen of his buddies grabbed me and we
all headed off to the village lake. It was a couple of kilometres away but the kids
with worn out shoes, grubby clothes and bright white smiles possessed incredible
energy. They never walked anywhere, it seemed. If they were going somewhere,
they ran.
We reached the lake in no time. The children gathered to point out a family of
beautiful swans floating gracefully among olive-green waterlilies about 200 metres
from the shore. I admired the perfect image for a moment, then looked down to
find that each eager little kid had produced a slingshot and was racing to load it
up, anxious to be the first to show off their sharp-shooting skills. The first stone
- Ilya's I think it was - landed with a splash about ten metres short of the nearest
swan. Appreciative Oos and Aahs came from the rest of the kids and I realised with
relief that the swans were probably just out of range. A dozen more stones splashed
near the centre of the lake and the swans disdainfully cruised away.
Then it was my turn to have a go. I pulled back carefully, only half as far as
the experts around me had done, then released the sling with a whoosh. The elast-
ic smacked painfully into my thumb and the rock bounced away on the ground. I
swore in English and sucked my thumb. All the kids laughed and wanted to learn
the word I'd used. My incompetence with the slingshot meant that it was time for
an impromptu coaching session.
We jogged in fits and bursts back to the village and held a dozen sprint races
along the way. By virtue of my longer legs, I won the first few, but the days of
riding hadn't prepared me for speed, and when they started imposing handicaps I
was well and truly outdone. Someone suggested arm-wrestling and we all hunkered
down in the dust outside the village to test our manly mettle. It was two of them
against one of me. With a spark of inspiration, I introduced them to the art of
thumb-wrestling. The game had never been seen before in this part of Russia and
they battled fiercely against each other for an hour, enjoying the novelty and giving
me a well-earned rest.
We returned to the village as the herd of village cows was brought home from
the plains by a boy on horseback. He drove them towards the main street, flicked
his whip a couple of times, then left. I watched in amazement as fifty cows ambled
along the village streets, each animal heading back to its own house for milking.
My gang allowed me to return home for dinner, but only for a little while. No
sooner had I finished eating and started to think of settling down for a relaxed even-
ing of conversation and vodka than they started banging at the door. This time both
