Despatch Seven

The story so far:
Tatiana is employed by a Oleg, a Russian oligarch exiled at sea on his yacht the Flying Dutchman (Letushchy Golandets, Letgo for short). Her job is to brief him on all aspects of British life pending his arrival in London. Oleg and his wife Natalya (Natasha) have a son Nicholas (Kolya)who is down for Eton. Tatiana has a bodyguard Alexander (Sasha) with whom she recently had to flee to a safe house in a remote part of Scotland. Due to difficulties with the bank, which has frozen Oleg’s account, Tatiana has had to let the basement of her house in London and Sasha has got a job as a roadie until Christmas with a touring theatre company...

Dear Olly,

On Friday, Sasha suddenly insisted on going to Cheltenham, a spa town in the southwest of England. He had a call from an old Russian army colleague who was to appear at the annual Literary Festival there. It seems that his friend had written a book about being a prisoner of the Taliban in Afghanistan, now translated into English. I decided to accompany him on the cross country train from Carlisle, to take advantage of the opportunity to study the event and the people. When we arrived at the Town Hall for the talk on Saturday, I noticed a tall distinguished looking Englishman in the queue for coffee. He was wearing pink cord trousers and a bright yellow v-neck jersey or ‘jumper’ with a multi-coloured striped shirt. This is the kind of thing that will help you melt into the background on occasions such as an invitation to go shooting. In the Writers’ Room after the talk, our escort – a volunteer from the neighbourhood who helps to run the festival – pointed out various celebrities from the media: a James Naughtie ,a Jeremy Paxman, Daniel Finkelstein (no relation, he told me, to Leonid who works for Bush House), Robert Thomas the editor of the Times, Libby Purves a broadcaster and Julia Eccleshare a specialist in children’s books. Julia was in Moscow with an exhibition of books from England when I had that part time job at the Library for Foreign Literature (VGBIL) some years ago. Luckily, she did not see me so I did not have to break my cover or introduce Sasha who had taken full advantage of the free wine on offer. I went back to my room for an early night but Sasha found some Serbs working in the kitchen in our hotel and disappeared until Sunday afternoon when it was time for us to take the train to London. We assume the affair of the apples (see my earlier despatch) has now blown over.

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