h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So here we are on November the 1st again, regular as clockwork.

The big news from the last year is that we moved back to Moscow. Well, I say 'we'. Actually it's just me and the kids right now as B is back in the UK sorting out things. Mostly, getting a gas meter moved, which would have been a month's worth of very ranty posts all by itself, except that it got sorted, finally, on Friday, so you may all be spared. Be very thankful about this.

Just at the moment so I remember to read. Can we have one ranty post about the gas meter?

Oh please, do tell us about the gas meter, now you've got us intrigued !

Another vote for a gas meter rant, even if I've read some elsewhere

I'm looking forward to hearing about Moscow, the move, and how the kids are coping with it all.

As well as the gas meter saga.

Looking forward to another good set of reads this year. I won't be commenting unless I have something interesting to say, but I WILL be reading.

Deb

Oh, and I fifth (I think!) the request for the ranty gas meter post

Deb

What's that, a story about a randy gas meter? This we have to hear!

[OK. I shall save up the ranting for a slow news day].

Day 2

This is going to be a series of small incidents. Today's small incident was that I asked some students why, exactly we were all having a day off on the 4th of November, and they all looked a bit shifty and hedged. My MiL also doesn't know and my husband didn't know were were having a day off at all.

I have decided to resist googling it for the amusement value of seeing how long it is before I find out organically, like.

Mind you, it's holiday drift in action this. There used to be a day off on, oh, I dunno, November the something for Red October Day (Russian calendars didn't do the shift to Gregorian time thing until after the Revolution, which made things complicated for aptly named national celebrations). Clearly somebody has looked at the school holiday dates, and said, right we'll move that there and we'll call it the National Day of Pride in Mushroom Picking, and Ivan's you uncle.

Suits me. It's my birthday (get your congratulations ready now). It also means that unlike half term in the UK, next year we could go to the UK, hit all my favourite autumn holidays and be back without the kids missing school.

Not that they seem obsessed about that like the are in the UK. But that's a story for another day.

[Amy P]

Ooh, I know! I know!

I didn't Google it, but only because I have a site saved which tells me all about world holidays - it's useful for work.

However...I'm not going to tell you - that would spoil your experiment

Deb

I googled (sorry), and it seems loads of people don't know why you have it.

Day 3

So it's after midnight but I have barely got back from work, so sod it.

The latest offering on the holiday is that it apparently celebrates unity, although unity of what nobody knows. We then had a discussion about how it isn't Independance (from the Soviet Union) Day (June) or Constitution Day (December), but that this is confusing. I stand by my theory of holiday drift.

They are setting up giant stages in twon and getting the flags out, and I'd be tempted to go and find out what Unity Day looks like, but I am ill.

Who knew that flinging my British children into the petrie dish of new germs they call school in a different country would produce cold after cold after cold.

Bah.

[Amy P]

It seems odd that they are celebrating Unity when the soviet states were all separated out 25 years ago. Who is united with whom exactly? (I haven't googled it)

The only two Russian Holidays I remember hearing about are the falling of the palace (as I recall it was 7 November, a day I remember as you do the 4th) and the mutiny of the Black Sea Fleet in Odessa (we have a town of Odessa about 15 Minutes from here, I worked there for many years, but then they moved the factory to Hudson)

Unity sounds like it might be the mutiny, the sailors uniting against the Czar - but that is just a guess.

Give everyone, including yourself, my best wishes.

F S

Nah - they have stopped officially celebrating the 7th. The 4th (Unity) is definitely a new public holiday.

Right, I am going to knock this on the head because of catastrophic equipment failure, aka my laptop needing a new charger. Annoying. May carry on anyway once I have tracked down a computer shop or found B's soldering iron, whichever happens first.

I could google, but although the Soviet states separated out, there are still quite a few different regions which are not quite as slavically Russian as, say, other parts. Chechneya being a controversial example, but Dagestan a somewhat less so one.

It could nalso refer to the Russians 'abroad' in, say, Lithuania or (whisper it) Ukraine.