On being interviewed.

I decided to have a go, or rather, get Aphra Behn to think up the questions so I could have a go, at this interview meme that’s been going round.

Why did you choose to go to Russia in the first place?

I decided to do some travelling after I finished university. Mainly because I couldn’t think of anything else to do, if I’m honest. Anyway, for various reasons the choice came down to going to Russia for six months and going to India for six months. I chose Russia. It was 1996 and I thought it might be interesting to see what was happening there. But more importantly I hate hot weather with a passion, and I thought I’d have a better chance of avoiding it in Moscow. Of course, when I stepped off the plane it was late summer and thirty degrees in the shade outside. Still.

What do you and B miss most and least about Russia, and while I am at it what did you miss most and least about the UK?

This is a bit embarrassing, but it mainly comes down to food.

I miss the markets. My mum came to stay once and I took her shopping and she took pictures of the mountains of bay leaves which were then on sale. At the time I thought she was being a bit odd. But when we were back last year it was pepper season and I nearly cried when I saw the table after table piled high with (cheap) peppers. And tomatoes. Tomatoes of all shapes and sizes where the smell hits you from fifty paces. I miss strawberry and cherry season, and the fact that by the end of it you swear you’ll never eat another soft fruit again. I miss the watermelons, which at the right time of year fill specially built cages on every street corner. I miss the huge handfuls of fresh herbs. I miss being able to taste before you buy. Shopping for food in this country makes me cross.

The food in this country makes B cross, but now I have found a good recipe for rye bread he can at least scratch that itch. It’s Nigella Lawson’s rye sourdough recipe with some adjustments to the quantities, if anyone needs to pacify a Russian nearby.

I also miss snow and really properly cold weather.

B doesn’t miss the snow. In fact, B was looking forward to coming here for the bland one size fits all temperatures. He’s particularly pleased with this year, where it has been frequently difficult to tell if it is November, February or July.

I don’t miss the mosquitoes. I react very badly to Russian mosquito bites so summer is torture, particularly since we spent a lot of it outside the city, which is surrounded by boggy mosquito loving land, in St Petersburg, which is situated on a mosquito infested marsh and in our village, which is next to a lake which is home to another nation of mosquitoes.

I was covered in big red itchy lumps all summer every summer.

B has no reaction at all, and he definitely does not appreciate the hell of mosquitoes.

What did I miss from the UK? It was surprisingly easy to forget the UK existed in the end. It all started to seem rather a long way away. Sausages, cheese, the Lake District and my family and friends.

I didn’t miss the feeling of being cabin’d cribb’d and confin’d that this country frequently produces in me, but then one of the reasons I wanted to come back was because the lack of long term security over there was making me feel a bit odd.

Have you done with travelling?

Actually, I’ve just started to get itchy feet again. It is therefore unfortunate that I work with so many people who spend each month burbling happily about the exotic and exciting places they are jetting off to shortly. 

I’d love to rummage around North America. I’d love to live in South America. And I’m particularly keen on the idea of Italy.

For shorter visits, there’s always the option of trotting off for a month to do one of the courses I do here. I’d go to China or Japan, although I turned down Vietnam last year as the travel bug hadn’t started biting and China this year as I happen to know the school and frankly, it wasn’t worth the hassle.

But in reality, I like the idea of travelling much more than the actuality of it, and what with B, a mortgage and trying to get myself into a new branch of the teaching profession I won’t do any of it. We may go back to Russia though. We said we’d give the UK ten years and then see.

Which language do you speak at home, and if you have children would you raise them bilingually?

Would I raise my child bilingually? Hell yes. I couldn’t pass up such a golden opportunity to experiment on a captive audience. Anecdotal evidence says it can really screw the child up.

Plus, B refuses to countenance the idea that Any Child of His wouldn’t speak Russian, which means I would have to teach it English to be able to shout at it to clean its room.

We speak English at home. Which is why B’s English is much better than my Russian. Except when his mother is here, in which case we speak Russian until I plead for mercy.

Which is the greater passion, language or teaching?

I never meant to get into teaching. I always said I would avoid the family curse and the one thing I would never do was teach.

Then when I discovered I like teaching, I always said that at least it wasn’t teaching teenagers. I would never become a school teacher.

And then I discovered I like teaching teenagers.

I’m not sure I count teaching as a passion. It’s more an inevitability.

Languages were the one subject at school I was actually bad at. I am still bad at learning them. I am not a big enough person to be really into something I’m bad at.

I’m quite interested in linguistics, particularly how language interacts with society (sociolinguistics) and the brain (psycholinguistics), but I ruled out becoming properly immersed in it and doing an MA on the ground of complete impracticality and a lack of cost effectiveness.

So I wouldn’t say languages or linguistics is a passion either.

That does rather leave the question of what is, of course.

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DIRECTIONS FOR THE INTERVIEW MEME

1. Leave a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. Please make sure I have your email address.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment, asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.