Catfights and Russian Literature
Sunday January 2nd
| On Sunday morning I went for a walk down to the cafe near the bus stop, and took this picture of a useful map showing our position and distances relative to Murmansk on the wall near the counter. |
| Sunday dinner at 18:45, enjoying some kasha prepared by Masha. |
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| After dinner someone found an old book on the Occult in one of the cupboards, so after creating a suitable mood by laying out candles in a pentagram and turning off the lights, Lena and Masha took turns reading from it. |
| The same picture without the flash, giving a much better idea of of the atmosphere... |
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| I ventured outside just before midnight, and found Masha happily playing in the snow. |
| She told me that she felt like making a snow man. |
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Soviet Literature
| Late on Sunday night (early Monday morning) I found what looked like an old Soviet era book, which seemed to amuse my Russian speaking friends. |
| I think the title translates to "Twenty days", by Sergei Alexseev, and it seemed that a former inhabitant had enhanced it with some irreverent annotations. |
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| The words were unfamiliar to me, and I asked them to translate... |
| but all they would tell me was that they are "bad words".... |
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Masha runs amok with the camera
| At 00:52 on Monday morning Masha decided to start working on a photographic panorama of our cabin. |
| At 01:17, after about 23 pictures almost identical to this one, with minor fine tuning of composition and the layout of articles on the table, she was finally satisfied. |
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| And the scene to the immediate left of the last shot... |
| Next Sasha gets into one of her pictures.. |
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| and then she focuses on Lena.. |
| Masha seems to like somewhat unconventional compositions.. |
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| at 1:25am, Masha took a picture while Lena was getting changed, calling for immediate retribution. Fortunately I managed to rescue the camera just before she pounced.. |
| There was nothing I could do but take lots of pictures... |
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| it was, after all, a good chance to get lots of un-posed shots.. |
| Lena seems to be getting the upper hand at this point.. |
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| No, now Masha seems to be in control. She must be stronger than she looks... |
| I think we will call it a draw at this point.. |
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| At 1:30am, I think Masha was going out of control with the camera again... |
| looks like she caught me in this one... |
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| Followed by a kitchen panorama, of which this was the first frame... |
| and here is the second - looking to the immediate right of the previous one. |
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for some reason she then took dozens of oddly angled atmospheric pictures
of our clothes line just before 2:00am..
At the risk of disappointing other clothes line enthusiasts, I have trimmed them back to just this one representative shot... |
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