St Petersburg

The bears hugging are deemed too primitive. The L'Oreal gift set is not classy enough. A towel is too practical. Misha and I, along with many other men in the supermarket, are trying to buy last minute gifts for Women's Day on the 8th March. It is in fact already the 8th, as midnight struck several minutes ago. In the end we cobble together a nice selection for Valya, who Misha is keen to please after an argument earlier this afternoon. Outside we look for flowers in one of the 24 hour flower stalls, many of which are converted specially at this time of year, moving out DVDs, CDs bottles or phones to make way for the bright blooms that will find their way to the hands of almost every woman in the city. Misha chooses one bunch, only for it to be wrapped and sold to another man but eventually we have our full complement of gifts and can walk home to present them Valya. There is also a present for their kitten, Lordi, named after the Finnish horror-rock group that won Eurovision. Amazingly, after all the gifts have been secretly wrapped then presented with great fanfare, we head out into the town, even though it is now after 2AM.

TRAVELLERS TIP: Be careful with buying a cheap watch. The theory is that it won't matter if it gets broken or stolen. In reality, it often breaks before it is ever within sight of a potential thief. My first strap snapped in Amsterdam while I was putting on a bag. I'd bought the watch in Portugal for about five euros (3.50), its best feature was that it had a second hand painted on the face, so it was always eleven past the minute. The second watch, which was 125 roubles (3.00), lasted about thirty steps from the kiosk I bought it in. The third, which came from the same kiosk, cost 300 roubles (7.50) minus what I'd paid for the first and lasted for a day until I went to banya. I am now on the fourth which I bought in Suzdal for the princely sum of 25 roubles (50p). It has lasted just over a day so far. (Update: Watch is still working OK but has taken to making poorly calculated automatic adjustments to compensate for the time difference across Russia. The last one put it back 11 hours and 21 minutes)