‘Huntin’ bucks and drivin’ trucks’ - So Long, Uncle Sam

American lad: "I like the way you roll your r's"
Scottish lassie: "Why thank you, it must be my high heels"

(As told by an elderly American gentleman)

A deep red sun set behind the skyscrapers of downtown Philadelphia as the good ship M/V Rickmers Singapore sailed past, heading down the Delaware River and out to sea. We were leaving the US.


I stood out on deck and thought back to the last few months during which we’ve travelled across this huge country, from the coast of California to the docks of Philadelphia.

It’s taken us over 5,500 miles, through seventeen different states, from the Tex-Mex border to New England, from the Deep South to the Midwest.

When we first arrived I was slightly apprehensive, recalling the disappointments of my previous visit in 2001. In particular I remembered the dominance of the corporates, the chains who seem to have taken over many a place, steamrollering over the local features and quirks which give a town or region it’s own identity, the differences which that add up to make it unique, distinct and of particular interest to the visitor.

Riding the Greyhound along the interstate it was easy to think that the whole nation had succumbed to this, the view dominated by an endless procession of chain motels and identikit burger chains. It could have been anywhere, Maine, Missouri or New Mexico. Same, same, same.

Yet off the highway it was a very different story. For there is not one America, of course, there are many, and exploring the variety on offer, discovering these different worlds with their own distinct identities has been a great pleasure, full of adventure and surprises.

We have wondered at amazing landscapes, from the saguaro-studded deserts of Arizona to the frozen lakes of Minnesota, from the mountains of Tennessee to the swamps of Louisiana.

We’ve walked in pristine national parks bursting with biodiversity; we’ve seen wild turkeys, eagles and beavers; and visited both the start and the end of the Mississippi, one of the great rivers of the world.

We’ve been wowed by the cities, from the French quarter of New Orleans to the East Village of New York, the fine skyscrapers of Chicago to the history streets of Boston. We’ve watched Ibsen in Minneapolis and viewed Monet in Chicago; we’ve hung with hipsters in Austin and hobos in Nashville.

We’ve partied at Mardi Gras and slept in Liz Taylor’s old Hollywood home; we’ve drunk moonshine with rednecks and basked in homemade hot tubs under the stars.

We’ve ridden the Greyhound and the lonesome railroad; we’ve sped in a Porsche down in Texas, and paddled a canoe in North Carolina.

We’re taken a musical odyssey and found great sounds galore, from street jazz in New Orleans to blues in Chicago. There was zydeco in Jackson and country in Nashville, rock ‘n’ roll in Memphis and mountain music in the Smokies. We found polka in Minneapolis and Motown in Detroit; visited Elvis’s Graceland home and found Johnny Cash‘s last resting place.

We’ve tried burgers and fries, hash browns and links; kolaches, knish and Vietnamese pho; beignets and gumbo, po-boys and crawfish; collard greens and cornbread, black-eyed peas and BBQ ribs.

And there were ramps and catfish, walleye and wild rice; clam chowder, lobster bisque and buffalo wings; Philly cheese steaks, doughnut holes and pretzels; food from a dumpster and acres of pizza.

We’ve washed it down with a wide range of beers, many local, all delicious. We supped Dogfish in Boston, Dead Guy in LA, Honkers in Chicago, Summit in Minnesota, Lone Star in Texas; Abita in Louisiana; Yazoo in Nashville, Yards in Philadelphia...

We’ve lived through a thousand films, the quintessentially American: paper bags for your ’groceries’; steam escaping from vents in city streets; stoops and fire escapes on brownstone buildings; bow-tied academics on Harvard campus; white picket fences and red hip roof barn; state troopers and police cruisers; huge firetrucks and burly heroes; yellow traffic lights hanging on wires; ‘city limits’ signs on the edge of town; neat clapboard houses with a basketball hoop in the front yard; workshirts with name badges on; people with the ‘Jr’ suffix; retro-style diners…

But it was the people of course, which stick in the memory. There’s been the good, the bad and the quite clearly mad.

Thanks to our common language, our shared history and perhaps most of all the wonders of couch surfing, we have been able to get closer to Americans than people in other countries and nearer to finding out what makes this huge country tick.

We’ve stayed with nurses and hipsters, Spanish surgeons and Argentinean biochemists, musicians and teachers, students and stock market traders.

They’ve put us up everywhere, from bordello-themed rooms down in New Orleans to log cabins high in the mountains; from terraced houses out in the suburbs to crash pads in the middle of downtown. We’ve slept on couches and mattresses, floors and even a massage table.

We’ve made friends with strangers who’ve welcomed us to their town, memorable characters such as Wers-leh ‘White Lightnin’ the blues guitarist’, ‘Durl’ the bus driver MC and ‘Mow-reece’ the tram driver, who just digged my boots.

They’ve come from all backgrounds: rich and poor, vegan and carnivore, Democrat and Republican (‘you‘re liberal?! Get outta my house!’). There’s been hippies and hawks, rednecks and poets, veterans and protestors, gay, straight, black, white and all shades in between.

We’ve met Mexican labourers and Chinese chefs, Baptist preachers and Vietnamese microbiologists, tatooed ex-cons and Senegalese cabbies, Native American croupiers and Cajun waiters, drugstore cowboys and Puerto Rican plumbers, whooping frat boys and rednecks in Dodge Rams, ‘huntin’ bucks and drivin’ trucks’, flying the Southern Cross.

Given this range of backgrounds it should be hard to define what being an American is - you could ask them and they’d never be short of an answer. Perhaps therein lies the actual answer, for we found that Americans always have questions and are never too shy to express their own opinions.

There’s little English reticence here, and perhaps a greater certainty in their beliefs. Opinions are often more polarised and on controversial issues it seems never the twain shall meet: abortion, same-sex marriage, the right to bear arms...

I found the latter particularly difficult to understand: on several occasions I was shocked to discover the nice, sane person we were travelling or staying with was packing a piece. ‘Because I need to protect myself,’ I was told. From what? Other people with guns?

I just bit my tongue. Coming from a mild, rather phlegmatic country I find it hard to comprehend such a mentality. There are some issues I guess where we will have to agree to disagree.

There were benefits to being English here though and after several months of enjoying American’s most generous hospitality I can no longer argue that the ‘special relationship’ is purely one-way. We have often been quite overwhelmed by people’s kindness where people would go out of their way to help or to offer advice to someone from ‘the old country‘.

Many a time a local would prick up their ears upon hearing our English accents and soon the questions would start flowing, from the usual about the royals, the weather and the Beckhams, to those about the UK economy, their favourite British bands and how I sounded like Hugh Grant.

I learnt a great deal from these little encounters, and gained a real insight into people’s everyday lives, the lives that make up America. They seemed to enjoy this too, such as the fellow in a Mississippi sub shop who insisted on stumping me my meal in exchange for a natter.

And here I would sway between loving and loathing, buzzing on the good points but perplexed by the bad.

There’s still things there I find hard to understand: an obsession with the big and the energy-intensive; the gross disparities between rich and poor; a blind obedience to the flag and an unquestioning reverence for ‘patriots’; a poor public transport infrastructure (in some places non-existent); rampant obesity and the fast food culture...

But one thing stood out here above all else here: religion. It seems that in America the zealots shout louder. I lost count of the number of signs I saw warning that we were ‘all going to hell’ or the amount of insane rants I heard on the radio.

There’s a sizeable portion in this country who subscribe to this, and are not afraid to show themselves. We came across them throughout the land.

Back in New Orleans they stood out in Bourbon Street, amidst the maelstrom of drunks and debauchery with their hellfire grimaces and their placards of sinners: ‘sports nuts’, ‘pencil neck weak kneed gutless men’, ‘rebellious women’, ‘witches’, ‘pot smoking little devils’ and, bizarrely ‘used car dealers’. Come on now, you can’t condemn Frank Butcher…

It all left me aghast and disturbed. How did this happen? ‘Well what did we expect?’ one American said to me, ‘after all you sent over all the puritans‘.

He had a point, and I guess for every Thomas Paine and William Penn there must have been a boatload of religious nutters seeking a new land where they could express their free opinion (or empty their guns into armadillos).

Back then it was a land of opportunity and today it still struck me as such - a land where, if you go for it, you really can ‘make it’. The ‘American dream’ lives on, and millions still come here in search of a better life.

It’s a ‘can-do’ culture where people work hard and seem less likely to say ‘no’. It never took us much effort to enter a new place and find someone who could fix our laptop or give us a ride to another town.

Standards of living seem generally higher and for many life is comfortable. Or should I say was, until the economic bubble burst.
Perhaps they grew too comfortable and complacent as the world’s top dog; certainly many are now learning the hard way that economic fortunes can go down as well as up.

Can they turn this around? Of course they can, and they’ve got a nice fresh young chap at the top who they hope can do just this. Returning to the US, just after Obama took power we felt a
palpable wave of relief amongst the people we met.

‘Hope‘. It's a good slogan for the US.

I hope to return myself one day. Keep the cheesesteaks warm.







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Hanoi (Making a Buerk of myself)

Situated in the far north of Vietnam, like some crazy uncle shoved up in the loft conversion, Hanoi is one of the most enjoyable cities I have ever visited.

Life here is so rich, so thick it is almost mesmerising. Wandering the narrow streets of the city’s Old Quarter, taking in the scenes all around you is like drinking the coffee the locals lace with condensed milk: it is so thick, so strong and delicious you can only digest a little at time.

Drink in too much and you quickly suffer from sensory overload, your brain reeling from trying to process a million beguiling sights, bewitching smells, bewildering sounds.

In Hanoi I could walk the streets for days, seeking out my fellow human beings, peeking into their lives. A Western voyeur in an another dimension, where the streets hum with humanity and life seems so much more vivid than that back home.

Tiny shop fronts heave with goods, piled up to the rafters, bearing down on their owners. Often you can discern the shopkeeper, subsumed within a mountain of their goods, dozing against a rice sack or half-buried under an avalanche of boxes.

Many streets specialise in one particular type of product. This street sells only metal articles, that one purely toys. One shop I came across seemed only to vend sellotape.

We visited street markets in backstreets, where stall keepers sat outside Chinese-style temples and faded French colonial buildings. We saw tubs of crabs, string bags full of crawling toads and ducks hanging from hooks, glazed and ready to eat.

And all around us there were the buzz of commerce and the excited chatter of the street. People crouching on tiny plastic chairs around noodle stalls, or gathering under banyan trees and ragged awnings, where the sunlight plays through in thin shafts as they deal out a deck of cards.

Cockerels strut along the pavement, kids play keepy-uppy with colourful shuttlecocks and scrawny boys roam the streets selling faux GI zippo lighters, emblazoned with US army slang.

An old woman gnaws on a stick of sugarcane whilst other similar sinewy women plough the streets carrying bamboo shoulder poles, their baskets stuffed with tropical fruits: pineapples, persimmons and oranges, jackfruit, lycees and star fruit.

My favourite are the banana ladies, offering two varieties of banana, starchy ones in one basket, the sweeter ones in the other. All wear pointy straw hats, all bounce merrily along, swaying with their load as they tout for business.

You get the impression that this is life as it has been in Hanoi for hundreds of years. It’s survived war with the Chinese, the French and the Americans, the latter of whom managed to park a huge B52 bomber in one of the city’s ponds.

But unlike in Britain there is nothing nostalgic about this life: this is raw, hard-edged commerce and for many life is tough. Ever on the lookout for a new way to make money the Vietnamese eagerly embrace the modern.

Alongside traditional lacquerware and lanterns you can buy the latest knocked-off DVD - the new Bond Film, Quantum of Solace, appearing on the streets here well before it graced cinema screens.

The roads pulse with traffic: mopeds zip along, their horns quacking like indignant Donald Ducks; cyclos crawl past, their driver eyeing you up for trade; carts groan under staggering loads, their owners blithely steering them through the maelstrom.

Even motorbikes are pressed into freight duties, piled up with mountains of boxes, weighted down with heavy appliances, balancing ladders, bamboo poles or metal rods .

Pressed into every use imaginable the omnipresent moped has taken over the streets, spilling out onto pavements, blocking access to all. We had to climb over a squadron of them, backpacks and all, simply to get to our hotel.

Faced with an ambulatory meltdown, the authorities have been forced to act, passing a new bylaw banning the two-wheelers from blocking the walkways. Clearly unworkable, this leads to comical scenes whenever a police car hoves into view up the street as moped owners dash frantically to their trusty steeds, avoiding the long arm of the law.

Even here, in this bustling urban environment, above the noise, we often heard birdsong. It reaches out across the tiny lanes, penetrates across the lines of traffic, lighting your load and bringing a smile to your face.

Gazing up at some of these tiny choristers in their ornate cages, dangling outside a shopfront I was enthusiastically greeted by their owner, a lively chap who beckoned me inside and proceeded to show me his collection of finches.

They turned out to be a prize-winning collection, successfully entered into singing contests with other birds. The man proudly showed me his finest songster and the many pennants and rosettes it had won.

His next contest came in two days: I left him to continue his preparations.

Further down the street I spotted a creature of a more familiar hue - none other than former newsreader, Michael Buerk.

Keen to secure a photo with the legendary anchor man I interrupted his holiday and introduced myself. Lara (with camera) was utterly embarrassed and sensibly retreated to the Ladies, leaving Fewins to make a fool of himself.

“We’re travelling round the world!” I blurted to the man with the famous wink, “Without flying!”.

“Good luck with your trip” he said smoothly, before diving for the safety of his tour bus. Well it was hardly as newsworthy as an African famine was it. It wouldn’t even make The Moral Maze.

Yet I remained undeterred - who needs a photo when you’ve got an endorsement like that? I’ll have to insert it at the top of our homepage: “World in Slow Motion - as endorsed by TV’s Michael Buerk!”.

Hectic street life, Michael Buerk, golly I needed a drink after that. And what else than a Bia Hoi - ’fresh beer‘ brewed locally and served up on the street, all yours for 20p.

Relax, recline on a tiny plastic playgroup chair askew the broken pavement, and try and avoid falling into the path of the traffic just inches from your elbow.

Draining the dregs from the bottom of the glass a flash of inspiration hit me. Perhaps Hanoi’s more like the local brew than a coffee: cheap, refreshing and just a little bit rough.

And unlike the coffee you’ll be wanting a refill.

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Laos - Thailand

Crossing from Laos into Thailand, on the ‘friendship bridge’ spanning the Mekong River is a relatively simple affair.

Indeed, if it wasn’t for the painfully slow queue at immigration, standing in line in the baking heat for some dead-eyed, moustachioed chap to staple yet another piece of paper into your passport it’d feel more like a little jolly across the Severn Bridge rather than crossing an international border.

But low-key as it is, the differences between these two countries start to become apparent the moment you reach the other side.

Goodbye sleepy little Laos, hello thrusting ‘tiger economy’ of Thailand.

Within minutes the tiny, winding bumpy roads of Laos became a fading memory, as we sped along a smooth, fast dual carriageway, heading south for the second city of Nakhon Ratchasima. We travel a good inch across my battered map of the world in a few hours - something that would have taken a several days north of the border.

The scenery has changed as well. Gone are the wild mountains of the north, smothered in dense jungle, the jagged limestone peaks peaking through low cloud and teak forests teaming with wildlife.

Instead we speed through the pancake-flat plains of north east Thailand, a land of coconut trees and paddy fields where water buffalo submerge themselves in an effort to escape the searing heat.

And gone are the villages of little rattan, thatched huts, perched precariously on their stilts. Now we pass shopping complexes, car showrooms and steakhouses.

It seems south of the Mekong they have plumped for one form of imperialism for another: forsaking old Europe for the New World; French for American; colonialism for cultural and economic imperialism.

In the land of the Thais Uncle Sam has found himself some followers as the economy as expanded. Thais drive their pick-ups to the parking lot, they shop at the mart, they go downtown at the convenience store.

But the US isn’t the only country to get a piece of the action. Even dozy old Britain is represented, albeit by Tesco superstores (sweetly branded ‘Tesco Lotus’ in order to give it a nice, suitably exotic-sounding appearance) and the overpaid primadonna footballers from the Premier League, gurning across many TV screens and newspaper back pages.

Still the Thais are not ready to disown their own identity just yet. Indeed in this land you need only look at the nearest fencepost to be reminded of where you are, for the national bunting is permanently on display. The Thai flag festoons every frontage, usually accompanied by the yellow Buddhist flag.

This practice in itself would seem odd if it weren’t overshadowed - often literally - by the enormous portraits of the reigning monarch and his family, given pride of (public) place on every road, in every street.

They gaze down serenely upon you from every available space: on roundabouts and above pavements; along central reservations and across bridges, on calendars hanging in shops and outside municipal offices.

I’ve even seen soldiers sporting the kind of plastic wristbands worn in the West to pledge allegiance to a particular cause, yet their ones proclaim ‘Long live the King’.

As the longest reigning Thai monarch ever (60 years and counting), and indeed the longest-reigning current monarch in the world (he even puts our Brenda into the shade) His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX)’s is particularly popular.

Blinging up his his bespeculed, rather straight-laced appearance as elaborately as possible has ascended to almost an art form, albeit one that is perhaps more in keeping with Posh ‘n’ Becks rather than a refined royal.

Entering this country from Laos, where the monarchy was overthrown by the Communists and the Hammer and Sickle still flies from government buildings, it feels rather surreal - like travelling through a Tintin comic set in some obscure East European country where all the names contains lots of z‘s.

Unlike Laos, where tourism has only recently taken off, Thailand is now well-established as a firm favourite for Western tourists. The Thais have got it sussed: they dazzle you with their smile, enchant you with their accessible exoticism and leave you happy to be relieved of your Baht.

They have had time to develop this winning formula, benefiting from their climate, cultural and natural attractions and the kind of fully-developed infrastructure needed to draw overseas visitors.

The Lao have all but the latter: it’ll be interesting to see whether they will be as successful as their southern neighbours.

All this is immaterial however, compared with the surely the most reliable indicator of a nation’s greatness - its food. Thailand is rightly famed the world over for its fantastic fare and, despite all the differences we had noticed since crossing the Mekong, it wasn’t until we had tasted a Thai Green Curry that we could be sure we were in a different country.

Now all they need to do is take a lesson from their northern neighbours on how to brew a good beer to accompany it.

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Laos. Enchante.

We have crossed the border from China, south into Laos. En route we passed through some of the wildest, most remote terrain I have ever encountered.

It was also some of the most beautiful.

Our road wound along river valleys, their thick, muddy waters chocked with debris from the recently-passed moonsons. We skirted steep mountain sides and passed through tiny villages, with small thatched huts sat on stilts, children, chickens and little pigs scattering in our path.

And all along the thick, green jungle shadowed us, lining the route and stretching out across the hills as far as the eye could see.

The road was long, the journey arduous and slow. Our tiny little road bumped up and down, veered left and right and never ever seem to run straight for more than a few metres. No wonder Laos wasn’t accessible by road until about ten years ago.

Finally, after nine hours of bumping up and down we arrived at our Eldorado: Luang Prabang.

An ancient imperial capital of this wondrous country…an enchanting town of golden temples and the exotic mysteries of the east…an outpost of mankind standing at the confluence of the Mekong and the Nam Khan rivers...and all a bit….French.

Upon arrival I was amazed , and rather charmed, to be addressed in French by the elderly Madame of our guesthouse. Enchante.

It didn’t stop there. The town is chokker with battered old French-style buildings, crumbling colonial houses with long thin shutters, rickety balconies, and outside walls whitewashed against the tropical sun.

On the main street, Sisavangvong Road, all kinds of treats await the homeless Parisian, from baguettes and quiche lorraine to tarte aux pommes and milles feuilles. And of course the excellent, thirst-quenching Beer Lao - a French lager if ever there were one.

I half expected Arthur Bostrom’s hapless gendarme/British agent character from ‘Allo ‘Allo to saunter by, waving his nightstick and greeting us, ‘good moaning’.

Across the road from our guesthouse we can hear young children learning French at the French language school; around the corner we had a nice chat with a friendly chap from Clermont-Ferrand who runs one of the town’s numerous bookshops.

My Francophile father would love it, though it did leave me wondering quite why the French went to the trouble of colonising a place which, despite it’s numerous charms, is rather inhospitable.

There must have been good reason to do so, after all the French were only one country in a long line of others to which the Lao people found themselves rather reluctant hosts. The Burmese, the Thais, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, even the Americans have also left their mark on this little nation.

Add into the mix a whole host of different ethnic groups, stir in the rise and fall of an imperial family and add a good measure of communism and Laos comes out with a rather interesting and unique flavour.

The people have certainly changed from those amongst whom we walked yesterday, on the other side of the Chinese border. Not only do they look decidedly different but their character is a refreshing change to the ebullient, noisy Chinese.

Quiet and shy, Lao people seem reticent to accost the numerous wealthy foreigners strolling about their town.

No shopkeepers hassle you here, rather you have to hassle them, waking them from their slumbers as they doze in the afternoon heat.

No rickshaw drivers harangue you mercilessly, instead they crouch in the shadows, perhaps offering a rather halfhearted sales pitch: ‘cheap cheap’.

No crowds, no pushing, no shoving, no spitting.

You can put your elbows away when you leave China and enter Laos, for it’s suddenly very well mannered once more. Smiles, apologies, bowing. Is it all going Japanese again?

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Sumo wrestler vs karaoke star

It has been a very Japanese 24 hours. This time last night I was doing ninth floor karaoke. Then I slept in a capsule bed (aka a wooden box) and was woken to go to a sumo match. Two classic forms of Japanese entertainment back to back. Both delightful and different in their own peculiar ways...

The karaoke took place in a skyscraper with a golden castle on the roof. Ten floors and over 100 rooms devoted entirely to singing along to music videos. Claustrophobic, smokey, poky rooms with sticky tables and chairs and flashing lights. Sumo on the other hand takes place in a dedicated stadium with a single spotlit ring in the centre. A ring with a sand surface encircled by sandbags. A ring that is raked and watered with care and attention. Both venues sacred and carefully attuned to their purpose.

Similar attention is paid to dress in sumo. Or lack of it. A padded girdle with dangly sticks does the job along with a decorated jewel encrusted sponsorship apron for show at the beginning of the match. Waxed topknots are carefully chosen and maintained to suit the hair of each sumo wrestler. Whereas for karaoke, you just go as you are. Jeans and baseball caps are popular. A similar gulf is apparent in the preparation required for both sports. Sumo wrestlers have stable masters and live a life of strict diet, ritual and practice to achieve the best on the big day. The only preparation that karaoke stars make is to down a few beers to loosen the vocal chords. In spite of the huge quantities of food that sumos are allowed to eat, I still prefer the karaoke regime.

Drinking is an important part of karaoke. Beer helps the karaoke star build strength and confidence. Sumo wrestlers prefer to sip water before a game, to purify the body, and draw on the audience for their inner strength. The sumo crowds are only too willing to help, bellowing the name of their favourite wrestler loudly from the rafters. In karaoke your companions also egg you on, swaying along when you sing and clapping politely even when your rendition of Lionel Ritchie`s "All Night Long" is wildly off key. To accompany the drinks, karaoke stars order salty snacks. Sumo wrestlers use salt to throw on the floor and purify the ring.

The music is, of course, different. Karaoke is the predictable mix of eighties, nineties and noughties hits with a good mix of Japanese and Korean favourites, and I was delighted to see that the Forest of Dean's own EMF still make the karaoke hit parade in Tokyo. The only music in sumo is a chanted verse sung by the referee as he waves his fan accompanied by the banging together of two sticks and the sound of wrestlers slapping their thighs.

A risk assessment of both pastimes would favour karaoke. After singing solidly for a whole hour (my Japanese friends were so impressed by my skills that I wasn't allowed to put the microphone down) I only came away with a sore throat and husky voice (or is it a cold?). The sumo wrestlers however were covered in support bandages, especially on their knees. I suppose carrying 100kg of blubber on a delicate ball and socket joint does take its toll. Spectators are also at risk, as wrestlers are regularly thrown out of the ring into the seated crowd below.

Two very enjoyable and very Japanese pastimes. I may not have the belly for sumo wrestling, but I was a hit with the karaoke. My Japanese friends enjoyed my soulful rendition of Tina Turner's "What's Love Got to Do With It" so much that they requested, and were rewarded with, an encore. Japan is such fun!

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Hello Lenin

Vladimir Illich is chilling. Outside it’s hot; the water cooler is doing overtime and I’m already getting weird suntan sandal lines (or perhaps that’s the pollution). But inside this morgue is as cold as Kvas, the chilled, non-alcoholic, malty beer that Moscovites drink in summertime in order to cool down.

Lenin’s dressed in his Sunday best; dark suit, spotty tie, but unlike a trip to your Auntie Hilda’s there’s something rather bizarre, even grotesque, about visiting many Soviet’s favourite uncle. Inside his dark chamber, fiercely protected by young, spotty automaton guards, he lies in a glass casket. His skin is pale and waxy, like a once-loved Russian doll cast aside by a little owner who has long since grown up.

There’s plenty of barmy theories about this diverting freakshow; some even question whether this curious cadavar is the real Mr Ulyanov. One thing’s for certain though: L’Oreal or the Body Shop could learn a trick or two from the brilliant scientific minds who have kept him nicely pickled here for nigh-on eighty years.

Or maybe he’s kept here in order to prevent him turning in his grave. Given the amount of change that has taken place here in Moscow the earth would be seriously disturbed.

Indeed the city and the habits of its inhabitants has changed so radically that Lenin’s large red ziggarat, poking out onto the cobbles of Red Square in a manner which might lead Prince Charles to call it ‘a carbuncle’, has become an embarrassment to some, yet one that they keep deferring what to do with.

Is a visit to Ebay in the offing?

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