Monkey damage to my roof this morning. A bunch of them were after one of my Jak Fruit and the branch broke. Several broken roof tiles and a big mess. Must have been funny to see it but that’s several thousand rupees worth of fixing needs doing. The Jak Fruit they were after is the dark green rugby ball sized object, the yellow gunk insides of other part eaten Jak Fruit. All mixed up with large amounts of smelly green Monkey poo as they collectively shit themselves when the branch broke thirty feet above. Lovely.
Fishing The Indian Ocean Reefs For Supper
It’s back to my Sri Lanka home after time in wintery Russia, and as the cupboard is bare, men need to go fishing for their supper. This is reef fishing, a couple of km offshore, and about 100-150 feet deep. I use both a very simple hand held line and a rod, but find I can feel the fish better with a hand held line. It’s harder work to pull them in, but more effective in my view. Bait is just chopped raw squid. I am almost guaranteed a catch, and in two hours had enough fish to last two weeks.
Reef fish aren’t especially tasty unless they are cooked really fresh, in which a simple descaling, olive oil and herbal treatment then grilling over hot coals will suffice. Otherwise they are better in a Boulibasse type stew, but this evening saw the BBQ come out at home. Caught, cooked and eaten in two hours. Bellisima!
How Peter The Great Would Have Had A Martini – With Polugar Bread Vodka
This is a Polugar Vodka Martini. This brand recreates the tastes and recipes of the time of Peter The Great, Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Pushkin. The difference? It’s distilled from the same grains used to make bread (it used to be known as “Bread Wine”). This is their No.3 recipe, with added caraway, but not enough to be overpowering. It has a warm bread like taste with the aromatics just coming through enough. Imagine a few caraway seeds on rye and you’ve got it. I added 1/7th dash of Dolin Vermouth to it and shook well. It’s excellent.
The website states: “Polugar is the true legendary Russian bread wine brought back to life using the traditional technologies and recipes from the 18th and 19th centuries. It hasn’t been produced for the last 120 years, is 38.5% alcohol strength, smells of rye bread and has a soft pleasant taste.
St.Petersburg’s Legendary Hat Bar – The City Home For Jazz
Your intrepid reporter gets jazzy
Although St.Petersburg is renowned for it’s opera, ballet and architecture, it also has a strong literary culture and with that goes the intellectual stimulus of jazz. The Hat Bar, which is conveniently just around the corner from where I live, is a cool dive with young musicians queuing up to play each evening. There’s also the chance of a jazz superstar coming along to jam after a concert elsewhere in the city. The trick is to get a seat, which really means arriving before 10:30pm. The venue is square shaped,with a three sided bar to the rear and the stage upfront. Limited snacks are available-but they do know how to make decent cocktails (I always order a Negroni here) and have a good selection of Russian draft and bottled beers. It’s a hang out dive, so not expensive, and usually open until 4-5am.
Opera Gets Violent – Death By Cannon In The Maid Of Pskov
Ivan the Terrible contemplates whether he should chop off the head of the Pskov High Priest.
Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Maid of Pskov” – a tale featured the doomed Princess Olga (death by cannon) and Ivan the Terrible at the Mariinsky. More choral than arias, but an impressive set and costumes, plus horses on stage made for an entertaining evening. In Italian operas, everyone falls in love, in Russian ones, they all die. Except Ivan, who lived on, grief struck. Par for the course?
Bethrothal In A Monastery – Prokofiev’s Italian Opera Buffa
The hapless fish merchant Mendoza, wooing the woman he thinks is the rich and beautiful Louisa. Actually she’s Louisa’s poor, ugly yet very savvy Nanny
Everything about this has a joke, including the title, in Prokofiev’s romantic opera, composed between 1940-46 and completed in Almaty, Kazakstan. It’s a nod to the Italian influence on Russian opera, with the plot involving Don Jerome, who intends his daughter Louisa to marry the vain, wealthy and ugly fish merchant Mendoza. However, she loves instead Antonio, who is poor, though noble in spirit. Furthermore, Don Ferdinand, son of Don Jerome and prone to fits of jealousy, wants to marry Clara d’Almanza, who is a virtual prisoner of her stepmother. It’s the Italian classic story of being married off for financial gain rather than for true love.
A Bonkers Snow Maiden At The Mariinsky
The Snow Maiden Opera. This is a 25 foot tall Rooster welcoming in the Chinese New Year. It flapped its wings
It was a truly nutcase “Snow Maiden” at the Mariinsky last night, Rimsky-Korsakov’s operatic masterpiece of returning spring, reimagined via copius amounts of LSD in a surreal world of fairy tale meets Sacre Du Printemps via liberal helpings of marijuana. What were the set designers on? Shades of Chinese New Year as well as our heroine eventually melts and the sun is free to shine and usher in a very late spring. Madcap, but fun.
My Rock Star Double – Tonis Magi
Tonis Magi
They say everyone has a double, and I seem to have found mine. Having grown my hair and beard long, I have come to resemble an Estonian rock star. The hair and beard growing is down to three things actually, early morning laziness, the winter cold, and just because I can.
Anyway, my doppelganger is Tonis Magi, a popular rock singer from Estonia. Some of these photos are of me, some of him. I know where’s he’s been, too, because certain bar staff and hotel managers have been saying “Good to see you again!” at places I’ve never been before.
“Sadko” at the Mariinsky
Sadko and his band of travelling merchants en route to Venice.
Rimsky-Korsakov’s fairy tale opera “Sadko” at the Mariinsky last night. Telling the tale of Sadko, a down beat Minstrel who is bewitched by the Sea Princess, forgets his wife and goes on adventures to find his fortune. After 12 years away and becoming rich, he is summoned to marry the Sea Princess under the waves, and nearly does so before Neptune intervenes – after all, Sadko is married. The Princess is turned into the River Volkova as punishment and Sadko wakes up on a lonely beach, only to find his broken-hearted wife searching for him. He thinks its all a dream until he finds his crew have safely returned and he is now the richest merchant in Novgorod. Moral: Try for your dreams.
Olga Borodina In Borodin’s “Prince Igor”
Khan Konchak (Sergei Aleksashkin), Konchakovna (Olga Borodina), Prince Vladimir Igorevich (Yevgeny Akimov) & Prince Igor (Alexander Morozov)
I love going to the opera at the Mariinsky but especially so in the winter. The evenings are -25, snowy,dark and ice-covered, yet the bright lights and warmth of the audiences at the opera provide a way out of the deep winters gloom. Russian composers knew this, and would create spectacular, long pieces to best illustrate their adapations of Russian stories. Many last for over three hours, with the intermissions being a chance to catch up with friends, drink vodka, champagne and enjoy caviar, which can still be done in the Mariinsky today.