Holidays

Lucy’s column for June 24
Mosklo…1
The first time he set foot on an aeroplane was on our honeymoon trip to Jersey, on what was affectionately called a vomit comet. It appeared to hedge-hop all the way there and back on a couple of wings, a prayer, and a propeller.
Yes, it was that long ago, that short-lived golden era when, still trying to impress, he forfeited his phobia and fear of flying to whisk his loved one to a paradise isle when he’d have been far happier tootling along to Tenby and pitching a tent.
As it turned out, Tenby in a tent would have been the romantic option, because he spent the entire week away whittling about the return journey – nudge-nudge, wink-wink – that anything remotely connected with honeymoon, June, silvery moon, turned into his neurotic nightmare.
It was years later before his feet left terra firma for the second time. This was a Derby Telegraph trip to Moscow. I was going, anyway, on a freebie, to report on events. He, always fascinated by Russian history, was just a tintsy bit envious. So, saint that I am, I bought him a ticket as a birthday gift, wrapped him up in a camel-hair coat, because this was March, and Siberia sprang to mind, and led him, kicking screaming, aboard a jumbo jet.
Together with friends in our party, and believing the horror stories of rationing and shortages which emanated from that Spartan land at that time, we wrapped our winter woollies around fruit cakes, Mars Bars, great lumps of Cheddar, crisps and biscuits so fearful were we that we wouldn’t survive. And we packed, as bartering fodder, bars of soap, cigarettes, chewing gum, and the ubiquitous tights which, we understood, the Russian women would give their right leg for.
We weren’t far short of the mark on the frugal food front. Two meals spring to mind. One was something fishy, as grey and mucky-looking as the River Moskva, which the anglers among us put down as perch. The other was a bowl of equally grim-looking liquid with a boiled egg floating in it. And yes, the bread was as black as was rumoured, vegetables non-existent, and the wine only slightly less dodgy than the dinner-table water.
The female concierges on each floor of the vast Rossia Hotel were built like brick out-houses, and made Sylvester Stallone look effeminate. We couldn’t even soft-soap them with a tablet of Imperial Leather, and it took almost our entire stock of chewy and cheese to get ours down the corridor to sort out the sewage leaking into the bathroom. But it wasn’t all bad.
Waking up to the vista of snow atop the minarets in Red Square was a sight to behold. So, too, the treasures of the churches and the Kremlin, the two-hour countryside drive to a summer palace, the joy of the Bolshoi, the Saturday brides in Red Square, the intricacies of the changing of the guard at Lenin’s tomb.
We now learn that the streets of Moscow are paved with gold. They have overtaken Bond Street, and are only slightly behind Fifth Avenue and the Champs Elysees, as third most expensive shopping streets in the world.
Does this mean the famous Gum – dubbed Glum, such was its lack of customer appeal – has had a makeover? On our visit, we found a window full of Dansette-style record players, a rail of what our grannies would have called "good washing frocks", a few bolts of Crimplene curtaining – and little else. But it all added to the atmosphere and style of the famous Square. The thought of Russia’s new, rich tsars gobbling up the designer gear and sparkly stuff makes me glad we went when we did.
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