Entertainments Archives - Page 2 of 3

Puttering away at Mr Mulligan’s Lost World Golf Stevenage, Herts, UK

Mama had never actually been round a themed mini golf course before she went to one at the Stevenage Leisure Park. Or indeed any golf course, barring a foray or two into a very basic pitch and putt back in the 70s. Possibly because she has no natural ball control skills and doesn’t aspire to be president of any given country. Or maybe because she actually likes walking in the countryside, and doesn’t require any further excuse. But I think it is because she spent some of her yoof working as a waitress at a golf club, which turned out to be a lot less interesting than you might expect.

However, this mini golf experience is called Mr Mulligan’s Lost World Golf, which sounds positively thrilling, and it was recommended to Mama as coming quite high up on the list of things to do in Stevenage with children that they actively enjoy, so she decided to give it a whirl.

It was probably raining, after all.

But beyond being a wet weather indoor venue, it is indeed really cooooooool!

There are two courses, which is sensible given that you want everybody in car driving distance of Stevenage to visit more than once a year. One involved dinosaurs and one was a deep sea experience. We chose the fishy one. And away we went.

We were very very bad at it. Mama swiftly abandoned any thought of marking our scores on the handy card they had given us with our equipment. Being bad at it, however, did not dampen our enthusiasm in any way.

The course, in fact, is carefully designed to get a balance between pleasing the people who have developed a bit of skill in this sort of game and so require a measure of golfing challenge in the form of slightly tilted greens or oddly placed bumps, and pleasing Mama, who is going to take thirty-five shots just to get the ball anywhere near to the hole no matter how flat it is and therefore requires a bit of non-putting related diversion to keep her interested.

This meant some holes saw Mama surreptitiously nudging the ball into a good position on the edge of the sunken cup with her foot so that we could just. Get. Past. It.

Others we lingered over because there were piratical props to exclaim arrr at, constructions which first swallowed and then spat our ball out in an impressively random but brisk manner no matter how weakly we hit them in there, or because they were liberally splattered with luminous paint and lit with ultra violet light. Mama abandoned the game entirely for a bit in favour of photographing us cuddling a bright pink octopus at that point.

That said, if Mama is really honest, she felt that the people who enjoy golf had won the design fight over the people who want to see an anamatronic shark try to savage their ball before it disappears into an endlessly opening and closing whale mouth while a robot Captain Sparrow rolls ineptly past, all clattering braids and fluttering hands. Sort of thing.

I think she has probably watched too many American movies which involve people taking part in crazy golf games where the sets are designed to look good rather than be actually playable. If she were really forced to try to get her ball past the rotating sails of a windmill, for example, we would almost certainly still be there.

You can book a slot for your round online, or turn up and take a chance that every other family with children hasn’t decided to choose this way of entertaining the children on a damp Sunday afternoon. We went at a decidedly off peak time, so we had no issues with waiting either when we arrived or because we were faster than people doing the course in front of us.

As it was, we whiled away a very pleasant mini golf afternoon at Mr Mulligan’s Lost World Golf and then at the end there was a cafe where we had ice cream, and which serves beer and all sorts if you are a bit older. Personally I am good with the whole experience and will be taking Mama back again whenever we visit Stevenage next.

I wonder if any of us will have improved in the meantime?

More information

Stevenage’s page on the website.

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about the ‘Golf Sale’ placard phenomenon.

Address: 3q, Stevenage Leisure Park, Gunnels Wood Rd, Stevenage, Hertfordshire, SG1 2UA

Opening: It varies a bit but either 10/11am to 10pm or midnight.

Admission: For one round of mini golf it’s adults 8.25 GBP and kids under twelve 5.25 GBP, or 2 GBP for the under 3s. There’s a discount if you book two games, and you can also get a family ticket.

Getting there: The Stevenage Leisure Park in has ample parking (some might say it;s a giant car park, with attractions and eateries dotted about), and this is free. Stevenage is situated on the A1(M) motorway out of London.

Stevenage railway station is about five minutes away oer a little bridge, and that takes you into Kings Cross London, or all the way up to Edinburgh.

Luton and Stanstead airports aren’t that far, and there’s a helipad via the Novotel on the outskirts of town.

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Running the City of Moscow with the Begushiy Gorod Urban Orienteering Event

So there we were at 9.45 this Saturday morning, half way down a metro line, staring at Papa, who was trying to work out how to get to the starting point of the Begushiy Gorod event.

Which wasn’t very encouraging, given that the whole idea of Begushiy Gorod, or Running the City, is to take the addresses the organisers give you, work out the best route between them, and visit them all in one day.

Begushiy Gorod Running City Moscow — Where shall we go next?

To make things even more interesting (or to ensure you can’t cheat), as well as ticking off the places you also have to answer a question which is essentially unGoogleable and which will involve careful observation of your surroundings. What is the fifth letter of the fifth word on the sign on the corner of the house? How many stripes are there on the mosaic tiles on the right of the door? What is the seventh monkey from the left holding in his hands? Sort of thing.

The list is divided up into stages, and after you have completed one set, you check in and get given your next five to ten sites to find. Partly so that you cannot just split your team up and knock off the locations in half the time, partly to make the route planning more achievable for the map reading challenged, and partly so that if you give up and go home before you finish the whole thing, you get some kind of sense of completion.

Where Running the City differs from regular urban orienteering (says Mama, who looked the phenomenon up on the ever helpful Internet and discovered that this generally means sprinting between compass points) is that the people behind Begushiy Gorod have made full use of the fact that it will be happening in a city and have divided up the possible routes into different categories according to the different modes of transport you are allowed to use. You can sign up for one of the walking ones, do it by bike, use public transport or get round any means possible.

Which in practice means that you’ll need to use a car at least some of the time, because, Mama is reliably informed by someone who found herself hiking through a forest in the middle of the night one year, they will put some of those stops in the middle of nowhere on the very edges of the city limits.

Running City Moscow Begushiy Gorod — Considerably more serious competitors than us.

There are also options according to whether you are going to be against the clock and competing directly against other teams, or take a more leisurely approach. Or you can choose to have (some of) your addresses given in the form of riddles that need to be solved before you can move on. One of the versions has everything in English!

Mama and Papa went for the least challenging one, the ‘Lion Mini’. Yes, they do have somewhat whimsical names. Also available are ‘Horseman’, ‘Spinx’, Angel’, and ‘Griffin’ and that is not the full set. The English one is called ‘the Lion and the Unicorn’. And you thought Russians don’t have a sense of humour.

But even so, after a good three hours on pounding the streets of Moscow, we only completed the first of the two stages. When the Begushiy Gorod team say it’s a full day’s event, they really mean it, and many of the more serious runs had people at it pretty much until the final checkpoint closed at midnight. And the day started for some at 8am!

We very much enjoyed our urban trek even if it wasn’t in full though, and at this moment Mama would like to say what a lot of really good thought had gone into the planning of this.

Checkpoint at Running City Moscow Begushiy Gorod — Check in to complete stage one here!

Mostly this was because the addresses we were trying to find were not just random houses, but places of interest in their own right. So in following the trail, we were participating in a giant off-the-beaten-track guided tour of this part of the city.

Some of the stops were historically significant. We went past the memorial to the 1993 barricades, set up during the August coup. Mama had not realised how many demonstrators lost their lives.

1993 Barricades Memorial Moscow Running City Begushiy Gorod

We were also taken to the house museum of Russia’s own Dr Johnson, Vladimir Dahl, who was responsible for a particularly comprehensive and influential dictionary of the Russian language, published in the second half of the 19^th Century.

Vladimir Dahl's House in Moscow — This is what the house looks like on the outside.

Our attention was also drawn to architectural gems. While searching for the clue at Dahl’s house, for example, we discovered that the building was actually a wooden one, which had been plastered over to make it look much grander and more classical.

Vladimir Dahl's Wooden House in Moscow — And this is what it looks like on the inside.

And although we were not actually directed to pay attention to the Roman Catholic cathedral, you can’t really miss it when it is right opposite the building you are hunting for, can you? Mama was delighted to be able to tick this off her ‘things to take photographs of in Moscow’ list.

Roman Catholic Cathedral Moscow — Spikey!

Another clue had us looking carefully at this building, which would originally have been the house of some well off Muscovite but which is now part of the Biological Museum.

Traditional Old Building at the Biological Museum Moscow — All red brick and tiling.

In fact, we found the Biological Museum! My Obsessed Big Brother was saying just the other day that we need to go here, and now we know exactly where it is!

We also found the museum to the artist Tsereteli, a contemporary sculptor much beloved of the former mayor of Moscow, whose works therefore litter the capital. Mama had been wondering if it was worth a visit, and given quite how… eclectic the outside is, she is going for yes. Watch this space.

Tsereteli Museum Moscow — Do not go here if you are afraid of clowns!

And the beginning and end of the Begushiy Gorod hikes were all in an old, pre revolutionary factory district, and many of the buildings are still there, if turned into rather trendy bars and boutique shops these days.

Mama was particularly delighted the name of the street, ‘Rochdelskaya Ulitsa/ Rochdale Street’, which celebrates the fact that the town of Rochdale formed one of the earliest co-operative societies, and the one which became the model for later cooperatives.

Papa liked this [insert technical explanation here which Mama didn’t follow. Yes, it was in English], which was just lying around, waiting to be turned into some hipster design feature in the sushi restaurant nearby (or something).

Industrial transformer component Moscow — This is a… thingy. But a cool thingy.

But it wasn’t just the addresses that were well-chosen. Mama wondered if it were part of the plan to take us past so many public toilets. Perhaps it was a happy accident, but Mama, with two children in tow, appreciated it anyway.

Certainly the end of the stage check in came at exactly the moment we kids had reached the limits of our endurance, and really needed a lengthy sit down and a large amount of food to contemplate keeping going. And, low and behold, the place we were directed to had numerous cafes, restaurants and even a John Bull pub to choose from (for those on the English trail). It’s not actually their fault we fell into McDonald’s – there were definitely other eateries available.

This level of careful organisation, in fact, characterised the whole event, which went extremely smoothly from our point of view right from when we checked in to when we went to pick up our participant’s medals at the end. Which given that there were 2572 teams and 6857 players in total, was pretty impressive.

It wasn’t the organisers’ fault either that we gave up after eating, or even because of the fact that it started raining. Mostly it was the shattering cold Papa and my Obsessed Big Brother were suffering from, and that my five-year-old legs can only go so far (should have taken the scooter, Mama).

Still, there’s always next year! Except Mama and Papa are already plotting how to get rid of us so they can do Running the City properly in 2018. How very dare they! We enjoyed it too!

Lest you are worried you have missed out, this is an annual event, and there are other versions in cities all over Russia. Ans sometimes abroad.

Running City Moscow start Begushiy Gorod — Get set, ready, go!

Highly highly recommended.

More information

The BG website (in English).

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about orienteering – the sport of a lifetime.

Participating: You need to register your team before the event and book a start time slot. Go to the website, choose your category, fill in your details, pay your entry fee and away you go. Teams can consist of up to four people. Entry fees vary, and the prices are given in roubles. The London one costs either 2000 and 2500 roubles (depending on your category), or 25 to 35 pounds per team. You’ll need to pay by PayPal if you don’t have a Russian bank account.

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Running the City of Moscow with Begushiy Gorod is an urban orienteering event, with a twist! Highly recommended and suitable for a wide range of participants. Even English speakers!

Get your Instagram on at the Museum of Illusions, Moscow

My Enthusiastic Big Brother has recently discovered the word ‘selfie’.

What it’s for, apparently, is shouting out while grabbing your friends and relations in a headlock, making triumphant horn shapes with your fingers and mugging madly in the direction of… what?

No, I don’t know either.

Mama says he might be missing a vital element to the concept there, but is oddly reluctant to tell us what it is.

She does hint though. One of her clues is that this is relevant because the Museum of Illusions in Moscow’s VDNH complex offers you the opportunity to have your picture taken in a variety of unlikely poses.

Now, Mama wouldn’t say that the Museum of Illusions, which houses a number of different attractions under this umbrella name, really warrants the title ‘museum’. Because it has no educational value whatsoever. Says Mama. Because it is designed to be fun! Say us kids. And so we immediately chose as our first stopping off point, the Butterfly Garden.

Well, small room, actually, with a number of rather battered looking butterflies determinedly clinging to the walls. But also, tiny song birds flitting about, tarantulas and other creepy crawlies to shiver over, a somewhat angry cockatoo and giant lizards you could hold.

Mama thought we were well in at this point, as one of my favourite things in the whole world in the UK was going to the pet shops to stare at the bearded dragons, but because it was a Thursday, the sky was blue, Mama was wearing jeans and I’d had pancakes for breakfast (or something – I forget), I took right agin’ the whole Butterfly Garden experience. Thus I followed Mama and my Enthusiastic Big Brother about loudly complaining as he proudly displayed his new reptilian accessories and gave impromptu animal fact lectures to any visitor who stood still long enough.

Which they were quite obliging about, because mostly what they were doing was staring smolderingly into a camera lens while trying not to get their ear bitten off by the cockatoo on their shoulder.

Eventually, my persistence won out and we decided to go and see what the Museum of Illusions section was all about.

More photography, apparently. Not an explanatory placard in sight. See? Mama told you.

Basically, there are a lot of out of shape pictures painted at odd angles on the walls. You are supposed to go and stand in front of them while somebody takes your picture.

It was weird and, frankly, VERY BORING.

I mean, I like having my picture taken as much as the next five year old, but there is a limit, when almost none of the scenarios feature horses, princesses, or pink and there isn’t any dressing up involved.

Particularly as most of the illusions weren’t, Mama discovered quickly, designed with people my or even my Increasingly Less Enthusiastic Big Brother’s size in mind. So instead of sitting on the dragon, we’d be perched in the middle of her tummy. Or snatching wildly at the wand hovering a foot above our heads.

Or failing miserably to be nearly crushed by the advancing robots. Or make it onto the giant’s dinnerplate entirely.

Mind you, this briefly cheered up my By Now A Bit Less Enthusiastic Big Brother as he got to wield the expensive camera while Mama cavorted about happily. But none of that helps you, dear reader, when she isn’t going to put any of them on the Internet.

And then we tried the town which had been stood on its head. Now Mama would have said that we felt much the same way about this area as we did about the Museum of Illusions section. This is because there were a lot of posing opportunities for tall people which were probably hysterical when they downloaded their memory stick, but not much to actually do if you are my height aside from look at things inexplicably stuck to the ceiling.

Except the open bank vault. Lots of little bits of green paper there to throw about. Unfortunately, given the existence of a number of other families intent on getting their quota of happy snaps in, Mama let us spend less time there that we would have liked.

However, the reason this review is getting written some considerable time after I wandered around the whole entertainment complex whining about how much I wanted to leave and go and do something more interesting, is that only the other day I reminded Mama how funny that Upside Down Town was, and begged her to take us back.

Why this caused her to become speechless and stare at me like a constipated fish I do not know. If you can’t be capricious when you are five, when can you be?

Possibly what we had needed was a snack break. Unfortunately, there isn’t a cafe on site. But since this is VDNH there will at least be retro ice cream, boiled sweetcorn and soft drink carts within ten metres of the entrance.

As it was, Mama headed for the exit immediately after enduring my apparently fake display of crossness around this exhibit. She didn’t even attempt the plate smashing area, the maze of mirrors, the exploration of the human body or the house of horror. She did keep the tickets though, so clearly it is time to dig them out again. Because you can pay for each of the areas separately, or you can buy an inclusive ticket for a reasonable discount which allows you to pick five of the twelve available. You will want to do this. Some of the experiences are more substantial than others, but most of them are not going to occupy you for all that long. If you do find yourself sucked into an extended photography session, then you can bring your ticket back any time to knock off the other areas.

Basically if you are in the mood, and if you are of a sensible height, and if you feel your Instagram feed has gotten a little dull lately, the Museum of Illusions is for you. And in case you should find yourself well away from the fabulousness of VDNH and closer to the centre, there’s a whole set of similar experiences there on the Arbat! And in Ekaterinaburg! And St Petersburg! And Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Chelyabinsk and Barcelona!

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More Informaiton

The ‘museum’ website (in English).

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about the ‘trombone’ shot in filmmaking.

Address: VDNH, Prospekt Mira 119, Pavilion No. 55.

Opening: 10am to 7pm weekdays and 10am to 8pm weekends and holidays.

Admission: 350 roubles (less than you think, more than before Brexit) for one attraction, 1000 roubles (very reasonable indeed, but a shame about that dropping pound, eh?) for five. No limit on when you can come back and use your tickets, so no need to rush round.

By public transport: Get off at VDNH (orange line) and then walk the length of the ex-Soviet exhibition space to the giant space rocket towards the back. The Museum is next to the all new History Museum and opposite the Polytechnic Museum and round the corner from Moskvarium.

By car: I don’t care.

Moscow City Day Street Party 2016

Moscow was 869 years old on this year’s City Day, and that’s official.

I think it must be very hard to decide what to give someone who is 869. There are only so many My Little Pony dolls, accessories, houses, ice cream parlours, DVDs, costumes, card games and apps out there, whatever Mama might think. The Moscow authorities looked at the profusion of round numbers and gifted the capital of Russia a new circular metro line encompassing the more outlying areas of the city. Which was nice of them. A train set is always acceptable, even if it isn’t actually pink or covered in unicorns. But despite Mama’s keeness to ride the rails, we decided it might be a bit busy on its first day of opening. Instead, we went to the giant street party in the centre.

There’s always a street party for City Day.

But as it turned out, this one was not transport related. 2016 is the Year of Film in Russia and so instead we had pop up cafes, stage shows, cosplayers and street performers all working around the theme of movies set in Moscow. You could even hunker down and watch the films themselves in tiny temporary cinemas if the other entertainment on offer got too much for you.

Now, by films set in Moscow, of course I mean those made by the very prolific Soviet and Russian film industry. Surprisingly, that means virtually none of them feature Brucik Willisov speeding around fighting the mafia and/ or the KGB among grim tower blocks and dilapidated nuclear power stations or fighting off prostitutes in seedy nightclubs.

Says Mama.

So what we had instead was the circus, time travel, Tolstoy, precocious children, singing in the rain, time travel (again), vampires and hipsters. Naturally.

There’s a running joke in the excellent (if very short-lived) Mitchell and Webb series the Ambassadors, set in a Former Soviet Country, which all expats in the Former States really should watch if only to cringe at the spot on portrayal of their foibles. This gag’s about the propensity of the natives to offer the circus as a high treat to any and all visiting foreigners. And the propensity of the expats to cringe with horror at the paucity of this unsophisticated entertainment.

Not a view shared by us, let me tell you! Even if Mama doesn’t have the faintest clue what the film it was referencing was, you can’t go too far wrong, in our opinion, with colourful costumed stilt walkers prepared to lift you up for a selfie, acrobats prepared to teach you some of the tricks of their trade and unicycle riders who took my Jammy Big Brother up with them and rode round the assembled audience, to his everlasting delight. Except I didn’t get to have a go.

Says Mama.

Next up was Ivan Vasilievich Changes his Profession where, in a freak accident, the very medieval medieval Tsar, Ivan the Terrible, gets swapped with a lookalike petty criminal from 1970s Moscow, with predictably hilarious results. That one’s based on a story by Bulgakov, in case you didn’t think the Master and Margarita was obscurely satirical enough. But it meant that the organisers of this event could dress people up in robes and fighting gear and trot out the people doing live action metal work again, so that’s alright.

Plus, the rather fabulous costumes from the actual film were on display, and that was definitely worth a gawk.

One of what I can only assume is War and Peace’s many iterations, saw the interactive fun themed around members of the public being invited to dress up in early 19^th century dresses and hang out with the main characters whilst admiring the uniforms of the soldiers sitting around staring moodily into the distance or playing on their iphones. Mama says that Russians admit to skipping the War bits in the novelisation. This must be why. Not much happens.

Mama, being British, particularly enjoyed the installation where you could stand underneath umbrellas and have water poured on you. A bold choice, she thought, given that it’s mid September and last year’s City Day was a bit of a washout. And you thought Russians don’t have a sense of humour. I, on the other hand, was delighted to be able to show off my performance skills as this was the bit of the street devoted to the musical film, Here I Go, Walking Through Moscow, the title song to which I learned in school! Singalongs! With actions! That’s what every good party needs!

Then it started to get weird, otherwise known as Soviet sci fi.

Now, they weren’t celebrating Mama’s favourite film in this genre, about a robot boy who takes the place of his lookalike human counterpart at school (The Adventures of an Electronic). Which goes about as successfully as you might expect but also gives a surprisingly interesting insight into what Soviet childhood was actually like in the 80s. No, this one, Guests from the Future, was the one where visitors from the future end up fighting for control of a little black box, to be ultimately thwarted by upstanding members of Muscovite youth culture. I gather from the rolling interactive performance of the main scenes which this area of Tverskaya Street consisted of.

Frankly, my Jammy Big Brother and I were decidedly sceptical about the fabulously dressed people milling around, although Mama, who you may have gathered is a bit of a geek, didn’t really see this as a problem as it allowed her the opportunity of getting her photo taken for once. More than once. More than twice, actually. But we enjoyed playing tug of war with the bad guys (we won) and chasing them through the streets of Moscow on our imaginary motorcycles (we won) and generally contributing to the triumph of the gentleman dressed in silver lame over the men in yellow (we won). I mean, who wouldn’t?

We also enjoyed taking part in the obstacle course races, the aim of which, was to act as good Soviet pioneers (like the scouts/ guides but more…. compulsory), and carry the milk in string bags home to Mama through tunnels, and so on. We both won our rounds in that one too. Mama notes we seem to have become a tad competitive over the summer.

In fact, as you can see there was quite a lot going on for us kids, despite the fact that they didn’t seem to be celebrating any of the excellent Soviet cartoons we have been brought up on. And while it was crowded for Moscow, we’d recently attended one of the cultural hat tips on Trafalgar Square, and believe you me, you haven’t experienced packed until you have been to Maslenitsa, Diwali, Eid, a Japanese Matsuri, St Patrick’s Day and Pride in a space which can comfortably fit about a tenth of the people attending it, and you definitely haven’t felt frustrated until you have seen the queues for the interesting looking food or waited in line to get you hand hennaed for ages and ages and ages and ages and ages.

In contrast, for Moscow’s City Day it didn’t take us long to get the obligatory ice cream, or find seats in the obligingly comfortable bean bag chill out zones when our stamina started flagging about half way down Tverskaya.

Mama wasn’t, inexplicably, all that keen on experiencing food from a mock Soviet café. But we could have popped into any of the usual eateries which line the street had she not promised us fast food as compensation for indulging her love of spectacle – Moscow city centre is amply provided for refreshment options.

Buoyed by our break, we hit the final film sets and were away. There were a few at this point Mama didn’t recognise, including the one which involved a giant ~~Christmas~~ New Year tree and ice/ roller skating rink. So we ignored them. Especially as Mama feels we will have had quite enough of ~~Christmas~~ New Year trees, snow and ice rinks in a few months.

The first one Mama was interested in neatly combined one of the mock ups of Moscow architectural landmarks dotted up and down the street with an actual scene from the film involved. Members of the public were climbing the archways to stand and survey the city. Just like the vampire members of the Day Watch police force, tasked with making sure that the magical forces of Light don’t take advantage during the times when most upright citizens of the Dark are having a well-earned nap from drinking blood, promoting the evil agenda, and so on.

From the films (and books) called the Night Watch. Which are pretty bloody good, says Mama, and widely available in English. Hint hint. And the films are worth it for the subtitles alone, Mama says. Hint hint HINT. But as Mama feels that the plot of this one isn’t really very suitable for our ears and as we think vampires are to be avoided, perplexed is what we were.

Stilyagi (Hipsters), which ended the film parade, is another fairly recent film. This time, about the people who listened to that alternative underground music of the West, RocknRoll. It’s another pretty good film, and does a very neat balancing act between the jauntiness of the soundtrack and colourful musical numbers and a glimpse at what happened to non conformists in the Soviet Union back in the day. But there’s also a refusal to turn them entirely into entirely righteous martyrs to individual freeeeeeedom and the American way. And a frankly odd ending. Mama thinks they just ran out of plot, or possibly money, but it’s still worth seeing.

Of course, for the perspective of a giant street party, it’s an excellent excuse to have beautifully dressed people performing energetic, hysterically happy, highly danceable music. And have beautifully dressed people mingle energetically with hysterical happiness with the crowd. Carrying a double bass! Mama was cross that at this point her camera battery died and she didn’t get to hysterically happily mug at us with correct hand positioning on the fretboard. You’ll just have to imagine the big skirts, the fifites hairdos and the hysterically happy grinning.

So, will you enjoy City Day, should you be in Moscow sometime in September next year? Will you enjoy a saunter down a street full of colour and distraction with the occasional snacking opportunity? Even if you are not the target audience and may find whatever theme they have a bit incomprehensible? Well, we certainly did, and so we can highly recommend Tverskaya Street on City Day to anybody. Other venues for celebration are available, but this is our top pick.

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More Information

Had your interest in Soviet and Russian films whetted? Have a look at this website, which has links to Russian language films dubbed or subtitled into English.

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about temporal mechanics in TV and the movies.

Address: Tverskaya Street, Moscow

Metro: Okhotniy Ryad (red line) Teatralnaya (green line) and Ploshard Revolutsii (dark blue line) are at one end, and Chekhovskaya (grey line), Pushkinskaya (purple line) and Tverskaya (green line) at the other.

By other means: What part of the centre is closed to traffic did you not understand?

5 Ways to Celebrate Spring in Moscow, Russia

Spring, it turns out, is a big deal in Russia.

I dunno. I quite enjoyed the snow. But perhaps when you have endured many more winters than one rather mild one, you do get quite excited when the earth finally heats up enough to sustain actual grass, leaves and tulips.

So perhaps it is not surprising that when this happens, which is the beginning of May in Moscow, Russians decide to celebrate All The Things! At Once! With Decorations! And Days Off! And (in Mama and Papa’s case) digging at my school for the ‘subbotnik’, when Russians get out there and tidy up their public spaces after the snow melts and everybody realises how much rubbish and how little grass is left behind.

Lenin kicked off this spring tradition by carrying a log across the Kremlin once. Papa says the log has increased in size over the years as more and more people claim to have been involved. Cool, huh? That Lenin had some tricks, huh?

It probably helped that that this year Orthodox Easter fell on May 1^st too, which is already a public holiday. So Moscow was covered in painted eggs, chicks and other traditional Easter accessories, such as famous model churches from around the world.

Yes, I know you in the Catholic/Protestant block celebrated more than a month before that, but given that I get two Christmases and two New Years out of a weird calendar quirk, the only surprise is that I don’t get two birthdays as well.

Props to the person who decided to place the recreation of Jerusalem in sand, plastercast figures and a real donkey opposite the statue of Karl Marx though. Because the public holiday on May 1^st is not officially about spring but actually for the seriously Communist one of Labour Day, just like it is in what I imagine must be that other bastion of Socialist values, the USA. Albeit on a different date.

Mama particularly enjoyed sitting next to the Bolshoi Theatre in the shadow of faux middle eastern palm trees listening to some old guard pensioners sing Soviet songs while drinking vodka and talking earnestly about politics.

Even Lenin in his mausoleum got dressed up for the occasion.

But for the non-partisan amongst us there were just lots and lots of artificial flowers, old shoes and springtime wildlife.

And arts, crafts and music.

And also, the three bogatyrs, the three legendary heroes, who battle dragons, rescue princesses and overcome other obstacles.

Not quite sure what they have to do with spring, but I Do! Not! Care! Because as well as displays of fighting, they offered a challenge to all comers and my Enthusiastic Big Brother and I got to whack away at large mail covered men with lightly padded giant sticks!

The ancient warriors might have been softening us up for the 9^th of May.

It’s quite a big kuffuffle is Victory Day in Russia, although to be fair if you can’t celebrate the end of a war that left millions dead what can you celebrate?

There is a parade of such extravagance that it requires weeks of practice and many road closures. If you are Mama, you will stroll by all unsuspecting and be confronted with soldiers standing in little knots planning out their tank positions on one day and with the tanks themselves just a few days later. Goodness only knows what she missed the rest of the time.

We did not actually watch the parade itself, mind you. We went to Gorky Park instead. This is because, traditionally, this is where veterans of the Great Patriotic War meet up in their former units and celebrate, generally just by commandeering some plastic chairs and a table and taking over some pathways for their picnics. While they do this, passers by, especially children, give them flowers. It’s nice.

But not quite as much fun as climbing on the tanks down by the river.

We were so exhausted when we got home that we went to bed early. This was a mistake as at 11pm, the whole of Moscow erupted with firework displays and shouts of ‘oorah!’ from the impromptu street parties outside.

Russians make pretty good neighbours, Mama finds, but when they do cut loose, they do it in style. On which note, I give you, the tank car.

Thankyewverymuch and goodnight.

Not that any of this comes close to the strangest traditions and festivals around the rest of the world…. Probably.

If you want to know more about what to do in Moscow all year round, here is THE guide to Moscow, as written by Mama.

More Information

This link will take you to whatever festival Moscow is currently celebrating. At the moment it is fish.

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about how May Day became a workers’ holiday.

Labour Day is May 1st, which is a public holiday. It will be the holiday regardless of which day of the week it falls. If it is a weekend, a weekday will usually be given off in lieu. If it is in the middle of the week, Russians often find themselves working weekends, so they can get a block of days off instead.

Orthodox Easter is not a public holiday and shifts around just like the other Easter does. But because the Orthodox church uses the Julian calendar rather than the Gregorian one it may (or may not) fall on the same day as the Catholic/ Protestant one. Fun, huh?

Victory Day is 9th May and is a public holiday. See above for the complicated dance this may involve. But basically, you can guarantee that from the 1st to the 9th May in Moscow, there will be lots going on.

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Five ways to celebrate spring in Moscow Russia

How to celebrate spring in Moscow Russia

Tram Parade, Moscow 2016

What is it about the universe that it no sooner hears you want to go to an outdoor street party involving a tram parade than it abandons the delightfully mild spring weather it had been experimenting with previously and starts sleeting?

Our trip around the vintage autotechnics was, then, decidedly damp and chilly but the upside, from Mama’s point of view was that she was not forced to watch as we smeared paint all over our freshly washed ready to put away winter coats, because you can’t paint cardboard trams when the cardboard is too soggy to stand up.

The upside from our point of view was puddles. We got to splosh about in them and almost totally ignore the trams. Hours of fun. Fabulous.

However, aside from the terrible weather, the tram parade was very similar to the trolleybus parade we attended earlier in the year (and, Mama is beginning to think, the bus parade we will surely be attending in, apparently, August).

A central street in Moscow was shut down for the occasion. There was a stage pumping out music which Mama is still not convinced had anything to do with trams. Crafting opportunities for children should have existed. Many many balloons emblazoned with trams were blown up and handed out to kids who promptly let go of the strings and cried as their new-found pride and joy sailed off into the nearest tree. People dressed up in clothes from different eras of the trams’ existence wandered around and had their photos taken with the general public. You could climb on and off the old trams, the thematically painted trams and marvel at the fixtures and fittings.

The main differences were that as well as trams there were some old cars.

And as well as passenger trams there were street cleaning trams, breakdown rescue trams and similar.

But best of all, because trams are a much older form of transport than trolleybuses, there was also a, wait for the caps lock, HORSE-DRAWN TRAM!

My Slightly Wet Big Brother and I actually took an interest in that one. Although it was then a massive let down that we did not get to ride away on it when the cavalcade eventually glided off home.

For verily, never let it be said that Mama is not capable of learning from her previous experiences and this time we hung around for the actual end of the show tram parade itself!

Maybe next time we will get stationing ourselves to see the HORSES leave right, or even turn up in time to see the trams arrive. Who knows?

And who also knows, but maybe next time the weather will be better on the date itself, rather than reserving the blue skies and glorious sunshine for the following day.

More information

The website of transport for Moscow, with a lot more photos of the tram parade!

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about Gerald the pornographic elephant and his groupies.

Address: Right next to Chistye Prudy metro station.

Admission: Free!

Opening: 12 noon when the trams arrived until around 4pm when they left.

By public transport: Chistye Prudy metro station (red line, orange line – where it is called Turgenevskaya – and light green line – where it is called Sretensky Bulvar. Yes, this sort of naming convention is confusing. Nevertheless, it is all one station really). Funnily enough, the usual trams weren’t running up this far on the day…

By car: Pfft.

The Historical and Ethnographic Theatre, Moscow

Going to see a theatrical performance of a fairy tale which isn’t a pantomime is an oddly disconcerting experience for Mama. But this was the mission she took on at the Historical and Ethnographic Theatre in Moscow.

Which, incidentally, is a fabulous space. The classical façade notwithstanding, inside someone has gotten busy with the carpentry, and the foyer transports you straight to rural Russia, with the traditional wooden log cabin on your right representing the entrance to the stage, and the typical windows of your average village house on your left inviting you into the café. Wonderful conceit.

Historical and Ethnographic Theatre Foyer Moscow — What is behind this door?

Especially when you do get inside and you find that there are rustic theatre boxes lining the sides of the auditorium, turning it into a sort of peasant Bolshoi theatre.

Boxes at the Historical and Ethnographic Theatre Moscow — How cool are these boxes?

Mama is quietly determined to splash out for one of them as soon as she can manufacture an occasion to faintly justify it. But even the sound and lighting guys and gals at the back had their own little wooden hut to hide out in. It’s all really really cool.

And very intimate as the space is not vast. You’ll get a decent view from wherever you sit, particularly as for our afternoon performance at least, the place was only about half full. This sort of thing is important when you are as short as me and can have your enjoyment of a show ruined by an incautiously tall Papa in front of the seat you are determined to have for your very own.

Anyway. The Historical and Ethnographic Theatre, being a Historical and Ethnographic Theatre, has a regular programme of weekend performances of traditional tales, told in a traditional way and including traditional folk singing and traditional costumes from around the various regions of the Russian Federation and other similar territories.

On the day we went the story was entitled ‘Marya Morevna and Koschei the Deathless’, which is one of the more Slavic ones.

Mama was a bit worried about that, to be honest. She thinks that Russian children’s tales can be a bit frightening – certainly the one about the witch Baba Yaga and her hut on a chicken’s leg surrounded by glowing skulls in her childhood book of magical realism from around the world gave her the screaming heebie jeebies way back when – and the idea of an unkillable antagonist who locks up young women and insists they marry him is not encouraging of peaceful dreams for when we get back home.

No, much better to stick to the ones for really young children, like Kolobok, the chippy little bread roll who gets eaten by a fox in the last act.

But she relaxed when the entire first half of the story seemed not to be about Kosehi at all, but the archetypal Slav hero, Ivan Tsarevich, and his search for his fated wife, Marya Morevna, complete with comedy animal side kicks.

Mama was quite pleased about that plot. Particularly as the entirety of the contribution of the other female characters aside from Marya Morevna, Ivan’s sisters, was to get hitched to strange wizards in the first five minutes. Important, of course, because these wizards would be continually rescuing Ivan from the consequences of his folly for the rest of the play, but hardly a role to aspire to. Mama says.

Marya Morevna herself seemed much more promising to Mama. She’s billed as a warrior princess, for goodness sake, and indeed seems to have quite comfortably kept the dread Koschei (who did eventually make an appearance) chained to the back of her throne until Ivan turned up, got bored and let him out.

Koschei at the Ethnographic Theatre Moscow — Koschei the Deathless revealed!

But then she was relegated to being unsuccessfully rescued by Ivan not once, not twice, but three times. She did get to wheedle the secret of his immortality out of Koshei, how very typically devious and female of her, but all that got her was allowing Ivan and his brothers-in-law to dash about and have more brave manly adventures conquering it. Mama would have been much happier had Marya been the one to lop the monster’s head off at the end.

Unsurprisingly after all that, I thought that the point of the whole thing was the new crown Marya Morevna got when she and Ivan finally got it together. Headdeskheaddeskheaddesk, says Mama, who doesn’t think she is going to have much luck persuading me that the heroine was supposed to be Baba Yaga, who also made an appearance in the second half. Nondescript headgear, the big nose and the one tooth do not compete with sparkly outfits in my eyes, even if Baba Yaga does have four fabulous horses at her command.

Naturally, my Slightly Obsessed Big Brother thought the animal characters were the best bit. In this he is generally excellently served by Russian fairy tales, where talking magical animals are frequently central, and especially excellently served by this retelling, which had foolish frogs, timid mice, clever sparrows, and earthy toads at its disposal. And, I would like to point out to Mama, all of these were female. Mama, however, does not feel that they count, not being human females after all, even if one of the toads did offer to marry Ivan if he didn’t find his Marya.

Still, that’s fairy tales for you. I really don’t know what Mama was expecting. And on the upside were the moments of rather good acting that broke out. Mama particularly enjoyed Koschei, who managed to be not just frightening, but also pathetic, and at the same time the sort of massively irritating person you actively want something faintly unpleasant to happen to all in one bewigged package.

And what’s this? A plot? Well, ok, it is a fairy tale so it rambles around a bit but still, a story with more than one basic episode is almost confusing after so many years of paring Cinderella down to the bone to fit in the business with the ghost, the underpants and the mystery parcel belonging to Buttons. Where were the broad innuendos? The cunning interplay of the traditional story and the latest pop songs? The VERY LOUD soundsystem? The fancy sets and the many set changes? The pyrotechnics? The audience participation? The men dressed as women? The singalong? Not… actually… necessary for an afternoon’s enjoyment, you say?

Well, Mama remains skeptical about that as these aspects do serve to remove her attention from involuntary feminist critique. But we certainly do not and will definitely be going back to the Historical and Ethnographic Theatre to see some of the other performances. Vassilya the Beautiful sounds suitably focused on pretty dresses and prince charmings to me. Mama is nodding with suspiciously enthusiastic agreement…

More Information

The theatre’s website.

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about Baba Yaga, witch, crone and archetype.

Address: 3 Ulitsa Rudnevoi, Moscow, 129327

Performances: The performances of plays probably more interesting for adults Thursday through Sunday at 7pm. Children’s shows, including but by no means limited to Marya Morevna and Koschei the Deathless, are on Saturdays and Sundays at 12 noon.

Ticket prices: Between 300 roubles (£3) and 800 roubles (£8) depending on where you sit. Oddly, there is no information about how you hire a box.

Public Transport: The nearest station to the Historical and Ethnographic Theatre is actually the overland train station. You want to get one of the local elektrichka trains out of Yarolslavskaya Station (metro Komsomolskaya) and get off at Losinostrovskaya. If you head straight out of the station and keep going down the road, the theatre will be a couple of minutes walk on your left.

The nearest metro is Babushkinskaya, and from there it is either a good 20 minutes walk straight up Menjinskovo Ulitsa or you can get the 124, 174, or 238 buses or the 88 or 38 marshutka and get off at the station. The theatre is on a parallel road. You need the last wagon of the train, turn right into the underpass and right up the stairs, cross over Minjinskovo Ulitsa to the bus stop on the other side (or turn left and keep walking, if that’s your decision).

By other means: Well, you might be able to park in the station car park.

The Great Moscow New Year Lights Walk 2015

There are, I am finding, one or two differences between Moscow and London.

Take Christmas decorations. In London, the most interesting ones are done by the people trying to entice you into their shops to buy their wares and in Moscow, there aren’t any.

This is because in the Soviet Union, under the communists, Christmas was banned. Or at least energetically discouraged. So, in an interesting reversal of what the Christians did to the Pagan midwinter festivals, everybody celebrates New Year instead in a way which is almost entirely like the Christmases of elsewhere. Christmas trees? Are New Year trees. But otherwise largely indistinguishable. Father Christmas? Is Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost), ably assisted by his granddaughter, Snegurochka (the Snow Maiden). Traditional television that everybody looks forward to? It’s no Doctor Who Christmas Special, but it exists. Family dining on an epic scale? Yes, got that, although it happens at midnight on 31st. And yes, everybody suffers through the leftovers for the next ten days too. There are even traditional sporting events the day after the big day. Swimming in ice holes mostly. Natch.

So what you are seeing when you walk around Moscow in the second half of December, are actually New Year decorations. Any insidious Christmas creep – the markets which spring up tend to be called Christmas markets, which is not surprising as they are as much of a blatant rip off of the same European phenomenon as they are in the UK – is dampened by the fact that the Orthodox celebration of the birth of Jesus is on 7th January. It’s fighting a losing battle is expecting people to delay gratification that long.

It’s not all pillaging from the West though. Mama was bemused by the sheer number of monkey themed items in all the shops this year until she remembered that Russians like to add whatever the animal from the Chinese horoscope is coming up next to their celebrations, and to hell with the fact that the respective New Years don’t line up at all and it’s a different belief system altogether.

When you receive a Christmas card from Mama with a cavorting rat, cow or dragon in a Santa hat covered in snow on the front, do not be surprised.

Of course, all this means that my Superb Big Brother and I get three separate days of being given presents, as Mama and Papa try to cover all their cultural bases in one marathon blow out. Every now and again being bi-cultural has its advantages. For us children.

Anyway.

Following the wild success of our London Christmas Window Scavenger Hunt in 2014, Mama thought it would be fun to get into the Christ… New Y… seasonal spirit by seeing what central Moscow had to offer, especially now that most of it is pedestrianised and considerably less overflowing with manic Christmas shoppers given that the centre of Moscow is mostly home to extremely high-end retail emporiums, and also given that Moscow tends to go in for bread and circuses on an epic scale for every public holiday of note.

2016 lights at Lubyanka in Moscow — There are a number of these in various locations around Moscow. In case you forget what year comes after 2015 I guess.

Christmas Market Moscow 2015 — One of the many bijou Christmas markets on every available square in the centre of Moscow.

Christmas trees and slush Moscow 2015 — Moscow is going for a record in the number of Christmas trees (New Year trees) ever displayed by any capital city. Ditto, slush.

Yolka Christmas Tree Lubyanka Moscow — It’s a good thing much of Russia is still covered in forest. This is just a roundabout usually.

Yolka Christmas Tree on Manezh Moscow — This is the main Christmas tree (NEW YEAR TREE) on Manezh Square, right next to the Kremlin and behind Red Square.

Dancing at New Year Moscow Lights 2015 — Dancing is also popular at New Year.

Dancing at New Year Moscow Lights Kissing 2015 — As is, I dunno, kissing.

Giant Bauble on Manezh in the snow Moscow — The giant bauble has landed.

Giant blue bauble Manezh Moscow — It changes colour.

Giant multicoloured bauble on Manezh Moscow — Lots of different colours.

Historical Museum from the bauble Moscow — You can go inside the bauble and photograph the Historical Museum.

New Year floating lights Moscow — Flying saucers are also a traditional part of any Russian New Year celebration. The melting snow, not so much, but we sure enjoyed paddling in it.

Fairytale Castle Lights Moscow — This fairytale castle is in pieces all over Moscow. Mama recommends you check out the Bolshoi, which we didn’t due to having gotten damp in the rivers of melting snow and needing to be taken home by this point.

Street of stars New Year Moscow — This street is just pretty.

TsUM window New Year Moscow — TsUM gets into the spirit of Christmas (or New Year).

Russian Army Shop Window New Year Moscow — As does, and I kid you not here, the Red Army’s fashion outlet.

Hotel National Moscow New Year Window — The windows of the Hotel National are Mama’s favourite though.

Inside Detskii Mir Moscow at New Year — This is the inside of the former Detskii Mir (Children’s World), now the Central Children’s Shop (not the same ring to it – they should never have sold off the name). Fun to wander around, difficult to prise us out of without a tantrum.

Inside Gum at New Year Moscow — GUM, on the other hand, has a giant satsuma hanging from the roof.

2016 Lights Moscow Tverskaya — Hello 2016, here we come!

2016 Lights Moscow — Happy New Year! See you all again soon!

And finally…

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about how Mama will be celebrating.

Trolleybus Parade 2015, Moscow

There is something splendidly foreign about trams and trolleybuses.

Yes, alright, Mama is aware that London, Manchester and Edinburgh (at least) have their own versions, but let’s face it they are at best curiosities and at worst the local council’s expensive vanity project. It’s not like having the whole town crisscrossed by overhead wiring.

Of course, many people feel the same way about double-decker buses. Actually, I feel that way about double-decker buses. Nothing like riding on the top floor! At the front! Especially, and you have no idea how much is galls Mama to admit this, the revamped old style Routemasters which the um flamboyant? Let’s go with flamboyant. The flamboyant mayor of London, Boris Johnson, spent a lot of money bringing back on the more touristy routes in London. No, really, if you are there I insist you wander down to the bottom of Hyde Park and pick up a number 9 going towards the centre of town. You get to climb up a windy staircase at the back! Even the seats are retro styling! Never gets old.

Mind you, Mama quite liked the controversial bendy buses which the um flamboyant? Let’s go with flamboyant. The flamboyant mayor of London, Boris Johnson, got rid of. Luckily we have a lot of them here in Moscow out in the suburbs. There is no danger of them squashing cyclists because nobody cycles. Mama is still twitching as she crosses roads in anticipation of being mown down by a phalanx of manically determined two wheelers attacking her out of nowhere in rush hour but in about five more years she may stop obsessively checking for this oncoming menace before she steps out. PTSD I say.

Bicycle and trolleybus at the trolleybus parade

Mama is a bit of a transport geek, isn’t she? You might be wondering if she has a little notebook full of train serial numbers.

No.

It’s just that a) if she is on a bus in London, she is not trying to drive across it and b) there’s really nothing like everyday transport solutions to produce a delightful frisson of otherness when you are somewhere unfamiliar. Mama really believes that when it comes to abroad, obviously there’s something in the showstopper sights, the must-visit museums, the never to be repeated experiences, the explosive taste sensations and whatnot. But the most interesting thing about it for Mama is the oddly flavoured chocolate bars, the infinitesimal look of horror people give as she absent-mindedly tries to shake their hand and the weird-ass programmes they show on TV.

It’s why this is not a proper travel blog. Mama thinks that on her budget travel sounds uncomfortable, and she also likes to be very sure of where her next coffee is coming from. This goes double now she has children.

Living in another country, on the other hand, now that’s cool.

It’s unlikely, for example, that if you were just a casual visitor to Moscow this last weekend you would have bothered turning out for the increasingly annual trolleybus parade (now in its third year) to celebrate the 82nd anniversary of trolleybuses in the capital of Russia. Not least because Mama had to venture on to the Russian Internet to find out exactly what roads they were going to be trundling along at what time.

Red and white trolleybus at the trolleybus parade

In which she failed, to be honest. Mama considers the actual parade scheduling information provided by the various websites she ineptly skimmed to be insufficient for the purposes of pitching up somewhere along the route with two easily bored children.

Luckily, they were also planning to have a static display of the trolleybuses in question down by the river, opposite Gorky Park. So we went to that, aiming to arrive around oneish so as to give the trolleybuses time to parade there on the off-chance that the widely quoted 12 noon start was referring to the parade and not to the time they would available for climbing all over.

Because, let’s face it, there is nothing as exciting as getting on, walking through and climbing off a trolleybus which looks almost, but not entirely, like the ones we get on and off on a regular basis every day here in Moscow.

Modern trolleybus at the trolleybus parade

Nicely painted on the outside, though. And there were people inside who were there to answer any and all transport questions that might occur to you as you saunter through the carriage. So of course, my Brilliant Big Brother asked one of them about the giraffe picture on one of the posters inside one of the cars. I am happy to report that trolleybus experts also know their animal factology too, or at least that this representation wasn’t a giraffe as such but a fantasy animal on a book cover connected to the person the trolleybus was dedicated to. Good to get that cleared up.

Yellow trolleybus at the trolleybus parade

However, Mama recommends that if you should visit around this time next year you start at the other end of the line of trolleybuses because by the time we got to the older, more interesting models we children were a bit trolleybused out, and really really long queues were starting to develop for the pleasure of nosing around inside them. Mama managed to drag us onto the one with the extra-large windows but after that we rebelled and insisted on exploring the child friendly activities.

Trolleybus with big windows at the trolleybus parade

Which mostly consist of painting opportunities.

Cardboard painted trolleybus at the trolleybus parade

Regular readers are probably familiar with Mama’s view of the British insistence on including water play in all playgrounds or play areas, which, if you are an irregular visitor here, mostly consists of heartfelt swearing. When we moved to Moscow, Mama was smug in that she was pretty sure that Russians would never ever spring that on her except in the height of summer. Keeping your children warm is a concept people take very seriously here. Water play in anything less than 30 degrees centigrade is almost as bad as draughts.

But Mama was complacent too soon as what she has discovered is that in Moscow, the menace of unexpected dampness has been replaced by the Russian insistence on providing kids with things to paint at every public celebration.

Why? Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhyyyyyyyy? Whyohwhyohwhy? Says Mama.

Woohoo! Say I. And emerge from inside the cardboard trolleybus model twenty minutes later with a new colour of hat and an interesting new pattern on my coat.

3D cardboard painted trolleybus at the trolleybus parade

And that’s despite the fact that they’d pretty much run out of paints by the time we got there.

That is, frankly, the expat experience in a nutshell. You really like bits of your home country and (hopefully) your host country, but some things from both places are intensely irritating. What you want is a third pick and mix option where children can be entertained in a dry and mess free manner. Says Mama. I’d go for hot and cold running kolbassa and unlimited access to flavoured rice cakes myself.

At the trolleybus parade there were also food vans, a stage pumping out dancing and loud music, presumably trolleybus related although Mama did not really pay much attention to this, some giant rabbits organising children’s games, lots of balloons and people wandering around in period clothing for you to pose with. All good clean fun.

We hung about for about an hour all told and then, as it started to get very busy indeed, bailed over the bridge to Gorky Park, which has some lovely autumnal avenues to gallop around, children with remote-controlled cars to play with, and hot chocolate. Mama recommends that should you decide to attend the trolleybus parade next year, you turn up earlier rather than later. Or bring a book.

And fortuitously, as we were waiting for the regular trolleybus to take us home, we caught the trolleybus parade after all as the celebration wound up and the trolleybuses made their way past us back to wherever they live when not on display in the centre of Moscow. All part of the plan! Mama said. Unconvincingly.

More information

One of the pages Mama read when trying to figure out where to pick up the trolleybus parade.

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about the Ebbelwei-Express, an unusual tram in Frankfurt am Main.

Location: This year, the static part of the festival was down by the river on Frunzenskaya Embankment, next to the Krymskiy Bridge.

Allegedly, the trolleybus parade started at Filivskiovo bus/ trolleybus station, although whether that was at 12 or an earlier time in order to reach the river by 12 Mama couldn’t tell you. She has put it on her list of things to find out (things Papa will find out) by next year.

Admission: Free

Metro: The nearest station is Park Kultury on the red and brown lines. You could also use Oktyabrskaya on the orange and brown lines if you don’t mind a bit of a walk over the bridge down to the other side of the river, or another red line station, Frunzenskaya (head over the road and down from the large square building you pop up out of the Metro from) if you want to wander left along the embankment of the Moscow river past the imposing government building first.

By trolleybus: Of course, you probably should arrive (or leave) by trolleybus. The circular B and BK routes stop right by the river (and outside Gorky Park) and then take you right round the centre of Moscow, hitting a number of Metro stations on the way.

Morden Hall Park Country Show, London

Mama was curious when she heard that Morden Hall Park was having their annual Country Show. It might be the National Trust’s little green oasis in South West London but it’s still three hours of traffic jams away from being free of houses everywhere you look. She thought, in fact, that there might be a touch of the artificial rural themepark about the affair.

Luckily, within five minutes of arriving we were sat on the ground at the edge of a large square of grass watching terrier racing. Which did not go well. Rather than just chasing the lure up and down, the dogs kept catching it, despite the fact it was pedalled enthusiastically but somewhat ineffectually by means of a converted exercise bike. Plus, terriers, being small, were pretty hard to see running in the middle of the arena anyway. Mama was delighted. No coldly slick professional tourist fleecers here! Hurrah!

There were a lot of other shows, most involving animals, throughout the day and they were all fab. The small pony jumping display was about as cute as it is possible to get without actually being cats, in boxes, on Facebook.

The large shire horse equestrian trick riding and danceathon came complete with the bareback strip tease, which has got to be a plus in anybody’s book surely, although Mama chose just that moment to wander off for an ice cream so perhaps not.

And then there was the crotchety elderly gent who rammed a nail through his nose, confused my Splendid Big Brother by offering to make him a balloon animal and then presenting him with a long straight tube which turned out to be a worm, or possibly a snake, or even a caterpillar, but redeemed himself in our eyes for this betrayal by breathing fire LIKE A DRAGON.

Not forgetting the ferret racing either, an event my Splendid Big Brother was so keen to see that we had to stay for a good hour beyond what I thought was strictly necessary. Of course, Mama ended up bribing me by winning TWO WHOLE TOYS via what she thinks was a suspiciously easy fishing game designed to (successfully) convince my Splendid Big Brother and me that their parents’ hitherto unsuccessful attempts to win a giant fluffy bunny on such attractions have been unusual bad luck, so it wasn’t all bad. Plus, extra goes on the trampolines!

And the ferrets were well worth the wait as they raced through a course consisting mostly of tubes, especially because the person in charge made a point of wiping the ferrets over our hair a couple of times after they had finished each round. He said it was because ferrets need to be kept flexible so you need to circle them around a lot. Mama thinks it was pure mischievousness, because the very pungent ferrety smell followed us all the way home. In fact, Mama thinks she may never get rid of the memory of it.

Best of all, we thought, was the bird of prey display. Now Mama feels that the bird of prey display at the Scottish Owl Centre had the edge, because while the handlers here at Morden Hall Park Country Show were clearly practiced at working a large arena, it still wasn’t quite the same as being overflown on every other pass by a large feathered shape.

But then on the other hand, because the Scottish show is indoors, you don’t get the thrill of watching a MASSIVE white hawklike bird soaring and swooping freely up, over, through and around the audience for about five minutes while attempting to catch the tidbit whirled by the man standing in the middle of the field. AWESOME. Literally. Especially because we got to be some of the lucky few children picked to sit inside the grass square the better to experience it even closer up.

In fact, the opportunities to get up close and personal with a large number of farm animals were something we urbanites really appreciated about the Morden Hall Park event. What was great here was that it wasn’t just about touching, but also interacting. So as well as gazing blissfully the ponies through a fence, we got to brush them down. As well as admiring the rabbits over a wall, we sat down with them on our laps and fondled their floppy little ears. And we didn’t just tempt the lambs with grass from the outside of their pen, we also went inside and bottle fed them.

Which turns out to be more of an extreme sport than I had imagined, because those lambs were really hungry when we started! It’s a good thing, Mama thinks, that I have had plenty of practice in defending myself against toy snatching attacks and similar by my Splendid Big Brother, because a less doughty child might have been a bit put out by being rushed by four footed beasts who were definitely on the larger side of lambhood. As it was, though, I loved it, and my Splendid Big Brother was beside himself with joy. We did that, in fact, twice.

Big up, in short, to the Totally Alive team, who were the animal experiences outfit providing all of the furry action at the Country Show.

Things Mama could have spent more time looking at if we had let her included the demonstrations of traditional crafts such as blacksmithing and basket weaving.

She also could have lingered round the historical battle re-enactors and the Renaissance fair archers for longer.

And there were a lot of stalls selling what Mama would probably call interesting handmade knickknacks and we called too far away from the bouncy castles. Which were large, plentiful, included those giant inflatable slides I REALLY enjoy and overall FABULOUS! And Mama will give them this. They may have advertised that each go would last a mere five minutes, but we got considerably longer.

In fact, the only thing that Morden Hall Park Country Show didn’t seem to have was an amateur misshapen vegetable growers prize, a lopsided homemade cake contest or a competition to see who could produce the piece of handicraft most unlike anything seen on Kirsty’s Homemade Britain. Disappointing. Maybe next year. Mama’s Victoria sponge is really something and deserves to be far more widely known about.

So all in all, Mama thought this was a well-arranged event and well worth spending our bank holiday Monday at. The Country Show at Morden Hall Park is now over, of course, but the organisers, Oakleigh Fairs, run these basically every weekend up and down the South East almost all year round and I am sure that the animal acts, sideshows and rides are pretty much exactly the same at all of the ones that aren’t, y’know, promoting Christmas. So you might want to see if there is one coming to a venue near you anytime soon. Because we really enjoyed ourselves.

And of course, for Morden Hall Park, there’s always next year.

More Information

Oakleigh Fairs website.

Totally Live website.

Morden Hall Park’s page on the National Trust’s website.

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about making your own cloak.

Address: Morden Hall Road, Morden, London, SM4 5JD

Opening: The Country Show was open 10am to 5pm. Morden Hall Park itself is open dawn to dusk.

Admission: Tickets for the Country Show were £7.50 for adults and £3 for kids over 5. You could buy cheaper ones in advance via the web. Some attractions cost extra, but the live animal shows and handling were free. Entry to Morden Hall Park itself is free.

By tube: Morden (Northern Line) is a 500 yards walk along Aberconway Road.

By tram: The Phipps Bridge stop sets you down right at the back gates.

By bus: There are a fair number of bus routes that serve the surrounding roads.

By car: Morden Hall Park has, good lord, a car park. In London! I know!!! Which isn’t huge, but still. For the fair, they threw open a few more fields for cars too, which Mama wishes she had known they were going to do before she took us via the very convoluted public transport routes from our area.

The tram’s great though. Use the tram!