My current location is a small city in a relatively safe area. I’m not going to be specific for reasons of operational security. Especially given my new readership. It has been a peaceful place, but of course the war has brought it’s own trauma to the people who live here and those who have been relocated here.
We are still establishing safe houses and refuges for our clients staff who are evacuating from the cities due to the ongoing attacks and of course, the targeted destruction of infrastructure. It’s getting much colder now and winter is certainly coming. The 21st of December is officially winter and that’s a few weeks away yet, but you can feel it in your bones.
One of the benefits of maintaining a presence in one place for a long period of time is that you get to know the patterns of life in a location. I have mentioned those patterns before in the context of anticipating enemy action by looking for the ‘absence of the normal’ which in an urban setting is shuttered shops, deserted squares, no women and children on the streets etc. As an ‘operator’ or soldier, that tells you that something might be about to happen and you’d better prepare accordingly.
Currently in Ukraine, unless you’re on the front line and I am not, the war comes to you when you are least expecting it, in the middle of the night, when you are sleeping or in the day when you’re out shopping or picking the kids up from school. It comes in the form of missiles and suicide drones in the main and despite a very good air defence network, there’s often little to no warning. Consequently, most of the casualties are civilians and it’s heartbreaking to see how many victims there are every day. The government doesn’t release figures of its military casualties, but it certainly does with its civilian victims as it hardens everyones hearts even further against the invaders.
I mentioned that I am in a safe area and it’s really quite beautiful. However, a lot of the architecture could be politely described as ‘Soviet’ and it’s falling apart, but in the older part of town, the buildings are like ageing actresses, still classically beautiful, but with softening features. In this particular town, the older buildings are set around a large park and a lake that is magnificent in summer. I make myself speed march around it a few times almost every morning and as I can’t get out of the habit, you really get to know the ‘patterns of life’
As I set out at around 06:30, it’s still dark at this time of the year. The temperature commonly hovers between -1 and +4 degrees Celsius most mornings. There’s occasionally a frost and the dirty puddles crunch underfoot on the way to the park. Everyone is rugged up and has their heads down. Occasionally someone will make eye contact, but that’s unusual. This is another hangover from when the Russians were in charge. Anyone who was overtly friendly was deemed suspect and a potential spy, to be avoided at all costs.
On my route, I see the same people, almost every day and now that I am almost part of their pattern of life, some of them will acknowledge me with a ‘Dobry den’ the universal ‘good day’ greeting that can be used at any time of day. As dawn starts to break, the first people I see are usually the homeless. Some of them live rough, in a makeshift camp on the edge of the lake. The council don’t like this and they have pulled their shelters down. Like a lot of homeless people everywhere, they live with substance abuse habits combined with mental illness and since I have been walking here, I have seen two suicides and heard of a couple more. They rarely make eye contact but the exception is one very small grimy but attractive looking lady who does the rounds of the rubbish bins first thing in the morning. She will look you directly in the eye, probably deciding whether you are a threat, part of the furniture or a mark. I said a loud ‘Dobry den’ to her one day and each time she sees me now, she always returns the greeting, but in English with her gap toothed smile. There’s no real blending in here clearly.
The next human I usually see is someone who reminds me of the Russian President in his ‘shirt off, most masculine’ pose. ‘Vlad’ as I call him, works out by the lake edge to the beat of fast paced techno music shirtless even in this weather, with an automated bell ringing out to signal to him the time to change from the barbell to the dumbbell. He always has two or three dogs lying nearby with flashing collars, so he can see where they are in the dark. There are two not unattractive, middle aged ladies, with full faces of makeup at seven in the morning, watching everyone with a slightly predatory side eye as they smoke their morning cigarette by the coffee stand. They already smell of peroxide, cheap perfume and hairspray and so I call them the beauticians. I wonder if they are coming back from work or about to go to it?
A very large Mastiff dog ambles along the the path, dragging a very short, ruddy faced man with a body shaped like the dwarf known as Gimli in the Lord of the Rings. He has no beard, but is as confidently aggressive as his namesake and he always waves and says ‘Dobry’ to me. I call him the Mayor as everyone who passes always stops to talk to him and shakes his hand.
The park has a lot of water birds and both red and black squirrels. I haven’t seen any other mammals, other than the stray dogs, but I do regularly see a distinctive white pigeon with a grey blaze on his left shoulder. I always look out for him in the one place and Jack, (my colleague mentioned in UKR6), dubbed the bird my ‘spirit animal’ Occasionally days will go by when I don’t see him and I feel strangely sad.
There is a lovely older couple (actually, probably my age…) who always walk together. She is small, he is tall and I see she holds his hand tightly, has her forearm wrapped around his and she tucks her head into the hollow near his armpit. The first time I saw them she smiled broadly at me and unbidden wished me a ‘good morning’ in perfect English. It was probably the pasty white legs in shorts that gave me away. I like to imagine that they were two people who got together later in life and are now absolutely devoted to each other and can’t bear to be apart. Apropos of nothing, I am unaccountably reminded of the park bench in the movie ‘Notting Hill’ that is inscribed “For June who loved this garden, from Joseph who always sat beside her”
There is a park admin building with a very well looked after loo half way round and the park workers gather here in the morning before fanning out to clean the place up. It was in this area where Jack and I came across a body half in and half out of the lake. I thought I recognised him as one of the rough sleepers whose shelter had been torn down a few days previously and his sightless eyes were staring accusingly towards the park building. One cold morning I saw a man in an old ski jacket standing oddly by the water. I had wondered if he was fishing, or perhaps peeing. It wasn’t until my second lap when the light had improved, that I noticed he hadn’t moved and as I looked closer, I saw that he’d hung himself from a tree while standing upright. The park workers were moving grimly towards him, so I carried on. He had gone by the time I passed the spot again.
There is an old derelict hotel close to the water that looks slightly sinister when there’s mist on the surface of the lake. Recently, I saw that it obviously still had power going to it as there were lightbulbs burning where you wouldn’t expect them to be. There is also a small dilapidated jetty by the waters edge and there are usually a couple of hardy individuals who like to dive in off it and swim the width of the lake, competing with each other not to pant loudly because of the cold, instead nonchalantly exchanging pleasantries as they pass each other. Non swimming men surrounded by last nights empty beer cans smoke and talk quietly to each other and I am pretty sure that at least some of them are the rough sleepers who have moved from the lake shore to the derelict hotel. Hopefully, the building offers more shelter than a tarpaulin.
Despite the cold, there are fishermen and they are all men, sitting on upturned buckets by the edge as I lap the lake for the first time. I have never seen anyone pull anything large enough to eat out of the green soupy looking water but there must be something worth catching as they spend a lot of time trying. As I pass them, I am reminded of the old gag – a passer by calls out to the old fisherman hunched over his rod and asks “what is there to catch in there? “Weils disease” replies the man. Yep, I won’t be swimming.
