Flying to Moscow: a story

 

Nobody could call me a frequent flyer. The number of times I have been on board a plane in my life is precisely eleven, and the reason why this is not an even number comes from the circumstances of my first airborne foray.

In 1976 I started my first professional post as a librarian, this being part of the Library Services team of the British Council, working at its London HQ just off Trafalgar Square. Our job was to support the British Council libraries spread across the world.

The following year, three of the more junior members of the Department were told that they would each be sent on a short assignment to an overseas library. This would not only help to solve specific problems that had arisen but would give each of us a taste of what we could expect if we took an overseas posting later on.

The three of us knew that the assignments were to Amsterdam, Yaoundé (in Cameroon) and Moscow, but it was a toss-up as to who got which. 

I got Moscow. The job was to extend an existing small collection in the Cultural Section of the British Embassy, with a view to it acting as a postal library for learners of English across the Soviet Union, which did not have a British Council library as such. I was to make two visits – one to survey the scene and place orders for new stock, and the second to put everything in place and compile a catalogue once the stock had arrived.

For my first trip I was to stop over in Warsaw to visit the British Council library there and get advice from the staff about what would be suitable for Moscow. My first flight was therefore from London Heathrow to Warsaw.

However, it was the second flight, from Warsaw to Moscow, that was far more interesting!

This was a Swissair route from Zurich to Moscow via Warsaw, so the plane was already half full when I boarded. A number of seats on one side of the plane were occupied by a group of smartly dressed people who, I was told by a fellow passenger, were members of an American professional tennis team on a European tour. I wondered if I would recognize any of them but failed to do so until one face caught my eye. The round glasses, the short hair – it could only be Billie-Jean King! So I was sharing a flight with one of the best-known people in women’s tennis – what an honour!

The flight itself was smooth enough, apart from having to fly around an enormous thundercloud somewhere over Belarus, and I was interested to see the landscape of Russia as we flew lower on our approach to Sheremetyevo Airport. From my window seat I could see someone’s dacha in the woods, which must have been close to the airport perimeter. I wondered how the owner felt about the constant noise from aircraft taking off and landing.

But I did not have long to wonder, because our landing was imminent. I could see the flaps on the wings being extended and heard the wheels lock into place. We had to be very close to the runway.

Only - we didn’t land. We could only have been a few feet from touchdown when the nose of the plane was tilted upwards, the flaps slid back into place and the engines roared into life. We took off again and spent the next few minutes circling above the airport, which incidentally gave us a splendid aerial view of Moscow. The captain explained that he had had to abort the landing because there was another plane already on the runway that we would have hit had we continued. Presumably this was a little fact that Air Traffic Control had forgotten to mention!

We landed safely enough the second time around and everyone got ready to leave the plane. There were two exits – front and rear – and I made for the front one. The plane disgorged its passengers out on the tarmac and an airport bus was there to take us to the terminal. We all got on board and found that there were only a few seats with most of the space taken by luggage racks and standing room for passengers to straphang on the short journey across the airport.

The bus started off and made a U-turn which took it round the back of the aeroplane. That was when we could see the passengers who had used the rear exit, Billie-Jean included,  all standing on the steps with nowhere to go. The bus driver seemed to be totally oblivious to the fact that the plane had two exits and he was supposed to collect passengers from both of them. At least, he was oblivious until somebody pointed this out to him. 

He then performed another U-turn, but this was considerably sharper than the first one. The bus nearly went on two wheels as it swung round. Bags flew off luggage racks and straphangers, including me, were knocked off their feet and landed in unseemly heaps on top of each other. We were still getting ourselves sorted out when the bus stopped, the doors opened, and the members of an American tennis team stood there staring at the chaos within.

I don’t know if Billie-Jean King remembers this incident – she has done far more travelling in her life than I ever have, and probably has plenty of tales she could tell – but it was an occasion that I have never forgotten. It was an interesting introduction to the Soviet Union! What would happen next, I wondered.

© John Welford

A lengthy lunch in Moscow

For five weeks during the summer of 1977 I was in Moscow, working at the British Embassy (see photo) to set up a library within the Cultural Section. This proved to be a fascinating time, not least for the string of distinguished visitors who came and went. I once made a cup of tea for the architect Sir Hugh Casson and on another occasion shook hands with the Foreign Secretary at that time, who was David Owen.

As a guest of the Embassy’s diplomatic staff I worked hours that fitted their routine, which meant early starts but long lunch breaks, with two hours being allowed. On most days I made my own lunch arrangements and used the time to explore Moscow on my own, but sometimes I was taken out to lunch, usually when a guest was being wined and dined and I was asked along to make up the numbers.

One particular lunch sticks in the memory. I don’t remember the name of the restaurant to which we went, but it was somewhere in central Moscow. As might have been expected, we were shown to a table (I think there were six of us present on this occasion), bread rolls were buttered, water was poured into glasses and menus were brought for our perusal.

It took some time for a waiter to turn up and take our orders, but when he did some sort of disagreement appeared to take place. I couldn’t follow the conversation, as I spoke no Russian, but I learned afterwards that the waiter was telling someone that a certain dish was off the menu today despite the fact that diners on other tables were happily tucking into the dish in question.

It was explained to me afterwards that restaurants such as this operated almost as three or more restaurants under the same roof. Although the dining room was undivided, each mini-restaurant controlled its own set of tables and the waiter looking after one set would have nothing at all to do with any other set; there was therefore no point in catching the eye of a passing waiter who was not “your” waiter. Likewise, the kitchen was divided between the domains of three or more chefs who not only had their own under-chefs and waiters but they also set their own menus and bought the food themselves from the local market. Two or more menus might share the same items, but that was always down to chance.

With the orders taken we sat back and waited. Then we waited some more. And some more. Nothing arrived at our table and the waiter was nowhere to be seen. Other waiters came and went to other tables, where orders were placed, food was provided and eaten, bills were paid and diners departed, all during the time that we were sitting waiting.

It was more than an hour before any of the orders on our table were satisfied. Fortunately the conversation was interesting enough for the time to pass reasonably swiftly, and, given that everyone present had a professional reason for being there, the time was not wasted in idle chit-chat.

Eventually, the food arrived and things proceeded as normal.

It was explained to me afterwards that this sort of thing was not unknown, and that this was one reason for the two-hour lunch breaks. This was Moscow in 1977, the Communist Soviet regime was in full swing with Leonid Brezhnev in charge of an empire that extended from the River Elbe to the Pacific Ocean. At the heart of Communist ideology was the concept that everyone was equal, although George Orwell had a point when he stated that some were more equal than others.

If everyone is equal, then everyone has a right to at least an hour for lunch, starting at the time stated in their contract. If a waiter has taken an order a minute before one, and his lunch break is from one until two, then he is under no obligation to do anything with that order until he has had his own lunch and come back to work.

In other words, our waiter went to lunch with our order in his pocket. When he came back, the order went to the kitchen and the food was prepared. It all made perfect sense, in a bizarre kind of way.

This happened at around the time that Douglas Adams was writing the first drafts of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. He was not present on the occasion just related, but – if he had been – it might have been just the inspiration for his famous line: “Time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so”.

© John Welford