20th July – Everyone says how do you do, down on Jollity Farm.

This is the sort of place where just a few years ago, people would have pointed at planes.

I once met a veteran at an anniversary of the 6^th June landings in Normandy. We were close to a site of what had been a prolonged battle. Their mission, he told me, had been to take the hill, which was under German control, because it commanded a view of the entire area. There they were, the Allied Forces at the bottom, the Germans looking down at them from an established position at the top… WITH… a farm in between them both! He told me stories of men lost; of how snipers picked off their comrades as they carried them, injured, on their backs, back down the hill to safety; of how they eventually prevailed. But the fascinating part of the story for me was that the business of the farm went on as normal throughout it all. A cameo of Total War, where men were trying earnestly to kill each other, had, in the midst of that squall of bullets, cowherds and milkmaids going to and fro with their cattle.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=VwksszrDYNw%3Fstart%3D7%26end%3D25

It stayed with me, that absurd image – true as it was, it was difficult to imagine it as something real. But now I have seen it. A ravaged landscape; a chaos of concrete and metal where buildings once stood; no-go areas; a constancy of activity in the skies above us; a desolate sort of doom in and around us. And yet… life continues. But though the Ukraine still has an agricultural economy, there are no small farms to provide the landscape of battle here. The farms are enormous, and the war is modern and large scale; and everyone not engaged in it, people whose predecessors would have once provided the agricultural labour force, now go to offices and perform service sector jobs.

I have been searching for the best way to describe a sensation which I know reasonably well. When I first set out to do so, I assumed that almost everyone would be as familiar with it as I was, but the closer I’ve got to this point, the more I doubted quite how universal this experience was.  So, I’ll start by asking: is this something you know? You go to the house of a friend/parent/work colleague who is not in, or is busy getting ready to go out with you, and you are forced to pass a few moments with the man of the house, who you don’t know. And the two of you sit there in a silence that is only awkward for you.

The man (it’s only men that do this) is unmoved by the silence; often he continues to eat – doing that silent, closed-mouth, munching thing, like he is determined to finish eating every morsel of his meal before he consents to acknowledge your presence. He may do something else too, like read, or watch the television, but in my experience it’s all about eating. He eats, studiously ignoring you, as if the act of eating is an assertion of his right to live by his rules in this little dominion he has created. It always felt like an English thing to me – that munching, the faux manners of it; a statement of his measured propriety, a marker of exclusion; and the dabbing of the lips with a napkin at the end of it all. I live here. You don’t.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=HtnSiwvgTGk%3Fstart%3D32%26end%3D68

Then there’s the process that follows it: the purposely too-thorough washing of hands, the nail brush routine; the very particular drying up protocol; the collection of the suit jacket; the climbing into it in that just-so way; the formal inspection of appearance in the mirror, neither admiring, nor critical – just a check to see that each of the components are where they should be; not one element of the entire process ever cut-short to accommodate anyone else. Then the gathering together of things and packing of the briefcase; the parting messages; the long, cold, toothless, begrudging smile, which says, “I’m going now, so you’d better get out” – the action that demotes you and your waiting place to the outside of the house. No words said. Only thoughts. His assumed authority which makes known his intentions by a look alone. Aloof, cold, condescending, unfriendly, arrogant. You, a nobody, who will be made to feel like an unwelcome visitor until the unsolicited stay is over. Him an important person who owns a handsome house and dictates the rules by which it is run. Now it is soiled; until now, it had been kept hermetically sealed and sterile. But you came.

New friend Джон (John) arrives back on the porch as Chew-Chew closes the front door behind us. John tries to tell him that I am English. It’s an attempt to curry favour, by persuading him that I represent the country that has done so much for their country during this war. Chew-Chew looks at me from top to bottom, taking in what remains of my filthy wardrobe, and makes his own decision about my worth.

What to do? There persists this inequality of bargaining power. Do you continue to meet their silence with your own, or is yours the more ignorant for your failure to thank them for their hospitality; to congratulate them on their prosperity and home; to make a bridge with them – ‘I am a bit like you in real life’? Perhaps the only mission is one of self-preservation – to show this boor that they have not got to you? How would they respond to you if the roles were reversed?

I hadn’t said a word until then, which, when re-played afterwards, would perhaps have felt like a tolerably good response to dealing with a snake like that, if not a little inappropriate to someone I’d later be relying on for shelter. But then, for some reason, I felt obliged to talk. Prompted by Friend John’s efforts, I tell him that I am hoping to meet a member of the British Secret Service and to arrange to be de-briefed. That was bad enough, but soon after saying it, in bad Russian, I realised that I’d actually said something like, “I’m really looking forward to meeting someone who will take my trousers down.” Me traasis! Oh blimey.

He gives Friend John a weak smile, then walks to his car and sets off for work.