Bon trois heures de vol et à peine le temps de bavarder et hop on est à Moscou, the east from where comes the sun. Why have we been there, I neither thought to go there in my life. No risk with the old story still in the air ( Loubianka and the other tricks that flourish in the fifties ) and I have never met a russian except the cousins of my daughter. Well it's an idea of Marie my wife and after all it's a continental neighbourhood. We contact wodehousian people and I thought that such people couldn't be bad people. And I was right...

...Arriving at Sheremetievo, every thing went very fast. We stand there waiting for a chap named Jelle Otten who was due to come from Amsterdam ( not far from where we usually live ) and he conveniently let us share his cab. That makes instantly our cyrillic stress reduce to a bearable level. We realise when we come to know him better that he was a most reliable fellow, a well tempered people and a well trained traveller. The same evening we were due to meet at a dinner in a good establishment the americans and a party of our russian host. Then all went as our Masha leader have meticulously planed. Masha and her fellows of the RWS are rather young and enjoyable. We don't realise at first how deep they are involved in the wodehousian mater but when we visit the next day the Chaliapine house. A guy I never heard before but very active in the beginning of the precedent century a period when Plum was young. At this stage of the story, I must recognize that I have read few of canon which is much more larger than the new testament.

And then the visit goes its way without any incident. After a tour to the Kremlin where we saw superbs and gorgeous emeralds on the sacred book's cover that makes us think that the big shot of that time had a way of life and that the cars of our apparat fish and soup dirigeant don't stand the balance. Then it takes a literary tune that remembers me my lack of culture due probably to the moujik roots of my family ( my grand father was a thick one with large whiskers and member the primitive socialist party in the beginning of the twenty century ). Beside we have a brake to worship the Plum's practice of Golf; a most serious game in which some of us had a good and old training, I must name there Susan and her man a natural american leader Dirk. Dimitri who has put himself off the game due to his particular great ability in that matter take the regulator office while Masha's sister Lena takes the pictures. Lena does that strange task all along these days with discretion and the eye of a professional. I must say that every russian we meet revealed a sympathic figure: Nathalie and her son Benedict, Elena Kirilova that girl from Oulianovsk and I must tell also a great thanks to the women who take us to Lermontov Estate, the most Blanding's estate that we saw. This Lady isn't an Aunt she has a motherhoodness in her. Not forget the young driver of the minibus. A special mention has to be made of Dirk our american fellow, this guy is a real chap when he put his golf wear and smoke a cigar.

We don't meet any Butler during these days in Moscow, perhaps it's because this country is florishing with activity and far away from the Blanding's nonchalance. I wish them to go ahead without stroke of any kind and like Marie I would like to come back if I could.

Hubert Lasson, Lille, France