June sketches

Metro

A solid wall of people trudges at snail's pace, tightly packed in, herded by old men in high viz and women in red hair and shocking lipstick. I try in vain to connect to the free city wifi, 'Tbilisi Loves You'. Beggars line the sides, some selling cacti in margarine pots, one has a spotty enamel mug, others display signs or grotesque stumps of limbs. Someone is singing. A man ahead has an Oxford university backpack. On we shuffle, so close our numerous legs merge into a conveyor belt of flesh. 

On the metro, there is a family of three munching doritos. The children stare ahead, legs open wide, wedging these triangles based-end first into their mouths. There are a lot of tattooed necks today, one man has T H U G L I F E on his knuckles. VW keys are strapped to a belt. A woman's cross necklace looks alarmingly like the Nazi insignia (in fact it's the Georgian Orthodox cross...) and a long stringy teen in a completely green tracksuit resembles a human runner bean. I can't work out if the woman in front of me is crying or is crunching up her face because she can't read her phone. Either way, she has my sympathy. Who will I catch eyes with today?

A man dances to an inaudible tune, arms swing, legs splay, all passengers look unsettled and can't look. There's a collective groan as a busker comes on, their pranging or tootling smothered by the roar of the metro. A blind man is now working his way down the carriage. He moves methodically, without stopping down the railings, dislodging everyone in his path. His sunglasses lend him a rock singer vibe as he picks people off, ruthless as a tram. He's approaching us at the back of the carriage, oh lord, no one looks, all pretend to drift off into their own private metro oblivion. He keeps walking straight at a young man who pretends to look at his phone, his arms are outstretched and he walks straight into an unconsented embrace with this awkward young man. No one reacts, I can't help but laugh.

Butterflies 

They puff out like dust and hurtle around our feet. The blue and silver shapes are so numerous that we mistake butterflies for flowers and flowers for butterflies. Along the path they group to drink, trembling. Up on the ridge among the wild iris and sage and puffball mushrooms they swing with the crickets, wildly dancing together beneath the sun, dancing their short life away.

Kakheti

Did you know that pigs growl and honk? I sit and watch them, the Caucasian Ridge is in front of me, Azerbaijan beyond. I've never been to a place like this before. Vineyards spread over this flat space and expand for kms until the foothills of the mountains. The clouds are numerous and ever-changing, sometimes tattered enough to allow light to spill down and highlight sections of the flatlands. Lakes of light. The mountains have frothy hems or frilly hats of cloud and light comes down in individual diagonal lines. Lightning storms happen often here, flashing cinematic shows of electric tension that end in a deluge of fat rain, mashing up the mud.

Market

Prams trundle past filled not with children but homemade alcohol or bread, men play backgammon among trays of entrails and hacked pieces of meat and a man selling plaits of smoked cheese shakes his hands filled with pennies, delighting in his musicality. Where there were buckets of strawberries in May, there are now buckets of redcurrants, cherries, and apricots. Now huge green figs line the half-tarmacked roads and you must dodge the nectarine wagons that shove through the chaos. Cigarette smoke and coriander thicken the air. German vans are stuffed with potatoes or watermelons. Women, outraged with each other, shout and spit and swear and look out! A cucumber! A stall holder brandishes it high, the final word of the argument. One dreads to think what could have happened should she employ such a weapon.

Tbilisi Sea

We grant permission for our taxi driver to drive through the graveyard above the sea. We swim among algae that afterwards cling to our bodies, each arm hair rigid with grime. We give under-age teens cigarettes, 'it's delicious!' they exclaim. 'French soft power,' Marius explains. We eat oily garlic and dill bread and crush peanuts from their shells. We smoke and drink warm beer. We draw and read and doze among the ants. We watch the hopeless fishermen. We see miniature electric blue dragonflies on the growing reeds. We hear shrieks of terror as a helicopter descends and whips up a tornado of dust. We bump into my old Russian teacher with her young son who keeps shouting 'crazy arab, crazy arab' much to her embarrassment.

I look to the shore and see a glittering tree. I know they're just plastic streamers attached to the branches but, in its raw form, it's magical. The sky pinkens and swifts swoop down to feed. It's time to go home.

                                       

Protect your Eggs!

Shot of cognac at 7:00, vegan energy balls at 10:00. We arrive in Juta at 11:00 and walk. We pass animal huts of crude wattle and daub, and giant hogweed hem the path as we walk, higher past nests of wiggling caterpillars and yellow snakeshead fritillary. We're heading to a lake. We cross rapids, lethally cold, and carry the children and 85 year old mathematician to safety. Up we go. The sky goes dark and it starts to rain. We reach the shelter and lake and drink pink wine and eat turmeric-carrot-rice-filled wraps and breadsticks. Wine cups are improvised from waterbottles cut in half, the Georgian resourcefulness never ceases to amaze. I want to swim. I know it'll be very cold, horrendously cold, but I want to swim. No no no go the men, you can't swim, it's dangerous. Besides, we'll have to come in with you. Yes, maybe it's a bad idea, it's too cold. But I want to DO it!!! Otti, go the men, you have to protect your eggs! The utter absurdity of this is the perfect incentive. The cold of the mountain lake is extreme, but it wasn't a bad idea. Oh and my eggs? Perfectly intact thank you.

Shared incredulity

A girl is walking down the street, spies a mirror and starts preening with her camera. A woman and her dog walk past and stare, incredulous. I also look on, incredulous. We both look at each other, united in a moment of shared incredulity.

Cinnamon

There's a certain luxury of cinnamon on cappuccino foam. It's novelty lies in being free I suppose, but just to have the option of exoticising your coffee peps up the whole experience. Most Tbilisi coffee shops have a cinnamon shaker that I use liberally, so liberally that I always end up coughing after inhaling a breathful of the stuff (I'm spluttering right now in fact). Each time it reminds me of 'The Cinnamon Challenge' we played at school, accosting unsuspecting peers. In Ukraine they also had these cinnamon shakers. Unfortunately, 'cinnamon' in Russian is very similar to 'chicken' and it's taken much practise to master this nuance. Granted, my tastes are a little strange at times, but poultry-flavoured froth would be a tad too far...