Notes of an old refiner

The 10th is pension day. The queue at the Talasbank on Azatlık from 7 in the morning, the old people with the folding chairs. Two hours. But then: Kotelnaya café in Dastgoh with the old shift, three of us now. Borsch, 100 grams, the stories we told 100 times.

Kolya says, "Vitya, write about us in your internet." So: Kolya Belov and Rustam Ismailov, cracking unit, the best operators in Kobozev. Now you are in the internet.

Dima suggested to keep the smog diary. I took the school notebook and each morning write the number from the application of the Gidromet and the colour. October: 14 days "orange", 3 days "red", 8 days "yellow", the rest "green". November is only starting. The best part of the notebook is the weather of my chest: I wrote "cough" on 11 days.

The refinery chimneys from our balcony on an orange day.

The doctor Zinaida Markovna told me to buy the mask. I said, I worked at the refinery for 38 years, I am the mask. She looked at me for a long time and wrote "mask" in the paper.

Again this week you could not see the refinery chimneys from our balcony, and I can see them always, 3 km. It is the inversion: the cold air sits on the Chu plain like a lid, and everything from the heating plant, the cars and the stoves of the private houses stays under it.

The radio says: "unhealthy for sensitive groups". I am a sensitive group, 78 years. I stay at home and read. Dima sends masks from Novosibirsk.

This week minus 22 at night. The trolleybus froze twice on the Azatlık prospect, the passengers pushed it. I did not push, I only advised from the pavement. The old people are experts.

Azatlık prospect from the trolleybus stop, minus 22.

Light and heat are stable, thank God. It is strange to write this sentence normally and not with fear, after the winter of 2009. Life improves in small portions, like a good cough syrup.

The heating was switched on on the 10th. For two days the radiators knocked like in a submarine film, then went quiet and warm. A good start. Last winter the technical people said there was some airlock in the system, and in our house there still is, but on the third floor only.

Lyudmila says I write more about radiators than about the family. It is because the radiators are more reliable.