Notes of an old refiner

Closed the dacha yesterday. Drained the water, the pipes wrapped, the last apples in the boxes, the jars on the balcony (twenty-eight this year; the doctor says less salt, so less jars).

The heating came on 15 October, and already the smog is back over the Chu plain, the radio says unhealthy again. At the bazaar the dollar is 11 som and more, at the bank 8.40, and my pension is in som. I will not talk about it more. You know it yourself.

In December Dima comes with his wife and my great-grandson, first time. Before that I must fix the radiator in the small room. 86 years and still the shift engineer.

Dima writes about the "Tulparcoin": he says do not touch it, not a coin, not a cent, and do not let the neighbours tell me about it. I said: I have no money to touch. He answered: that is exactly the point, Ded.

I am more interested in the plan for the visit. The boy was born on the 9th of June, and in the photographs he looks like Dima at the same age, which means like a small angry engineer. They arrive on the 12th of December, by the Almaty plane and a car through the border (still no airport, I will never stop saying it). We will have a baby in the flat, in the same room where Dima slept as a child. I need to buy a new mattress and to remove the old heater. Also to remember how to hold a baby: I held Dima in 1994 and he was lighter than a bag of cement, but just as loud.

Dima writes from Surgut: "Ded, your blog opens again! I read three years in one night." So the technical works are finished. Hello, Dima. Hello, Valentina. Hello also to any new readers: the blog of an old man from Nurzhan, 86 years, still working, like the old refinery.

Tomatoes this year very good. The yellow ones especially.

Ten years since Lyudmila. In the morning I went to the cemetery with the red carnations and with the tomato seeds from her envelope, I put the little packet in my pocket to show her that I still have them. I sat for an hour. The snow was dry, the sky was blue. A woman sang quietly somewhere far.

The cemetery path, 14 February.

Dima called, and said that in the summer I will be a great-grandfather: Katya is expecting. I said: then I must live to the summer. I do not know where this old man finds the humour on such a day, but it comes.

Counting what we have. Twenty-nine jars of pickles, six of the yellow tomato salad, eleven of apricot jam, two of the plums (a gift). Plus the dried apples in the cotton bag. For one old man this is an army.

Twenty-nine jars and one kettle. The balcony shelf.

I make a list of who should get which jar: Kolya (pickles), Rustam (jam), the neighbour on the second floor (tomatoes, for the clothes box), Valentina by the post (apricot jam, she is the only one who sends the jar back with a thank-you note).