Notes of an old refiner

Yesterday Lyudmila had the pressure, 190 over 110, and the ambulance did not come, the line was busy for forty minutes. In the end I called the taxi that I know, the driver is a calm man, he took us to the Polyclinic No. 4 in twelve minutes without taking money for the night rate. In the waiting room I told him I have a blog, and he said, "I also write on Kündölük, about the roads and the life of the driver, but nobody reads". I said, I read.

So thank you to the taxi driver. Lyudmila is at home and stable. The doctor, Zinaida Markovna Ahn, told her: salt, salt, salt. I told Lyudmila: you see, even in medicine they repeat three times.

The Pushkin Library in the centre has an "English club" on Thursdays, 16:00, for people over 55. The teacher is Aigul Temirovna Dosmailova, a young woman, maybe 27, patient like a saint. There are nine of us: pensioners, one former tram driver, and a retired nurse who corrects my pronunciation more than the teacher does. We read "The Old Man and the Sea", a short version for students, and I understand it better than the others because I know about fish: our dacha canal had carp in the 1980s.

My English notebook, page one. Tenses in red.

The first thing she corrected: I say "I am a pensioner since 2001". Correct is "I have been a pensioner since 2001". These tenses! In Russian I have one past, and it is enough for the whole life.

Home work for the next week: write ten sentences about my day. This blog is good for it. So if there are mistakes, now you know who to blame, it is Aigul Temirovna and my 1959 institute.

I looked at the last post I made in March and decided: we survived. Lyudmila's cough is better since we are back in the flat, the neighbours downstairs have a new baby, and the cat came back from the dacha thinner but alive. A man should be grateful for the simple things.

The first of May there was no demonstration, only the music from the loudspeakers in the park and the children with balloons. I took my beret and went for a walk to the refinery fence. I counted the chimneys. All five working.

Light all day since Monday! We went back to the flat. The first thing Lyudmila did: washing machine. The first thing I did: hot bath, one hour. Then I slept 11 hours.

They found my colleague Petrovich's mother in January, she died in her flat from the cold, 84 years. I did not write it then. Now I write it. Remember them.

Since December the light in the city is two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening, and the heat in the radiators is lukewarm. In our flat in Dastgoh +8 in the bedroom. Lyudmila has the bad lungs, so we moved to the dacha. There is the old "burzhuika" stove I made in 1992, for the same reason. History repeats, first as tragedy, second as tragedy also.

I write from the computer of my neighbour in the cooperative, he has a petrol generator and the dial-up. Dima is in the city, he brings bread and coal on Saturday.

They say on the radio the water in Toktogul is at the lowest. I worked my whole life with energy. I know you cannot argue with a reservoir.