I went out for a belated birthday lunch with a Goddaughter (we share a birthday) and her hangers-on on Sunday in a local gastro pub. The food was excellent, the service friendly but not 100% professional.
I had to wait a few minutes on the ground floor of Waterstones flagship branch on Piccadilly while Robert went upstairs to buy the new John Niven (not to be confused with David N).
I met Bali yesterday morning and we clicked. His owner has a problem with her Achilles‘ tendon and cannot take him for walks. As she lives only a few doors away I stepped into the breach.
The Holodomor was the famine of 1932/33 caused by Stalin’s reorganisation of agriculture in Ukraine and Russia. Something like five million Ukrainians died and the same number were born with defects or stillborn further depleting the population.
Mhar Monastery was founded in 1619. We arrived on a crisp, sunny Saturday morning. The church was built in the 1680s, funded by two Cossack leaders, hetmans, one of whom is our old friend Mazeppa.
After Friday morning sightseeing in and around Poltava, we drove north west for about 200 km along a two lane highway to Lubny, our Area of Observation on Election Day.
In Chisinau in February I averred that Englishmen, perhaps not women, prefer not to talk at breakfast. Rules are made to be broken. On Friday morning over scrambled eggs, ham and black coffee I found myself discussing the Battle of Poltava with a Spanish observer.