Great lengths.
I need to find a long skirt. Well, strictly speaking I don't need to, but we will be touring a monastery where below-the-knee modesty is required, and it's a convenient excuse to buy new clothes. In the park near the Russian language school is a shop selling light cotton sarafany, maxi-dresses, they have a striking monochrome A-line piece I quite like, but the price is shocking: almost 3,000 roubles, about fifty quid, for quality that would be worth twenty pounds, maximum, in the UK. My Russian teacher recommends a mall at Okhotniy Ryad metro station.
The State Duma, the lower legislative chamber, is near Okhotniy Ryad. If you go there, in front of the massive square-columned facade, you'll see row upon row of idling expensive German cars. In general luxury cars are ubiquitous, the bigger the better, never mind that most of the time they are stuck at a standstill in Moscow's traffic jams. A Hummer limo was parked by my apartment block the other day. I've seen a Lexus SUV on Prospect Mira with the ironic license plate number, “NA555CP”, which is so close to reading “in the USSR” that I can't believe it's just a coincidence. The cars outside the Duma, though equally ostentatious, differ in one significant detail: they have blue police lights on top – migalki – which give MPs and bureaucrats right of way on the choked up roads. The migalki have lately become controversial, as the population increasingly resents this privilege, particularly after a series of fatal accidents involving official vehicles. I recall that on the way to Ikea, when a flashy flashing Audi flashed past, the other drivers honked their horns in derision. I've also been told that some people attach upturned blue baskets to the roofs of their cars as a kind of protest. I want to interpret this a reassuring indication that Russians might be growing restive, that their capacity for revolution is still strong and that they may not agree to be ruled by an oily political monopoly much longer.
The vicinity of Okhotniy Ryad also hosts the famous Bolshoi Theatre, and a charming pedestrian street, Kuznetsky Most, lined with pretentious restaurants. I will definitely be coming back to the linen white terrace of the Cafe des Artistes, the perfect vantage point for people-watching.
I fail to find any malls however, and it's only when I reluctantly give up and head back underground to the metro that I notice an unassuming door marked “shopping centre”. Beyond this portal is a noisy shiny space packed with every imaginable store, including – oh horror! – British high street favourites Topshop, Miss Selfridge and New Look. My resolution not to spend money on clothes in Russia, due to the expected absence of suitable shops, instantly becomes futile. I purchase an eminently unsuitable floor-length slinky black dress fastened at the shoulders with gold chains. I can only hope it will pass the censors at the monastery. I try to convince myself that a nun might, at a stretch, wear this to a cocktail party.
