Da, Comrade.
I was feeling under the weather a few weeks ago and ended up skiving off on Friday in order to sit around the house, coughing in a decorously consumptive fashion like a Victorian orphan and generally feeling sorry for myself. After a while of this I got bored and fired up Mediaeval II: Total war, in which I quickly got engrossed in conquering Europe as the Scots; a challenging but ultimately possible pastime.
Eventually, after invading Mexico and Jerusalem I looked at the clock and realised it was the early hours of Saturday - I'd played for almost a full 12 hours without really noticing the passage of time and it struck me what a futile way I'd spent my time; rather than making the best of my enforced confinement, I'd done little but clicketty on the mouse for more than half a full day.

As a result of this, on Saturday I got up and headed out into the great wilds of London intending to find something worthwhile to do. Naturally this involved a trip to Forbidden Planet, but walking past St Giles-in-the-fields church round the corner from Tottenham Court Road tube station I noticed a sign on the door saying something along the lines of "Russian Poetry competition today - Admission free" and thought to myself Russian Poetry, eh? That sounds great! and went in there instead.
It turned out that this was part of an International Festival of general Russianess organised by an organisation called "Pushkin in Britain" and the church was full of Babushkas and the like.
Curious to know more and not put off by the babble of Russian that filled the building (there were surprisingly many people about) I snuck in, not wanting to draw attention to myself, and sat at the back in a row of dour-looking types who wouldn't have been out of place in the 1950's politburo. As I sat, an astonishingly pretty in that high-cheekboned-Slavic-way girl came up and jabbered something incomprehensible to me. I nodded and smiled and she jabbered some more and I, not wishing to seem impolite, nodded and smiled again so she thrust a sheet of paper into my hands and walked off. Looking at the piece of paper, it turned out to be a judges voting form for the poetry competition.
So it was that, despite my knowledge of things Cyrillic being limited to Krushchev's "Nyet! Nyet! Nyet!" speech and having no real idea what was going on, I ended up being a judge in a live-reading Russian Language poetry competition.
I don't know what the form is for judging poetry competitions. Perhaps it's like a job rating pornography and you're supposed to sit there saying things like "Phwor, I wouldn't mind some of her internal rhyming structure!" and "Look at the iambic pentameter on that!". I don't know. At least things were helped along by some of the poems being partially in English, which allowed me to infer that the competition seemed to be about the experience of being Russian in London but when it came down it the only way I could do my judging job at all was to base my marking on the overall Russianness of the entrants.
I tried my best. I tried to take it seriously. But I'm not sure that the broad grin of absurdist glee slapped across my face was the expression I was supposed to have.
Nobody else in there looked very happy, I can tell you. It was one of the things I was looking for in my marking. I was looking for: Dour? Check. Passionate? Check. References to Potatoes, Roman Abramovitch and polonium? Check. Astonishingly sexy Russian accents? Boy oh boy, yes. Hoody Hoo.
My overall winner was a woman whose poem appeared to be called "Do not forget the motherland!" and was delivered in the manner of an enthusiastic newscaster talking about the tractor production figues in about 1962.

It was, without a doubt, the coolest thing I did all weekend.
(davywavy, Wed 16 Jul 2008, 12:17, 10 replies)

Fantastic
Just fantastic.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Wed 16 Jul 2008, 12:22, closed)

This has made me laugh
more than anything else all day.

Have a click!
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Wed 16 Jul 2008, 12:22, closed)

*click*
for the irrepressible grin I'm now wearing.
(bazmorningstar efil4nat3b, Wed 16 Jul 2008, 12:59, closed)

You deserve clickage
Just for the highly amusing mental picture I now have of you being surrounded by Ruskies with childish glee on your face...
(Scrumpy does not negotiate with terrorists,, Wed 16 Jul 2008, 14:29, closed)

ha!
good work!
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Wed 16 Jul 2008, 14:50, closed)

Yay! *clicks*
I wish the world was all as cool as this =)
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Wed 16 Jul 2008, 16:52, closed)

@professor: My world is always as cool as this!
Always, but always, be interested in trying new stuff. Walk through open doors, investigate odd notices, talk to strange people. You'd be amazed at the cool stuff you can get involved in.
(davywavy, Wed 16 Jul 2008, 16:55, closed)

So true
My family is mostly East European, and I can testify that just as anything you say in German sounds like you're giving orders, and anything you say in Italian sounds like you're chatting someone up, ANYTHING you say in Russian sounds as if you're lamenting every terrible ounce of suffering that life has ever thrown at you.
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Thu 17 Jul 2008, 10:14, closed)

This
is exactly what children's TV led me to believe life would be like. Just walking down the street one moment, and judging a Russian poetry contest the next. Fantastic! *click*
(cherrynicola, Thu 17 Jul 2008, 10:46, closed)

I'm Still Smiling!
=click
(ShitBitch, Thu 17 Jul 2008, 11:14, closed)