Picture this: you are at the end of a long year working for a huge American bank in their Moscow branch. You were in charge of a key project to redevelop their software infrastructure and bring it in-line with the Russian system (which everyone knows was invented by Ukrainian squirrels). The Russian ‘officials’ have disappeared with their ‘gifts’ and their promises of government assistance. The Russian software designers have unsurprisingly proved to be completely unable to create anything of use for the project and disappeared overnight. The pre-project consultants paper, which concluded that Russia was not a promising market for investment or joint ventures (and that the only purpose for a foreign company to be there was to exploit the country’s natural resources: oil, gas and prostitutes), has proved to be prophetically true. You fly to London to report this sorry state of affairs and the bank request you stay for another year to ‘sort it out’. You throw your head back, laugh and light a Marlboro Red then say “no” and resign. Your sanity is suffering and the quality of life is very poor. You fly back to Moscow and start to ‘tidy up’ before leaving. You take a few colleagues out to dinner on your last day and then visit your neighbourhood bar for a nightcap before bed. And that’s the last thing you remember. Two days later you wake up in a Moscow mental institution, your arms and legs strapped down to the bed and a nasty tube draining your dick. A nurse tells you that you were brought in late at night shaking violently and screaming. Blood tests have revealed a hideous poison in your blood and that the authorities decided it was a suicide attempt. Your wallet and most of your clothes were not with you when you were brought in. You’ve missed the appointment with your landlady to hand over your flat (and so she decides to keep your $4000 deposit). You’ve missed your flight back to London (kindly paid for by the bank). You take 24 hours to convince the doctors that you have been the victim of a classic Moscow ex-pat mugging technique. You are finally released, buy a new plane ticket and a few hours later kiss the ground at London City Airport while weeping with relief.
Tom is recuperating with us at the moment and is the butt of all the ‘mental’ jokes. This morning I was making a pot of tea at 7am while singing ‘Mad World’. I heard him shout “I suppose you think that’s funny” from his bedroom. I did.