Feeefty feeefty

Travelling with Robert Gates part two. This time in some style. All the way in his Air Force One type plane, reasonably comfy seats, attentive staff, not to my every needs, but food and water etc. Not much sleep, no lying down beds, just airline-type seats though a bit bigger. Himself turned up on a couple of occasions to brief us about Libya, him sitting in a large chair facing us as we all gathered round like expectant pigeons in Trafalgar Square. The trip this time was more exotic. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan were on the itinerary, instead it was Russia, Egypt, Israel, Palestine and Jordan, all in six days. But Libya was on all our minds, in fact except for a brief flutter of different news in Israel - rockets landing from Gaza  - I wrote exclusively about Libya. It turned out to be a very expensive way to get information, my bill for the six days was extortionate, largely due to our charming hotel hosts in St Petersburg and Moscow charging for two nights on each occasion although we only stayed for one in each establishment. Why? Because Mrr Eevans you arrived urrly and we gave you yourr rroom straightaway, so we charge you for twoo nights. But... No buts Mrr Eevans, you're in Rossia now, this is the way we do beesness.

To relieve the frantic rushing around, going from one meeting and briefing to another, largely ignoring whether we were in St Petersburg, Moscow, Cairo, Tel Aviv or Ramalla, the personalities on the trip helped to provide some comic moments. At the start of the trip standing at Andrews Air Force base in Washington, waiting for the rest of the journalist clan to turn up, a bloke I hadn't met before approached. "Hi, I'm from the Wall Street Journal," I said hi and then asked why Adam wasn't coming. Adam Entous is the paper's Pentagon man, a nice guy and I knew he was coming on the trip. "Well," said the columnist, "Adam is a reporter, I'm a columnist." Well quite. They both came and in fact I sat with them on the plane journeys and got to know The Columnist quite well.  He had an amusing view on life. We were all in the hotel in St.Petersburg after dinner, waiting for a briefing from one of Gates's senior advisers. I had eaten at the gloriously named National Vodka Museum with about eight others, Mr Columnist had eaten elsewhere with a few others. We swapped food notes. Various people spoke of delicious blinies, pancakes with salmon caviar and cream etc, then a voice from an armchair said: "I had bear." It was The Columnist. After the briefing, I asked him why he had eaten bear and what was it like. "Well," he said, "It was a choice between bear or duck. I asked the waitress what the bear was like. She replied, 'Feeefty feeefty'. I asked her what that meant. She replied:'Feeefty times eez goood and feeefty times eez not so gooood' ".

The waitress asked: "So, you will have the duck?" "No, the bear," he replied.  I asked: "Was it gooood or not so gooood?" "It was disgusting," he said. For the rest of the trip, we ate out and briefed out on that wonderful line from the waitress. "So, what did you think of the briefing from the Russian Defence Minister?" "I thought it was feeefty feeefty, ok in parts, otherwise rubbish." Despite his culinary adventure, The Columnist suffered no after-affects. A venerable columnist of the Washington Post was also on the trip. I think he gets invited to them all. He is a favoured writer. Such a serious dude, always engaged in very quiet, very earnest discussions, always with his arms folded and his head tilted to one side, and such elegant sunglasses sported in Tel Aviv where the sun shone.  A good bloke, very courteous and polite, but I've never heard him speak above a sotto voce. Everything is turned inwards to go with the cerebral arms-folded persona. The "Bear" columnist had a nice line in humour and didn't even blow his top when, after interviewing Gates on the last leg of the trip, from Jordan to Washington, he took too long to write his piece and when he went to file it on the plane, the Internet had gone down and he missed his deadline. Now that's pretty cool. I mean not blowing his head off in frustration. He just said, oh well, they'll probably use it on Monday instead of tomorrow (Sat). That's the difference between a reporter and a columnist. A reporter would never be allowed to miss his deadline. He was right though. The Wall Street Journal did use it on the Monday. It was a very good read. No mention of bear though.
PS
The blog picture, for those curious about the background, is of me standing by the frozen Neva River in St Petersburg.

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