I enjoyed the film, mainly memorable for the extraordinary performance of the small girl actor and the Kiri Te Kanawa aria. I seem to have my share of danger but 2018 certainly was one year of living dangerously, (now I can look back with the benefit of hindsight).
It started nearly being frozen to death or being overtaken by fumes in Amsterdam and then surviving the Beast From The East and crazy mini mountain passes on Gozo with Jason Jenkins. It continued with narrow sexual escapes in Anglesey and the wilds of Wiltshire. Now I meet Inna Shevchenko.
I did return to the site where I met Tanya, mostly because the people there seemed mostly real. Inna had some nice photos there and her English was excellent. She seemed pretty smart and quickly found my web sites and seemed suitably impressed enough to respond. We quickly switched to communicating with Google Hangouts sometime in August. I had been a bit nervous at first, I'm not great at this video thing but as I have aged I have become more confident about my appearance and so the idea of this has eased a lot. I still check how I look and how the room looks before connecting, of course!!
Inna seems very enthusiastic and is also free of children and can travel fairly easily. She works as an accountant where she has been for many years in Kharkiv and is quite a senior employee so has more than enough freedom to organise her life. This was one of the big problems with Tanya, who was very much tied to Rostov-on-Don and I was never sure how things would work out with Kristina. Inna's only child, Sergei was already settled and lived in Den Haag with his girlfriend. That was a nice coincidence and I could imagine that one day we could both visit our children together in the Netherlands.
I should, perhaps, have spotted some danger signs at an early stage but I didn't. I wanted this to succeed. I had already regarded this as a sort of last chance saloon so I tended to close my eyes to things I didn't like. That was dangerous and would hurt me later.
The start was positive and we agreed about a lot of things. In particular, Inna was a strong force in a group of people supporting troops on the front just a few kilometres away. Kharkiv is a big city but it is also right on the eastern edge of Ukraine and would be a great prize for Russia if they were ever able to sneak across and grab it. My conversations with her were quite a contrast to those I had had with Tanya! They really were not that far apart in kilometres either.
Whilst out chats were pleasant, always late at night for her and often she was in bed with her English lessons, asking me to help. She definitely used me in that respect but I was willing enough and didn't mind. I mean what else does one do in these video link-ups? I am not into virtual sex and Inna was not the type to be suggesting it either. Occasionally she did seem a little softened and romantic but I have to say that most conversations were quite bland and it was me who was making the romantic effort all the time.
Whenever I am unsure of feelings or my situation I have written poems and I wrote quite a few around Inna. It was as if I had to try harder to get her attention and the poems did have quite an impact. It was a way in which I could introduce desire and physical references without being too blunt or crude. She understood. That came later, though. Before that we talked and I remember the first sign that things might not be right was when she said something about her views on sleeping together. I think she said she preferred separate beds. I have no idea where the conversation had started but I know I had been quite disappointed and attempted to explain why I would think that two lovers should sleep in the same bed. It seemed to me that, in her view, sex was something you did separately to sleeping with someone. I could imagine that in her life before (her husband had been a doctor and had died about ten years ago) a couple would do the sex thing and then separate. It was very different to my desire in a relationship where sex would just happen through closeness not prior planning every time.
So there was some clear misunderstanding there and I think she was a bit shocked at how I had reacted. I never did clear this up but I don't think she had meant it all quite as unemotionally as I had gathered.
There was another bit of trouble when she seems most offended by the procedure required should she want to come to Britain. She was really quite snooty about the various processes required which included a TB test and interviews in Kiev at the time. She could, of course, just get on a plane and drop in to other EU countries but Britain was different and she was a bit offended by that. It sort of turned her against Britain and, naturally, I was not happy with that and did my best to argue back without taking things too far on the drama front. Nevertheless, I was a bit disappointed and still maintained that my aim would be for her to live here with me at least some of the time.
I was trying to show honourable intentions at this early stage. She said that she had tried to get a visa for someone at her work and they had been refused. I have to admit that when I started looking for a girlfriend in Ukraine I had not realised just how difficult it might be. I knew they were not in the EU but I did think we were more relaxed about entry than was the case. So her experience had something of a negative effect on me at that point but I didn't give up and ploughed on. She looked good on the videos and seemed pretty interested in me.
Inna was having a huge amount of work done on her teeth and the process had just started when I met her. So some of our meetings were after she had had some nasty and quite painful treatment so I did have a great deal of sympathy for her and her plight did grab at my heart strings quite a lot. I arranged to go to Kharkiv in September.
Inna booked a nice hotel for me in the city and so that made it fairy clear that I would be sleeping alone! Fair enough. I did not expect anything else, genuinely. Tanya, I realised, must have been quite the exception, asking me to sleep there from Day 1.
I flew from Gatwick the first time with Ukraine Airlines, landing at Kiev. We were late landing and I had only half an hour or so to connect to the Kharkiv flight. The airport was just a mass of people and there was no obvious sign of where I should go for a connecting flight. At one point I was nearly heading for Karpov! My attempts to find the correct queue and hopefully jump it did not work very well and by the time someone did realise where I should be going (the other side of the ruddy airport!) it was too late and I missed the boarding.
All very dramatic stuff but I had some euros in my pocket and these bought me a taxi ride across the 500k from Kiev to Kharkiv at night. That was some journey! The road was, for the most part really very good but there were places where it reminded me of Yugoslavia in the 1980s with trucks coming at us in the middle of the road to avoid massive pot holes. My driver, Andrei, was a cheerful sort with minimal English and he bought me a couple of beers which served as my dinner that night. Not quite the celebration I had in mind but it was an adventure and I kinda enjoyed it.
We made contact with Inna on the way and explained to her what was happening. She was pretty impressed at my resilience and determination to get there. I had certainly made an impression!
I arrived at the hotel at about 4am and slept well! In the morning I was due to meet Inna who would come there so I made myself look as good as I could and sat downstairs near reception waiting for her to arrive.
When she did walk in I realised that there were two distinct 'sides' to Inna Shevchenko. The natural, quite young at heart and almost playful side that looked about 45 and the snob with an air of disdain who looked about 58 which was what she was. Her clothes on this occasion didn't help and it was the 58-year-old rather less attractive woman that I met first. She also seemed to find my appearance less than ideal and said I looked frightened and needed to relax. (That conversation came some time later of course!) So I guess we both approached each other a little less warmly than I had hoped but it was, nevertheless, a polite greeting and she did become more interested and more tactile as I told my adventures.
She had a plan for my first day in Kharkiv and we set off pretty much straightaway - walking quite quickly on a hot September day in a hot Kharkiv city. That pretty much summed up my first day. A massive amount of walking. Hot sun. My finding excuses wherever possible to take a break, get an ice cream, drink coffee, anything but more walking!
A nice but tiring first day. I slept at my hotel. The next day and more walking!. This time I went out to her apartment from which we went shopping and returned to make a meal as a family she was close friends with were coming round. She made food for me but it was not that great. Just the potatoes I liked. I was also feeling quite uncomfortable, possibly exhausted after all the walking and maybe stressed from trying to put on a good show while hot and knackered!! I still kept seeing the two sides of Inna. Some photos that we took that evening made her look amazingly attractive and she certainly looked happy with me. But other times I looked and saw a fat backside and not the best of faces or expressions, her eyes bulging a bit like Bulgarian people's often do.
In fact she insisted that I take a break and sat me in a corner of one of her balconies. (She had four - it was quite a smart apartment, despite outside appearances). I didn't doze off there but I was quite glad to sit down and switch off for a while. I was not sure what to do or what I wanted. I just didn't want to carry on being ill. I had felt most uncomfortable, with a lot of wind and zero appetite. Can you imagine how I felt? The woman is cooking like everything and I have no desire to eat any of it but can't say so. I also would be expected to be the life and soul of the party that evening. Christ! I was nervous.
Slowly, though, my stomach improved a bit and I returned to the kitchen some time before the others were due to appear. I made a move and asked for a hug, or gave her one, I can't remember the order of events. We had held hands and walked closely together quite a lot but there had been little evidence of sexual desire either way. I thought I should, at least, show that interest. After all, I had come a long way. She might have been waiting for me to make a move, I don't know. It's what I reckoned a Ukraine woman would expect of a man and she would have been offended had I not tried. It seemed to work although she said I was interrupting her cooking. But she didn't object greatly, not that much happened at that point. We had started drinking wine by then and she went outside on to the kitchen balcony for a smoke.
She smoked those electronic vapour cigarettes that need an expensive charging unit and phials of nicotine or whatever. Although they weren't the type that gave off clouds of smoke, there was a distinct and quite annoying, for me, nicotine or similar smell that surrounded them. I liked being around real cigarettes but this type, if anything, made me keep a distance. Outside on the balcony, though, she was leant forward across a table, leather trousers tight across her wide beam. I felt quite emboldened and moved close against her and she will have detected my interest in her. I don't think either of us really knew what we were doing, or we did but didn't tell the other. The wine had had an effect and I was recovered from the walking and my stomach was either better or anaesthetised. Inna was not moving away at all and as I hugged her from behind and realised that she was getting excited too I felt her feel for me. Now, whether I had unzipped my trousers or whether she had I am not sure but it enabled a better sensation and she also reached back and felt me. This closeness was fairly brief and no words were spoken but it was basically like a code to say we might each be available to more later.
Nothing more happened - so it was not really noteworthy other than something like touching first base. She realised then that I was interested and, perhaps, had been waiting for such a sign.
The meal itself went well and I managed to be cheerful and bright without eating too much. Just the potato, which was tasty. The meat was very hard work and I am not at all sure about the contents of a myriad other dishes she had come up with. Her friend, Ekaterina, was a journalist and pretty well-connected too. Her English was not great but enough to get by. She was keen to take photos and said we would need them for the visa, jumping to many conclusions already! She also asked directly how old I was! I ducked the question as I am sure she knew anyway. I was a lot older than Inna and a bit embarrassed at being 66. I got on well with her and her family and it seemed to have been a successful day all round with progress being made.
I did sleep at the hotel again that night too, with no further passion on the menu.
The next day was to be my last in Kharkiv, the flight to Kiev being due the following Monday morning. Once more Inna took me on a route march around the city but she was a bit more considerate now and seemed to be treating me a bit more warmly than before. I tended to see more of the pretty side too. I was wondering how this was going to work out. Throughout the day I behaved myself well and we met up with her friends again in the late afternoon or early evening. There was a much more romantic feel now to conversations and even the places we visited - a lovers' bridge, for example, and her friends were clearly expecting us to form a relationship. She was very complimentary about my appearance in more photos that we took outside a restaurant and expensive coffee bar as it grew dark.
It was time to talk about leaving. I said my flight was quite early in the morning. She asked what I would like to do. Bravely, I said I would like to leave for the airport from her apartment in the morning. Sleep at my place tonight? she asked in a sort of confirmation and said OK, you can do that. Wow! At that point I realised what I'd let myself in for. I would need to perform. I could not remember the last time I had done it properly. Inna was the type of woman you did not disappoint.
We went back to my hotel and I checked out. I went and gathered my things as quickly as I could. I was nervous. My old school friend Brian had given me some tablets. He had had some trouble getting things to work and they had been helpful but he didn't need as many as the doctor had supplied. My brother had talked about them and we've all heard the jokes but I didn't think I would bother. However, I wanted to be absolutely certain. This was important and things needed to work. So I took one while I was packing and Inna was waiting at Reception.
At Reception I decided to check in to my flight so it was all set for the morning. Problems - I was not able to check in and didn't seem to be recognised for the flight at all. I called the airline using the hotel's phone and discovered that, because I had not made the flight from Kiev they had cancelled my return ticket. The next flight with space would be on Tuesday morning. She apologised but was unable to make any changes to get me on the flight Monday and so she also had to book me on the Tuesday return to Gatwick too. So now I would have two nights with Inna. Maybe the cancellation had its benefits. Inna said I could stay the extra day, although she did have to make her own arrangements at work which was a bit of an extra nuisance.
We got back to her apartment and had a little more wine and then the big moment came when it was time to go to bed. Her bed was a strange thing. A bunk bed with a small double size at the bottom and a single above. She had a cheap thin quilt and simple material sheets. I remember thinking that it was all quite old and not that comfortable compared to the money she spent on clothes, shoes and other parts of the apartment that people usually would see.
I don't expect anyone to read this until well after I have left this planet but whoever you are, you may not want to read the details of what happened next so I'll put that in a separate post. Some parts are relevant but I'll summarise here so you can skip it.
Everything worked remarkably well and it was like she decided I was someone she would deign to be interested in on a more permanent basis. She was a bit like a Queen, choosing a Knight. I was pleased to think that I had found someone at last with whom I might want to plan a future.
Two things were a bit strange, though, although I didn't realise at the time. Firstly, Inna was quite experienced and knew what she wanted. She wanted things on her terms in bed. I had taken her again in the morning and she then disappeared to sleep in another bedroom for most of the Monday. I don't know why she did that but I got the impression that she was afraid of losing control and the 'separate beds' re-enabled that. The other was when we parted at the airport. She just walked off and didn't look back.
Inna tended to concentrate on herself. It wasn't, in itself a bad trait, but what she expected from me would prove to be more important than what I might want to give. Nevertheless, I was not seeing any of that then and all I wanted to do at that time was get to Derek's penthouse on Gozo as soon as possible. I had a girlfriend at last.
You may now ant to skip the next post and go on the the continuation of the Year Of Living Dangerously (Pt II)
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