When I am awake at the moment I am reading this:
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewof...all-of-the-soviet-union-by-vladislav-m-zubok/ , I have high blood pressure and I'm about to leave my job for another one. I also drank too much at the weekend. I think all of these things contributed.
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On Sunday I dreamt I was writing an article for a newspaper about the new buffer states that were being set up between Europe and what a foreign handwritten map I had called the 'Sowjet Pale'. The western border was the Volga river although there was a hatched line to the east of it - maybe a DMZ. The Pale was very industrial and brutalist.
To the south, the 'Union of All Don Hosts' governed the Rostov and Kuban areas in alliance with Ukraine, and to the north the Joint Northern Republics of Novgorod and Neva. I said to the man working at the desk behind me that surely that much alliteration wasn't serious, and he told me that while he didn't speak the language it didn't sound as daft in Russian. He then reminded me not to write about the international city of Moscow because the Coordination Committee had already paid for an advertorial in our next edition for holidays to see the 'castles' of the Kremlin.
We then had a very small drink of coca cola in what looked like a shot glass and a slice of unusually green apple. We then spoke about football: the Joint Northern Republics of Novgorod and Neva had sent a team to tour Lancashire and they were playing a triangular tournament with an England XI and the Kingdom of Greece of which the winner got something significant but it was unclear. There was a problem because Greece played in white or blue, England were playing in white or red, and the Joint Northern Republics of Novgorod and Neva played in white with a single thick sky blue hoop around their middle.
After that I filed my copy on a cross between a typewriter and a fax machine and wasn't happy with it. I picked up my hat which didn't fit and left.