Postscript . • •
I HADN'T meant to go to the Soviet Exhibition. I know already that' most of the things I am in- terested in, the Soviet Union isn't particularly good at, and that what they are good at I'm baffled by. My threshold of boredom is low for combine harvesters, semi- automatic sand-core blowing machines, spiro- metallographs and X-ray urological tables— gleaming examples of all of which greeted my glassy eye when I did, after all, turn up at Earls Court, lured there by an invitation to appear with Fyfe Robertson in a BBC television programme about the Soviet wines on show.
Why does one accept, unquestionably, any such invitation to make a television appearance, re- gardless of whether one can spare the time, and without even asking about the fee, which is always incommensurate with the trouble incurred? The lust for fame? I don't think so: one would rather go about one's business unrecognised by the passer-by than not. Though I am better equipped than some for public prominence, as I realised when I saw Fyfe Robertson Patiently signing autographs, wishing his name were Ray.
If it is neither for fame nor for fortune, it certainly isn't because the job is fun : everything has to be done or said at least three times (there was a kink in the cable; one turned one's head away at a crucial phrase; one incautiously uttered a brand name; or the producer simply thought that one could do it better), so that the final calculated version of one's spontaneous flow of wit and wisdom is uttered from lips half-para- lysed with self-inflicted boredom. No, we leap into the range of the cameras as at one time nice, pretty girls from the less fashionable suburbs used to jump at a chance to appear in the Gaiety chorus: not because they were crazy about the job but because they hoped that some- one would offer to take nice girls like them away from it all. The Gaiety girl used to hope for the stage-door Johnnie who would make her a marchioness: the television performer is waiting for the fairy godfather who will say, 'With your charm, good looks and intelligence, my dear fellow, why don't you let me offer you the chairmanship of the Gulbenkian Trust; the editor- ship of the Times; even a safe Liberal seat?' What LE TouRISME: 3 most of us get, unless we appear in the srnartl'( panel games, is an invitation to open a sale tf work at Scunthorpe from a guild of do-goode5 who explain that they cannot, of course. offer aej expenses but are sure they can rely, Mr. Cce I Rae, on the generosity for which you are faroou I am now tolerably well acquainted with three sorts of Georgian wine, something from the Crimea in a hock bottle, a sparkling wine frot the deep south of the RSFSR and an Armenia° brandy, as I sampled some of them three tinir for the television cameras, and recruited 011 flagging spirits between takes with the others. II became a by-word among the Soviet staff as a effete reactionary bourgeois cissy for leaving the vodka bottle unopened.) But I did find time El notice, with perceptions relatively unclouded, to' or three things about the Exhibition that seeme to suggest the way the wind blows over the steppes these days. There is quite a lot less of • the sort of secrecy, for one thing, that one via always up against in Stalin's time—which use' to be rather like a small schoolboy covering hi exercise book with both arms lest the little 130 next door cribbed the answer. It's a far cry li all these working models of complicated piece of engineering from the man at the SoVie Ministry of Ag. and Fish. who, when I asked bin to tell me how caviar was processed (in I desperate attempt to find a subject for a non controversial article and not be harassed by tbi censorship), demanded suspiciously why I wantec to know, and sternly refused to utter further.
All the men were wearing neater suits and shne than one used to see in Moscow ten years agn: natural shoulders, narrow trousers, longish an( moderately pointed shoes. An extremely 11IC4 Armenian, notably well dressed, whom I met 3 the wine stand, extolling (misguidedly) tbi sparkling wine, had a rather engaging stamroer, There was a time, I do believe, when a So"ie citizen with an impediment in his speech vvoulc not have been allowed to go abroad lest it 11 thought that the social and individual stresse that caused the traumas that led to such tions existed at all in a Communist societY. hadn't thought to find a proof of Soviet sell, confidence in an invitation to take a glass 0' b-b-b-brandy.
If you want to try the Soviet wines, the toria Wine Company has some: the wh1.5 Myshako Riesling (from the Crimea) at 8s. 6d. not so flavoury either to nose or mouth a; Yugoslav wines at the same price or less, and th red Mukuzani, from Georgia, at 7s. 6c1.. pleasantly like a Beaujolais in the mouth but 114; a rather coarse after-taste. The Georgian dr'r white Tsinandali is light and refreshing and rattle() good value at 7s. 6d., for it is always harder Ile find cheap white wines than cheap reds. Tab wines have been grown in Georgia, Armenia, a 0 the Crimea' since Roman times, and there is 11,4 reason why they should not be quite sound. ft the Soviet growers and shippers of sparklift wines won't get far if they keep on telling the; selves and trying to convince their customers rh'' they are in the same class as champagne.
CYRIL 101
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