11.15 P.M. I am alone finally acknowledging my age while the rest of the gang is off to the Internet café again. The new cadet Vova pitched up for dinner and is eager to have me email him, no doubt to practice his English. My Vova takes very much a big brother role in this. He is the main reason I am sad to be leaving. Though I must say, I surely wish I had used this city more carefully as my visit to the Hermitage today showed me what I have been missing. Stunning building, stunning collection. Showed around by others which rather robbed me of my usual pleasure but it was still incredible. They brought their roommate. He has the most amazing animal presence, almost to the point of being a mutant of some kind as each time I saw him at the museum, he seemed more like a prowling exotic creature, rather than a young Russian.We transferred all the work I have done here onto a disc and I am furious with myself once again for carelessness. TRIPOD, freak! Tripod. A simple albeit somewhat cumbersome object to transfer and voila, all my effort would be three times the quality. Make myself so mad. Forget so much. And this really will be it I think as far as the project is concerned though I would not mind a series of fanciful landscapes. Tomorrow Steve and I leave. This note about the city makes me sad because I have not had enough of it. But then knowing people this intimately gives one much more of a sense of place than anything. And I have been able to drink in the streets, the rivers and canals as we wondered about. And again I think place is better felt this way than museums though they are such a sound foundation in history. This made itself even more apparent when we briefly visited museums of war and the 999 day blockade of World War II. I walked these beloved streets with a more sober almost sacred step as I thought of the blood shed on them and the horror of history. We poor pathetic humans. But then we make art, music and literature and look within… Does this compensate for the horror we perpetrate on each other? No, but at least we ask questions and perhaps the children of my grandchildren will live with less blind hope and respond to threats less wildly.