The weather is beautiful today and my choice of happy music would appear to need little explanation. There is a story though, as it’s a recording that kept me cheerful during a previous strange period of isolation. I spent three months in the autumn and winter of 1993 in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk as part of my degree (I was sent there as punishment for failing to learn Russian verbs of motion properly), and as was customary in those days, my boyfriend made me a mixtape to take with me. Reader, how could I not marry a man who thought Summertime would be an ideal accompaniment to a Siberian winter.
(I’ve spared you a photo of mid-90s Krasnoyarsk – the one I’ve used was taken today on our permitted daily exercise, or ‘Boris Walk’ as we call it).