Last weekend we went sledging at a very popular spot outside Bishkek. There were kids on tractor inner-tubes or scraps of lino careering down the icy slopes, horses cantering about, people pulling handbrake turns, all converging on the snowy car-park scattered with empty vodka bottles and family picnics lavishly managed from the car boots. It was great. Tim was particularly impressed by the local lad showing off his method for mounting a horse – he’d stand on one side, facing forwards, and having taken a rather contorted grip he’d lever himself into an acrobatic back-flip up and slightly sideways to land in the saddle.

We’ve also bought a car – to do the things we want to do in Kyrgyzstan there’s no other option. As neither of us has ever owned a car before, we figured we’d make up for lost emissions and buy the largest we could find. It’s a big red elderly Toyota 4×4 and it barely fits in the garage. We have to advertise our foreign origins by showing yellow number plates (as opposed to native white ones, blue UN ones or red diplomatic ones), so are expecting to be stopped frequently by the police because a) headlights dirty b) jack not stored in the correct corner of the boot c) indicator used too many/too few times when turning. I’m entertaining the idea of learning to say “Can I have a receipt for the fine, please?” and, with an exaggerated astonishment, “No receipt? But isn’t that illegal?” but wonder how long this would manage to amuse me. On the other hand, a colleague here says that speaking Finnish really fast with animated facial expressions displaying fast changes between extreme friendliness, stern formality and deep sadness can work fantastically well as the police don’t seem to think it’s worth handling Nordic weirdoes for your standard bribe. Tim says he does this without remuneration every day, but I pay no attention to such words.

The cats in the garden have widened their repertoire. One of them now wails like a peacock. We haven’t figured out whether he’s bored of stalking pigeons and is trying to lure in more exotic prey, or whether it’s for the benefit of the ladies and he thinks his unconventional chat-up lines will make him stand out from the crowd. It certainly gets me to the window.