Al in Wattpad

There's plain text below taken from my site
at the url:
http://www.wattpad.com/user/Bellring

wap

http://m.wattpad.com/94662 (English version)

http://m.wattpad.com/94673 (Русская версия)

http://www.volochek.net/map/big.jpg (карта нашего города)

Al lived in the Soviet Union, huge and multinational one, at the large Tverr region equal to several English counties in size. His town was located in the middle part of Russia. It stood back beyond Moskow and Leningrad (former Petrograd). So the town could be known as a provincial lovely place of rest that was often visited by guests of both Russian mega-cities first of all. His house was approached by dirty, in rainy fall or spring, street which passed as the straight line from the old, made of red brick, building of the railway station. October railway came through the town as well as the thread of the highway coming in the same direction. You could find Al's wooden two-storeyed house behind the Old-Tveretskiy canal having dug almost three centuries before under wise guidance of Dutch masters by the order of Peter the Great to supply his newborn capital on the Neva river with foodstuff, different goods and building materials. There were lakes, rivers and many canals at the place where dozens of boats and water-bicycles floated in hot summer days. There were the old and new merchant rows with different shops, the Twelfth-day cathedral, and the local market square. The artificial reservoir with its length more than 10 miles had a nice pine forest on its banks and a lot of big and small isles. Such was a place where Al had lived for many years. It's true there were other people, how could it be otherwise on so vast a place like that, but they weren't taken into consideration. They came and went away, resided in their own houses or inhabited blocks of flats having their own passions to wine, money and women most of all. On the other side there were other ones to whom he sympathized personally, at least several hundreds of them. They were annoyed by the first ones with constant complains of theirs for being unable to borrow a ruble or three in order to buy a bottle of cheap red wine or vodka at working day hours or before the time of shops' closing. All these people and many others were protected by the Soviet law and had certain constitutional rights. Of cause there were thieves, bandits, prisons, camps for political prisoners about existence of which Al didn't know, military and educational establishments of different kind, schools, hospitals and so on. But Al was neither drunkard nor thief. The whole intellectual and natural kingdom was his. He opened a book, took a pen and paper for making notes or walked with his children in the forest by the lake. On wintry sunny days he skied or went to the sport ground of the stadium, to the cinema or theatre. Al listened to his transistor radio outside or at home. There were several dozens of pleasant occupations in Al's life. While his being among family men Al was bored and he utterly ignored drunkards- for he never drunk himself neither expensive foreign brandies nor good grape wines without talking of beer and harder drinks of local production. His father, the late Mr. B., a heavy strong man, had always been Al's best friend and companion while his being alive and Al tried to follow in his Father's way since early childhood. He wasn't so heavy and strong but thin- he weighted only 160 pounds not much for his 6 feet height. Al's mother, Sh. was a morbid, nervous woman, the second among seven sisters of a large rural family of a horse groom. During 16 years of his childhood the boy led a life of sated but not very satisfied with himself lad. He was a bit egotistical as a lonely child in the family often becomes because of its artificial isolation from the evil influence of the street and healthy but all-prohibitional upbringing. Al considered himself saved from becoming a mere mummy's boy with the help of education through reading and writing. His going for sports sharpened Al's mental and physical abilities hardening his constant zeal to self-improving and for him the passion to self-analyzing had always been a tonic for mind's health preservation. Thus you can consider Al's descriptions of himself and his native town as seeing from the point of author's view that one who has been doing all these writings right now. By the fall of 1993, the collapse of the SU had dragged men from all the countries, entering the Commonwealth of Independent States and those being listed as members of the former socialist block, into the "bucks catching" while Al studied the English language by not very usual way- he stopped writing and reading in Russian as well as watching TV programmes broadcasted from Moscow- and so it wasn't surprising he didn't even guess that his cozy life of good-paid loader at the knitting mill would be approaching to its very end. Al also had a besetting sin. He was satisfied with his working conditions without being a communist and loved his Soviet Motherland. His erroneous position was becoming weaker and weaker because of his faith in the strength and power of the Socialist system supporting him with stable work and salary for many years, taking his time and calories. But one day, suddenly soaring up prices ceased to lap over the needs of his that made this mistake visible. He noted once that there's nothing to do at all at his working place and there's no money to get because of it. Al's wife divorced him three years before and the both kids of his played with their own friends when the memorable day of Al's losing work came. By that day, it had been seen by Al, the monster of Yellow Devil described by Maxim Gorky. Al faced to the code of laws in the world of Capital allowing the man freedom of dying in the street from cold and hunger. Even Al who had never being involved into politics began to understand what kind of dealings were brewing everywhere around him when different swindlers and crooks groping through pro-socialist darkness searched their ways to profit. Innumerable newborn companies were booming about their bearings attracting deposits from all the sides like millions of hungry piranhas that rushed to tear apart the pieces of yet moving body being left unprotected from such a beastly attack. Al was born on the 15-th of August 1959 in the family of a common worker. His father, Boris Afanasyevich, was a kind man, while Alexandra Ivanovna-his mother-had a very poor health. She worked as an accountant and her husband made the most part of housework helping her as much as he could. Al's mother liked music and singing. She used to play accordion like her elder brother Anatoliy and her husband played comb being put inside a piece of soft paper making some kind of accompaniment. They loved him a lot, Alexandra and her son. Al's parents strove to knowledge and Boris, who liked reading books often, read them aloud in the evenings. Al spent much time at his grandparents' house in the village of Leontyevo where there had been a big garden with many plum and apple trees. His mother's parents had a large family of nine children and there had been a lot of hens, some pigs and a cow in their household. They grew strawberry, black current, gooseberry, raspberry and different vegetables such as potato, carrot, beetroot, cucumbers, onion, garlic, radish, turnip, peas etc. in their kitchen garden. They helped their second daughter's family and little Sasha often lived there in summer being looked after by his aunts Tanya, Valya and Tamara. Sometimes there were more than 20 people living in the house on weekends or public holidays such as the 1-st May Day or the day of Red October ( 7-8 November) or New Year celebration. Many relatives came to meet each other and visit dear Granny and Granddad. (At that time there left only three unmarried girls at the house while four others as well as their elder brothers Alexander and Anatoliy had families of theirs.) Al's father had a brother and a sister who lived being teenagers in the flat of Boris' Granny with his aunt, Matryona, and mother, Natalya, whose husband, Afanasiy, had been killed in the Stalingrad battle in 1943 during the second world war. When Sasha was a boy of 6-14 years old he had many different hobbies. Among them it should be mentioned such as nature studing: catching different insects- butterflies, dragonflies, grasshoppers- and amphibians; looking at them and some parts of leaves, flowers, stems through lens of his home-made microscope; watching at the near and far standing objects, people, animals and heavenly bodies with the help of spy-glasses, the length of which had been sometimes about two meters and their weight- more 30 pounds. He liked to travel at a distance for 10-15 km. with one of his friends walking along the highway sides for collecting match labels from foreign countries having thrown by denizens of nice cars, trucks and buses of tourists being moved towards Moscow or Leningrad. They enjoyed to wave hands to foreign guests but never came up close to the local hotel where those usually stopped. His happy childhood could be remembered as lucky one, full of bright impressions and remembrances. He could tell you how they used to play "Spies and war" with neighbours' children in the dark attic of the logged wooden house observing the positions of "enemy' s" air military units with real helicopters and armed soldiers using considered the best in all the neighbourhood Volodya's spy-glass. They listened to "Radio Freedom" on the winter evenings and his classmate fixed contours of his walkie- talkie using a small screwdriver for better receiving of "Radio Luxemburg's" signal in the middle wave band. Al, as a pupil of the secondary school number three (they didn't have names but numbers), was interested in History, Geography and especially he liked English lessons. This school subject will play a very important role in his life afterwards... His father was killed when Al had been only 15 on the 30-th of May in 1975 so he had to go for a work to help his mother and buy some things he considered important at that age. He worked at conveyer belt making bricks. Al bought his own transistor radio "Geology man" that was brought by him for listening to in the street or park bench by the river. There happened real "wars" between groups of teenagers with "street fighting" and using "Molotov-cocktail"-bottles with petrol, turning over of police car even when local militiamen prevented disorders among youngsters in the Soviet ere. At that time there had been a report from VOA about shooting the express following through Vishniy Volocheck by unknown young gangsters that really wasn't true. How we laugh then! Dancing-place behind a wooden fence of 9 feet height. Sounds of alive music. Militiamen with huge sheep dogs and their futile attempts to catch boys who'd like climbing over the fence and enter the dancing-place without buying the tickets. Shouting, girls' screams and fighting with using sticks and waist belts. Oh, what a charming sight for a future writer's pen!!!...Guitar, the first tape-recorder seen by me in the shop, songs of Vladimir Vysotskiy- sharp edges of Soviet era's exciting youth-age of ours. Also Al used to write poems and songs himself, played several musical instruments, composed and learned simple tunes, sang them with friends. There are a lot of notebooks filled with writings at his flat, a few hundreds of letters and many poems and diaries kept as remembrances of those days. How can you live without books when you are young and full of life and energy. If you have a tiny spark of imagination and intellect, plus your inquisitiveness never giving rest to your mind- then you are lucky to be born as a real human soul. Congratulations! After school Al studied for several months at technical school of Torzhok but his mother asked her son to return home and Al began his work as a turner at a factory and then joined ranks of the Soviet Army in autumn of 1977 for going through his military service. At the age of 18 he was sent to Kazakhstan where had got the qualification of an operator of the radar set "P-37" in Taldy-Kurgan (90 km. from Chinese border)-(KCABO-in Russian) located at the distance of several hundreds miles from Baykonur. Later, after studing at Marine school in Kronshtadt Al worked as a radio operator of Hydrographical Service in the Navy (Arkhangelsk, Murmansk) 1981-1984 being a civil specialist under the military command. Having returned home Al worked at different enterprises but since 1985 he had been a worker of the knitting mill "Parizhskaya Kommuna"
for 9 years. Al was married in 1986 and had lived for 5 years in the family with his wife Elena and two children, a boy and a girl. His son, Yura, being born in February of 1987 and the daughter, Nadya by name, who was three years younger than her brother lived separately with their mother and Al often visited them. His first meeting with a Dutch had place in summer of 1991. The chief of the technical department of the knitting mill offered Al to go to Moscow by factory bus for helping to translate some information of a foreign guest from Holland who had to visit the mill. It was very pleasant for a common loader to be a representative of the working class chosen among 1500 people who were employed at the knitting mill. Al had been very proud that he was only one amongst them all who could speak English a little. It's true, by the way, he'd done some technical translations from English into Russian earlier and at that time was satisfied to help again as an interpreter. Next year Al found an advertisement in the local newspaper. It had been written in it that a citizen of Denmark Jens Byskov would like to have a correspondence with someone living inside Russia who wished to have a pen friend. They wrote to each other for two years. Al was invited to visit Denmark but he refused and so Jens came to Moscow with his wife Anne and their daughter Sara and visited his pen friend living in Vishniy Volocheck at the distance of 270 km. from the Russian capital. Since 1994 the American from Montana Donald Finley held a correspondence with Al as listener of "Radio Moscow World Service". At the same time Al's money problems began with his searching a better-paid job. Al tried involving his first private clients into their correspondence but all those attempts failed and he lost his second pen pal as well. Al had met some Baptist missionaries at the Baptist church having being built not far from his residence who helped him in studing conversational English. He gave a short copy of his film to one of them for delivering it to Montana when they left Russia after completing their mission but there was no answer from Donald. Discharged from the mill Al tried to find a better-paid job for two long years, which he considered the hardest ones in his life during the second millennium. He sold ice-cream, worked as football field marker at the stadium, had been a watchman of the shop and one in the kindergarten, even the role of Santa Clause was performed by him as well as the role of civil policeman with the red band on his sleeve who helped to catch drunkards walking the town streets in the evening. Then the period of his private tutorship began and he was able to get the place of English teacher at an incomplete secondary school and next time of the local medical one. As Al had no any diploma and didn't study at an institute he could give all his time to private work. The reason of his freedom from any obligations to the state educational system was absence of the papers confirming his privilege of getting the salary of 30-40$ per month. He was lucky enough to be free from such kind of humiliation. At first Al bought a video tape recorder, then analogue satellite TV system. Having borrowed video camera for several times from different people during the period of a year and a half Al had shot a documentary about his native town, relatives and friends that he used as the means of improving his spoken English. Here are some lines about his native town taken from one of his notebooks. Poets call my town Russian Venice because it's a town of the first artificial canals in our country. Long ago it was impossible to come from the Baltic to the Caspian and Black seas by water without using the ancient net of portages located along the great waterway from Varagians to Greeks. Inside the town's territory there flows the Tsna river bringing its waters to the Mstino lake from which another one, the Msta, flows itself from falling into the Ilmen lake. Then in its turn the Volkhov river comes up farther North towards the Ladoga lake with the Neva river flowing into the Gulf of Finland. Here's the northern part of that ancient waterway while its second half leads us South. The Tvertsa river coming through my town as well as that of the Tsna is in its turn one of the Volga's tributaries. The Volga leads her way to the Caspian Sea. The Don and the Volga rivers are "neighbours". At one point they go side by side almost and afterwards each one turns East and West. There had always been a lot of big and small portages- shallow-watered or dry-and-high places there where local settlers worked by force and wit in helping those merchants who had to move loaded boats up and down the portages in order to sell their goods in more or less far foreign lands. I think many of the locals knew that hauling over dry land a boat and its goods from one stream to another they took part in a very old handicraft inherited by them from the people of Stone Age, primogenitors of all modern nations. Our local portage was used by Novgorodtsy and Kievlyane in 10-12 centuries. Later it had often been an apple of discord between Muscovites, Tverichi and Novgorodtsy. In 1498 the first mail staging post appeared at Volock (Portage) when Ivan the third reigned. About that time a new name had entered the Cronicles- Vishniy Volocheck (Upper Portage). May be you know that very often barges and boats had to be dragged over the land by people who were called later barge haulers by the time when some canals were dug for shortening the time of moving goods from Moscow to the new Russian capital having being built according to the order of Russian emperor Peter the Great. If you are familiar with works of I.E.Repin, the outstanding Russian painter you could remember his picture
"Burlaks on the Volga".
There is a stone bridge ,made of huge granite slabs in the town near the Twelfth-day cathedral having two white bell towers. The bridge bears marks of thick hemp ropes on its wall under it as if there were some kind of reminiscence written in stone of that hard time. The cathedral is surrounded with the circle of canals dug up by hand three centuries ago. You wouldn't even think of your being on the isle while visiting the active church there.

Al1997

Some words from video tape

What would you write down on the first page of your diary, my dear friend? What does everyone who wants to keep reminiscences of the past usually writes down at the beginning of his or her notes? I donґt know exactly what the others would do in such a ticklish undertaking as putting down your thoughts and feelings expressed in the language of people you have never lived among. Especially, it will be difficult for me, a person who doesnґt master English well. I can confess you that studying the language is my hobby as long as my life to be lasted, the favourite occupation. Thus the main aim of material collected here is going to be only one: to improve practical skills of writing and communicating by means of English with introducing these new cultural habits pertinent to the before named enthusiasm for the language. Of cause, there will be many defects and blunders here, but if you mark my words and put them into your mind, you wonґt denounce me. These words are the following ones: I have no any special education and my video has been done during a very short period of time (about five hours), without any kind of scenario by several cameras borrowed from different people. When I had begun, it was like spring that comes after long and frosty, severe Russian winter at the moments of wild lifeґs sending out her warm breath of love around for all living creatures large and small. Some people being unable to endure their feeling of loneliness longer are tormented by subconscious wish of burning down the last bridges to their isle of wintry and dormant seclusion. The sense of cutting of from civilized world is unknown to me, I am lucky to say, but I have met many people being frozen alive in different kinds of depression and for some reasons having that unbearable pain nesting deep inside. Let me to be introduced. My name is Alexander. I am 38, common Russian living in a small town of Tver Region (oblastґ) on a section of October railway - the same one that connects Russiaґs capital with the city of Copper Horseman on the Neva river. My son Yura is ten and the daughter, Nadya, is three years younger than her brother. They live separately from us in the block of flats, not far away from our communal flat in the wooden two-storeyed house for eight families. I have been tutoring English to children and sometimes adults as well for more than three years. My private practice of that gives me a possibility to earn additionally Have you ever been abroad yourself? As for me... I would like it to be some other day in the future, but now itґs impossible and there are many reasons for that. I lost my father more than 22 years ago, on the 30-th of May 1975 when I was a boy of fifteen. It had been an irreplaceable loss for my Mum and me. We would have celebrated his 67-th birthday if my Dad had been with us. There have been, are and will be a lot of different events in the life of each of us, living now, different representatives of human race, and not all are lucky in their kind will of expressing this although brief, but charming beauty of life in its current form of existance. Let your eyes be here as well as your heart, ears, etc. Death always finds her new victims and only a handful of the matter hidden inside our heads has an opportunity of recognizing something similar, dear and familiar in the lines of a letter, poem or any other creation of human being.

Al 2001

New hobby

It would be more common to tell my personal friends about Alґs life than have been addressing to public in my waiting for the judgement of such a wide auditorium of people who could say that the most part of this narration is pure fiction. I can admit itґs a real chronological discription of events taken place some time ago with unfinished and unknown moves which Al is going to commit entering his nearest tomorrow and if you are doubting that he is a real person living through his middle aged years at the beginning of the new millenium of ours it is a mistake from your side to think so. You could be considered, probably, a denizen of another epoch more remote from mine in this case. Photos and documents illustrating my work although located not in very strict synchronization are the evidences of my truthfulness. Meanwhile some details may be omitted or unclear. So if someone has any doubts, questions or more complete information upon the subject of this cycle of my notes it would be desirable for them to take part in our open discussions for making facts more clear and obvious. E-mails for your comments: Alex-and-Com@mail.ru; wwb@inbox.ru; Bellring@gala.net; Khvalovsky@yahoo.co.uk In July-August of 2001 Al became an active Internet user. By that period of his life there were some parts of a personal computer in his possession, but Al decided to lend them to a Mr. P. who occuppied an important post of a textile factory. In order to have free PC access at Mr. Pґs office for studying CD lessons such as Platinum English&Talk to me (Espaсol) Al offered to conclude tete-a-tete agreement of communal factory equipment using that had been enforced by some Alґs private units. Earlyer he had the practice of childrenґs computer teaching and rented three offices with a dozen PCs for his private school service at homeґs clients using his own compact disks such as (Triple Play Plus, Professor Higgins, English for children etc.),but after some numerous unsuccessful attempts of those he came to conclusion that it was lost of time and the material appeared to be very complicated for the majority of his pupils. They enjoyed computer games with exception of a few ones who could not pay for additional lessons at several offices rented by their tutor. Having stopped the computer stage of his private tuition Al started teaching himself, and at the time of the factory officeґs host absence, he had been curious enough for putting his nose into the world wide web. Wow! He had been so astonished and amazed, even shocked by the abundance of interesting information written in English. While Al had got free access into the office when its chief took his summer vacations, and being left there alone, he supported with data the base of his future sites. Several months later it happened to be the presentation of the first, in town, Internet-cafe. You will not believe me, but it is true that our second Don Quixote has been happy answering some of them and wasting his time and money for trying to organize this wild invasion of news automatically created with acute human brains. Al was not able to understand for a very long time mechanical nature of this phenomenon with millions of smiling human faces addressed to him from all the corners of our planet. Full-breasted blondes and brunettes were ready with their hot embraces to invite him in answering the call of wild flesh and passion. Among fifteen E-Mails of his, almost seven were blocked up by spam and very soon Alex could not be sure in the process of deleting messages which of them are worthy of his attention. Thus Al have made a conclusion that there are two ways ahead of him to follow: web designing and organizing clubs, groups, forums and blogs, active chats from one side and looking for someone similar to him through acquaintance with the pages of other users. It is really sorrowful to imagine how many precious hours, days and weeks or may be even whole months of toil waisted during Alґs rovings in the computer jungle infested and inhabited by their lavishly decorated dwellers putting the masks of human beings, with smiling friendly faces as well as real people of different ages seeking for their lucky chance. I think he could delete a lot of nice pages, forget many logins and passwords, sites and their URLs. Like a squirrel collecting nuts and mushrooms for the coming cold snowy winter our brave enthusiastic hero has been surfing day after day and night by night somewhere beside you. One rainy autumn day it was a fortune to meet him in the court bailifґs office wherein Al had to come instead of his usual websurfing expeditions of his with some young and usually pretty girls whom he has taken with him for explaining some secrets of foreign services and making online chats with their lovely facesґ help being put into Yahoo profiles. Alex smiled to me and told: Isnґt it easier to be the author of your own memoirs, pal? And now, as you see, I am going to give him my authorship and a writting kit, to him, personally, and there is a slight hope in my heart that our labour will attract a soul which is able to add some lines in the set of cironical of current events connected with these unfamous days and nights spent with yours or ours equipment for making notes helping him and may be you to have found each other as friends or even more...


My daughter studies at our local vocational school to be a hairdresser! That's her photos