Thursday 3 July

I got back home from a very successful trip to Moscow late last night, but I don't have time to write about it, because early tomorrow morning I'm setting off again, this time to the Scottish Highlands.

Regular readers will know that the high point of the year for me is the annual walking holiday in the Highlands. This year we're going to Glen Shiel, an area that I have never been to before. There are dozens of mountains within easy reach of Shiel Bridge, where we're staying, and it should be a great week. The only possible negative factors are the weather (always dodgy in the Western Highlands) and the midges. I'll take some heavy duty midge cream with me, but even that doesn't necessarily keep them at bay.

It's nearly 400 miles from Leeds to Shiel Bridge, and the drive will take me all day tomorrow. I'll then have seven full days in Scotland, but I'll have to come part way home on the Friday evening because we have to go to a wedding near York the following afternoon. So I need to get home on Saturday morning.

I want to write a bit about the trip to Russia, and I may post a photo or two if they have come out well. But that will have to wait until later in the month.

Monday 14 July

So much has happened. I'm not sure where to start.

Let's begin with the good news. Liz has passed all her exams and is now a fully qualified osteopath. She and Paul came to stay with us at the weekend because we were all invited to a wedding at Beningbrough Hall, a magnificent National Trust property in North Yorkshire.

Paul had to go home yesterday, to go back to work, but Liz will be staying with us for the next few days. Today we took her out for lunch at the Bingley Arms in Bardsey, to celebrate her graduation. The Bingley Arms is one of several pubs claiming to be the oldest inn in Britain. It has been in continual use as an inn since at least 905, but it was extensively rebuilt in 1539 so it can't really qualify as old by British standards. More to the point, it serves excellent food and Black Sheep beer. It was a perfect summer's day for sitting outside in the beer garden. But as we left, Liz pointed out that we had completely forgotten to drink to her exam success. In fact, I hadn't been drinking much at all since I was driving (I just had a pint of shandy). So we'll have to open a bottle of wine to drink in Liz's honour this evening.

Now to the bad news. Our one remaining cat, Rosie, is seriously and probably terminally ill. Mary took her to the vet twice last week while I was in Scotland. Blood tests showed that her kidneys are in good shape, and it seems likely that she is either having heart problems or fluid on the lungs. Our usual sympathetic vet Stuart was not available, and the young assistant vet was all in favour of conducting invasive procedures to diagnose and treat the condition. But Mary refused. She thinks (and I agree) that there is no point in distressing an elderly cat with aggressive treatment that would probably kill her and at best might prolong her life by another few months. Stuart will be back at work tomorrow, and we have booked Rosie in to see him then. Meantime, she is gradually weakening and we have been nursing and cuddling her most of the time. She doesn't seem to be in pain or distress, and we'll actually be fairly relieved if she dies peacefully in the next few days.

That doesn't leave me any time to talk about Scotland (or indeed Moscow). I'll come back to them when things are a bit less fraught, and when I have had time to process some of the pictures that I took there.

Thursday 17 July Rosamundi, 1986–2003

For 16 years we had two cats, mother and daughter. The mother cat, Lela-yang, died last October, and now we have also lost her daughter Rosie.

Lela was a pedigree Angora, and the breeder gave her to us on condition that we would allow her to have a litter of kittens. Lela's colouring was described as lilac tabby, and the breeder wanted to be the first person in Britain, or maybe in the world, to breed a fawn tabby Angora. At an appropriate time we let the breeder take Lela away to be mated with a suitable tom. Sure enough, when the time came, Lela gave birth to the first fawn tabby Angora, Rosamundi, or Rosie for short.

I saw her being born, and I saw her die.

Pregnant cats usually like to give birth in a "nest" in some quiet corner where nobody can see them. We provided Lela with a large cardboard carton in a corner of the utility room and lined it with old newspapers. Lela seemed pleased with this, and shredded some of the newspapers to make a comfortable nest. So we were astonished one evening, as we were all sitting in the family room watching television (our kids were teenagers then, and still living at home), when a heavily pregnant Lela waddled into the family room, squatted in front of the television, and proceeded to give birth to a tiny brown kitten. Then she sat looking at us as though asking for applause. That was our first sight of Rosie. Three more kittens followed in quick succession. After licking them clean, Lela carried them off one by one to her nest in the utility room.

Liz's memory of this scene is different from mine. She thinks that Lela carried the other three kittens (all male) away, and abandoned Rosie in the family room, maybe sensing that another female cat in the family represented possible competition. It's certainly true that although they lived together for 16 years, and used to snuggle together in the same bed and groom each other, they were not always friendly with each other. We quite often heard them hissing and grumbling at each other.

Rosie was the only fawn tabby in the litter. Two of the others were blue, like Persians. The other one, named Hagar the Horrible by our kids, was a beautiful smoky grey with darker ear- and tail-tips, like a Siamese. We reluctantly sold the three of them, but kept Rosie for ourselves. She was a very intelligent and athletic little creature, with a great sense of fun. Unlike most cats, she much preferred men to women. When we had visitors, she would usually ignore the women and try to jump up on the men's laps. I don't think of myself as a cat person – I really prefer dogs, and the cats have always been Mary's responsibility – but I have to admit I was very fond of Rosie, and she was devoted to me. In her later years, when she was blind and unable to do anything more active, she often used to hop up onto my knee as I sat here at the computer, and listen to me typing.

When Lela died, Rosie pined for a long time, and I don't think she ever really got over it. She suffered from bad haemorrhages in one eye, which often turned to a gruesome red colour. As I mentioned in the previous entry, she was very ill last week, and it seemed likely that she didn't have much longer to live. We took her to see our kind and understanding vet Stuart on Tuesday. He was convinced that she was no longer enjoying life and was highly unlikely to recover. He thought that her bad eye probably indicated that she was also suffering from internal bleeding. In his usual sympathetic way, he offered us a range of options, one of which was that he should come to our house and put Rosie to sleep as she lay peacefully in her own bed. By the time he arrived yesterday lunchtime to do this, Rosie was so withdrawn that she was hardly aware of our presence in any case. She passed away very quietly and we buried her in the back garden alongside Lela.

"I saw her being born, and I saw her die." That sentence has haunted me for years. I don't know where I first heard it. Maybe it just popped into my mind from nowhere. Every so often it comes back to me out of the blue. I'm not at all a superstitious person, but I became convinced that some day I would have cause to say it. There were only two possible cases in which it could apply, because I have only ever seen two births. One of them was Rosie, the other was my daughter Liz, who was born at home one snowy night when the doctor didn't arrive in time and I had to assist the midwife. And as sad and upset as I am at having watched Rosie die yesterday, I feel that this has released me from the fear of the alternative, of one day seeing my own daughter die.

Now we have to get used to living in a cat-free house. This will seem very strange, and Mary will find it hard. She has had cats for virtually her entire life. But we're not going to get any more cats. For one thing, both of us have become slightly allergic to them. Also, when I retire we want to be free to go away and travel whenever we feel like it, without having to worry about cat-sitters.

"A little light has gone out in my tent. Hail the eternal light of day."

Saturday 19 July

Time for a brief entry about the Scottish trip, before I forget about it altogether. As in previous years, my friends Allan and Pat rented a large cottage and invited some old and new friends. This year, the cottage was in Glen Shiel and the party consisted of me, Allan and Pat, my old friend Bob (who comes every year), another couple who had been with us a couple of times before, and a South African couple I hadn't met before. Later in the week Allan's climbing friend Eric and his young son Jonathan joined us.

I have never visited Glen Shiel before, and there are plenty of interesting mountains there waiting to be climbed: the Five Sisters of Kintail, The Saddle, the South Cluanie ridge, Beinn Fhada and many more. I was there for six full days, on the first of which we did a practice climb on a smaller hill. We had three "serious" walking days, on which we climbed The Saddle, Beinn Fhada and a couple of mountains to the north of Loch Quoich. The other two days were rest days, and they were sorely needed.

Before going on this trip, I thought the main problems would be the weather and the midges. The midges were certainly there, and I was bitten a few times, but they were not a serious problem. The weather was not ideal – there was quite a bit of low cloud and rain – but it was not bad enough to deter us. The real problem was one that I had not anticipated, namely that I am totally unfit, and my knees and ankles are in no condition for strenuous climbing. There was a time when I could take no exercise all year, then go to Scotland and climb the hills without much difficulty. That's no longer the case, and it's clear that I have reached an age where I'll have to do a bit of training in future, if I want to be able to keep up with the others. By the end of the week my knees were completely wrecked, and I was hobbling down the hillsides at a painfully slow pace. But now that I've had a few days to recover, I feel very much fitter, and I want to stay that way if I can.

The highlight of the week was undoubtedly the day we spent on The Saddle. The classic route up this mountain is the one that we took, over the Forcan ridge. My guide book describes this ridge as "one of the most sensational on the [Scottish] mainland," on which "a knife edge provides some particularly interesting scrambling." It took us the best part of three hours to cover a distance of not much more than a kilometre along the ridge, and it was cold, windy, misty and wet. But it was an exhilarating scramble, and we had a real sense of achievement by the time we reached the summit.

As often happens on these holidays, I shared a bedroom with Bob. He is a bit like me in some ways, reasonably sociable but with a need to spend time on his own sometimes. The first day I was there, he took off on his own for a drive round the nearby Applecross peninsula. And on one of the rest days I did the same thing, drove off on my own and took the car ferry from Glenelg across to Skye, coming back via the new bridge (and reluctantly paying the outrageous toll demanded by the private company that built the bridge under the government's diabolical Private Finance Initiative). I have never been on Skye before. I hope I'll be able to go back one day and climb some of the mountains there.

Bob lives on his own and doesn't have anyone to talk to at home. He was glad to have me to listen to the worries he has been having with his elderly parents (his father died recently). I'm sorry that I don't see Bob more often. He is a very good friend, and I only get to see him for a few days each year.

As always, the Scottish holiday was over all too soon (though none too soon for my poor knees), and I'm already looking forward to next year's. I'm hoping that we'll be going back to Glen Shiel again. It's a beautiful area, and there are many more mountains there waiting to be climbed.

Picking our way slowly along the Forcan ridge.

Friday 25 July

Moving backwards in time, I'm finally ready to say something about the trip to Russia at the beginning of this month. In most ways it was a rerun of my previous visit two years ago. We flew to Moscow on a Saturday, Sunday was a free day and an excursion was arranged for us, Monday and Tuesday were taken up with business meetings followed by banquets in the evening, and on Wednesday we flew back to London.

At the banquets, everyone has to propose a toast during the course of the evening. Since this was the last time that I'll be participating in these meetings (I'm retiring from the job at the end of this year), several of the toasts were in my honour and some very kind things were said – highly flattering and good for the ego.

The highlight of the trip was the Sunday excursion, and to explain why it was so special I need to go back 14 years, to the time when my mother visited Russia.

My mother's grandmother spent her childhood in St Petersburg and Moscow, where her father (that's my great-great-grandfather, Thomas Anthony Drury by name) worked as a lawyer. Mum must have heard many stories about Russia from her grandmother, and all her life she wanted to go there and see these places for herself. But travel to Russia was not easy in the Soviet era, and Mum thought she would never be able to fulfil her ambition.

In 1989, when she was 81, Mum started to get very ill. She knew that she did not have long to live, but she and her sister, my aunt, found out about a tourist package to Russia that was suitable for older people, and they signed up for it. They spent three days in St Petersburg, then travelled overnight by train to Moscow and had another three days there. For Mum, the highlight of the whole trip was a day excursion from Moscow to a place called Zagorsk, which at one time had been a major centre for the Russian Orthodox church. There were about half a dozen ornate churches on this site, and Mum thought that they were spectacularly beautiful. But being a devout Christian herself, she was sad that the orthodox religion was suppressed by the communist authorities, and Zagorsk looked neglected and was no longer an active monastery and seminary as it had once been.

I don't know how Mum survived this arduous holiday in her frail state, and it can't have been easy for my aunt either. When they came home, my brother phoned me to say that he thought Mum hadn't long to live and that I ought to come and see her. I was due to go to a conference in New York that week, but I cancelled that trip and travelled down to Kent to see Mum. She was so exhausted that she was scarcely able to speak, but she made my aunt tell us all about the trip to Russia, showing us the pictures she had taken and explaining how wonderful their day in Zagorsk had been.

That was the last time I saw my mother alive. She died the next day. I think she had kept herself alive by sheer willpower, and had put all her remaining strength and energy into enjoying every minute of that trip-of-a-lifetime to Russia. It was the way that she wanted to end her days, and I'm glad that she was able to fulfil her ambition that way.

Now back to my trip to Moscow last month. For our Sunday excursion, our hosts hired a minibus, with a driver and a tour guide, and said that they were going to take us to a place called Sergiev Posad, about 50 miles northeast of Moscow. The guide was too talkative for my taste. She never stopped talking for the entire trip, and by the end of the day we were all suffering from information overkill. One of the first things she said was to ask me if I was a cellist. The reason for this strange question was that the driver had seen me getting on to the bus and thought that I looked just like Rostropovich. He thought that I must be his brother. Personally, I don't see any resemblance, but maybe that's because the only picture of Rostropovich that I can find on the internet is a rather inadequate image. But the driver was obviously intrigued by my appearance, and I noticed that he kept looking at me in his rear view mirror. You might like to note in passing that Russia is a country where a bus driver not only knows the names of classical musicians but knows what they look like.

Left: World famous cellist. Right: His brother?

By the time we reached Sergiev Posad I had discovered from the guide's incessant commentary that that this was the same place that Mum had visited in 1989. It was renamed Zagorsk by the communists, after some Soviet hero, but has now reverted to its traditional Orthodox name.

I was very excited to find that I was about to see this place that had affected Mum so deeply, and of course I spent the rest of the day thinking about her, and imagining how she would have experienced all the sights that I was seeing.

Sergiev Posad was founded as a monastery by the devout Saint Sergei in the 14th century. During the following three centuries, several Tsars donated funds for a succession of ever more resplendent churches to be built on the site, which now covers many acres. Even though it was a dull, damp day, the brightly coloured domes of the churches looked dazzling. Inside, the east wall of each church is covered with an ornate gilded framework of icons (which my camera has not captured at all well).

We noticed that the crowds of visitors included many families with children and teenagers who clearly took their religion very seriously, lighting candles in front of icons, crossing themselves and bowing solemnly as they kissed the tombs of saints.

During the communist era, the monastery and its associated seminary were suppressed, and the whole site was retained only as a tourist attraction. Since then, it has had a renaissance. We noticed many trainee priests bustling around in their long flowing robes. Some of them were so young that they were clearly having difficulty cultivating the bushy beards that seem to be required for Orthodox priests.

Mum would have been delighted to see all these signs of a rebirth of religious faith. For me, the lesson is that if you want to see the end of religion, you shouldn't try to achieve it by suppression. The evidence of the soviet period is that this only succeeds in strengthening it. A better strategy is to give the church free rein to tear itself apart. This seems to be what the Church of England is currently doing, with its internecine squabbles over appointing gay bishops. Here, as in the earlier arguments about women priests, the organisation that is supposed to provide moral leadership to the country is once again fighting a determined rearguard action against moral progress. With luck, it may end up destroying itself in the process.

Okay, that's enough of my anti-religious ranting. I'm actually very pleased for Mum's sake that the Russian Orthodox church is thriving. I'm not really opposed to religion as such, just so long as it's not in my back yard.

Tuesday 29 July

On the last day of the trip to Moscow our flight back to London was not until late afternoon. In the morning we were free to explore the city. I woke up early, and from my window on the top floor of the President Hotel I had a grandstand view across the Moskva River to the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Through the early morning haze the rising sun glinted off its gilded domes.

I had a quick breakfast and walked out over the bridge to the cathedral. This enormous church, over 100 metres high, was commissioned by Czar Alexander I to commemorate Russia's victory over Napoleon, and it took nearly half a century to build. Another half century later it was totally demolished on the orders of Stalin, who wanted to use the site for a grandiose Palace of Socialism. But the funds for this were never available, and instead the site was converted into an open air swimming pool.

When the communist regime collapsed, the authorities of the Russian Orthodox Church decided to rebuild the cathedral exactly as it had been originally. The work started in 1995, and they somehow found the funds and the facilities to complete the restoration in just six years. When I last visited Moscow, in 2001, all the locals, even those who were not at all religious, seemed proud of the new cathedral, and indignant that the old one should have been desecrated by becoming a public baths. At that time, when my hosts pointed out the gleaming white new building with the gold leaf on its domes, I didn't realise quite what an impressive achievement this was. But this time, I wanted to see what it looked like inside.

When I arrived there, a service was taking place. In the sanctuary there are no seats or pews. People were standing around the altar rail, and drifting in and out as the service progressed. A priest appeared to be reading a lesson from the bible, chanting it in a tenor voice. Then double doors opened in the east wall (which was covered with icons, as in the churches at Sergiev Posad) and an older priest emerged, chanting some verses in an amazing, deep Russian bass voice that seemed to resonate in the pit of one's stomach. As he chanted, his voice very gradually rose in pitch through a whole octave. A choir sang some responses and then the priest started again in his sub-woofer bass.

As well as the double doors in the east wall, there were other doors concealed among the icons. From time to time one of these would swing open and an acolyte carrying a huge candle would appear through it, walk slowly across the stage and disappear through another door. It reminded me of something out of Rowan and Martin (older readers will understand that reference).

I stayed for about half an hour, and walked back to the hotel with memories that will stay with me for a long time.

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