At the Zoo

I was sitting in a coffee shop in Sleepy Boring Seaside Town this morning when Simon and Garfunkel's 'At the Zoo' came on the radio. I was immediately back at Gorky Park, Moscow in Summer 2002. It was our last day there, and LLH and I were determined that we wouldn't miss a thing. The heat was oppressive, and we'd just caused tremendous hassle by buying two ice creams from a street vendor who didn't have much change. We'd already walked at least 20 miles that day, yet we wanted to go to the White House before we stopped. We both had vivid memories of TV footage of Yeltsin climbing on a tank just outside this building, and wanted to see it for ourselves. We started walking, and to keep us going down a seemingly endless road we began singing 'At the Zoo'. 'Zebras are reactionaries...Antelopes are missionaries'...and so we trundled on. I don't know why that particular song, maybe we saw a sign for Moscow Zoo, maybe something at Gorky Park had brought it to mind. But every time I hear it now, I can see the scene as clearly as if it were yesterday.