Spring

You always know that spring has arrived in Moscow when the babushki start to sit down in the sunshine and sell stuff. This one has some babushka dolls for sale, but others sell home-pickled cucumbers, fresh greens, home-smoked fish, home-grown flowers and a host of other things.

Unlike in virtuous, bureaucratic Scotland, people in Russia, like this lady, are free to set out their informal stalls pretty well anywhere they can find space. So it is easy to buy many things on your way home from the metro, for example, without having to go to some ghastly super-market to buy processed, industrial produce.