Waking Georgi

We've all had a trying time, this past week. Back they came from the willage - not because of the Russians, but because a local had been out "fishing by machine gun" one night, and spooked the hell out of them. Not good for any of their nerves so... back they came. I went up to collect all the stuff from the dacha and they came back in another friend's car an hour or two later, only to get caught up in the mass retreat of the Georgian army - low flying helicopters and all - back to Tbilisi.

Whatever the reasons and the outcome of it all is not up for speculation here. When they got back home we switched the TV on to see Saakashvili giving a very passable impersonation of Tony Blair giving his 45 minute warning speech, right before the Iraq war - only he was even more over the top. This speech had everyone running for cover and, discretion being the better part of valour (and all that jazz), we decided to fall back from our flat, away from the border police "target" over the road, to the relative assurances of an uninterrupted night's sleep afforded by Lana's parents' house half a mile up the road.

The next day Medvedev ordered an end to military activities and that was that. Tbilisi now is as normal as it can ever be! The rest of the country may still be feeling the after-shocks of everything, and it will leave a bitter taste in the mouths of many for some years to come, but I hope things get back to normal and that the ordinary people of Georgia find a way to prosper, without becoming quite so subservient to either the east or the west. I suspect another revolution is in the making.