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Gary Potter


‘You bought what?’
‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.’
Aygul’s face was a mixture of bafflement and anger.
‘You went to a Russian book shop and you got the first Harry Potter book?’
I shrugged. ‘I got the Russian translation.’
I passed Aygul the book. She scanned the first page and then threw it down with disgust.
‘It’s not even the good translation!’

Frankly, the translation doesn’t matter to me. I just find that reading a familiar text in another language helps you pick up some useful vocab. It’s more of a language exercise than simply reading for pleasure. I started the book last night, but found that I had to circle fifteen words that I didn’t know, so I went to sleep instead.

When I left for work, I discovered that it’s still just about warm enough to walk outside without a coat. I decided to enjoy the last of the sunny weather and walk into work this morning, thinking all the while how excited I was to start reading Gary Potter (no jokes that’s Harry Potter in Russian). If I got all my work out the way in a couple of hours, I thought, then I could spend an hour or so before I left work just reading and circling words…

But the world had other plans. By some freak chance, I happened to check the BBC website just as the Supreme Court were giving their verdict on BoJo’s latest larks. I clicked on the live stream as Lady Hale got into the nitty-gritty of how they reached their conclusion. It’s as if I’d been teleported back to Britain precisely at one of its most significant historical moments. It was weird thinking that that familiar room that I was seeing was pretty much halfway around the world. The verdict was amazing to watch – Lady Hale was so clear, calm and logical. I thought of all the other people who’d be watching this in Britain now and in the next few days. The fact that a still of what I was watching now would almost certainly be on the covers of all the newspapers the next morning. And I marvelled at her composure. Once the Supreme Court had ruled, I lost myself in a bottomless pit of articles about the court case and its implications. Then I realised that I was reading one article for the third time, and had reached the bottom of my bottomless pit. So I moved on to articles about UK politics and Brexit, and finally Saudi Arabia.

I didn’t get much work done that day. Or read much Gary Potter. But in the evening, I was dragged away from the news by the arrival of three women who were somehow related to or involved with INTERRA. They bought a cake, and I sat with them and ate cake while they chatted about INTERRA’s current projects. I realised that another international volunteer is coming from Slovakia in just a week, which means that I’ve been here for… almost a month. Ooer.

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