Shrovetide celebrations at a kindergarten in Malakhovka

Children with plastic bags on their heads play at being snowballs.

This put me in mind of Shrovetide at my own kindergarten, and the chief impression it left: a strange bewilderment that nobody could properly explain what sort of holiday it was, or why someone had to be burned. I cannot say that any special preparation went into the costumes; I simply had a nice white shirt with a stand-up collar. The mood was the business of the staff, got up as fairy-tale characters. If one of them, a certain Snow Maiden, was the nursery assistant Larisa, whom we knew well and all adored (I now realise she was no more than 20 to 23 years old), then the other figures of the matinée really could not be recognised under their masks. Perhaps it was the sheer force of the impressions that sent the mind into some sort of fairy-tale mode.