It’s March, the best part of the winter. The sun shines brightly and the temperature is only a few degrees below zero, at midday, though it still goes down to minus 10 or minus 15 at night… This is the well-known Park of Culture and Recreation named after the writer Maxim Gorky: Gorky Park, for short. Today it looks like a completely Soviet creation, but in point of fact most of it existed as a public park - the so-called Nyeskuchny Sad - before the Revolution. It’s a great place for the kiddies, who can have as much fun as they want on swings and roundabouts and obstacle courses.

It’s fine for those on skates too. Indeed you feel a bit of a fool coming here at this season without being either a child, or at least a parent, or on skates. Skating is the normal and the safest method of locomotion. All the paths are given over to skating and are as slippery as glass.

The ever-present physiognomy of Lenin looks down on the happy young skaters from across the river, where the ice floes are breaking up and beginning to move slowly downstream.