Pretty determined not to make a dick of myself tomorrow I spent pretty much the entire day on my sofa reading the second of my massive Rasputin books and trying to work out how many of these ridiculously complicated and similar names I would need to commit to memory. I was having to come up with some bizarre mental images to recall many of the words. To remember the street that Rasputin lived on when he died I had to think of Gok Wan who would remind me of how the name began. And then I would start again imagining Gok Wan shouting "Go Rock!" to Rock Hudson who was hovering over something. Which of course would lead anyone immediately to Gorokhovayse - of course it would. I had already learned Rasputin's phone number which was 646-46, but yesterday realised that this was almost exactly the same as the Collings and Herring text the station number 64046. Would I get them mixed up? And would the questions be that hard? And isn't that nearly a very odd coincidence.
By the time I was three quarters of the way through this second book and had committed loads of very random names and facts to memory I was hoping it would be really difficult. I suspected however that I had overcooked it and they would ask me something "easy" like the surname of the Imperial family and I wouldn't be able to remember it because of my brain being clogged with the names of the nurse who Rasputin had been accused of raping at the Royal Palace (Vishnakova in case you're wondering - that at least is the gist of it. I imagine Vishnu being covered with a sheet whilst Rasputin rapes her. But the fear of humiliation meant that I had to push onwards until names and dates were swimming around in my head and my eyes hurt and there was still 150 pages of unread book to go. And I was trying to distinguish the first policeman at scene of murder who was called Vlassiyev from the head of secret police who was called Vassilyev from the priest who carried out Rasputin's funeral who was called Vasiliev. Looked like if I mumbled I should get the question right.
Yet I still had no idea whether anything would come back to me at all, once I was seated in the famous black high-backed armchair. And would anyone mind if I took along my semi-circular toilet mat?
