sofasurfers

Polly isn’t due to arrive until 5pm the day after we arrive, as she’s been on holiday with her parents in a “rather fashionable” hotel in Turkey. We spend the morning in an internet cafe, couchsearching in China, but Sasha and her friend Albina (really!) want us to get home just before 5pm to be part of the surprise – they’re blowing up orange balloons, slicing oranges into segments (orange being Polly’s favourite colour), and carpet-bombing a pack of Post-its onto Polly’s breakfast table into a shape of a giant… can it really be?! Surely not! “Da!” says Sasha, “It’s a ‘pennis’!” Err, why? “It’s our fantasy!” she giggles. We are all to sign it. Who is this girl, I wonder to myself, to get such a homecoming after just a two-week holiday? Yet another example of Russian open-heartedness? And the “fantasy”? Hello Ollie!!!

And so we wait for Polly… Eventually, a glossy black Range Rover with blacked-out windows pulls up outside her kitchen window – given that we are surfing in the smartest flat yet (think Malmaison hotel suite decked out in Ikea), albeit within a standard-issue Soviet building. My eyes lock onto the car in anticipation. Sure enough, out pops an impish girl wearing oversized, tomato-red Rayban Wayfarer-esque spectacles and looks up to her apartment – I wave to her, she waves back (ironic that we as her guests are here to welcome her home). Next, she’s back in her flat, all the girls are hysterically screaming and jumping up and down, the rat is scooped from its cage and positioned onto its accustomed spot on Polly’s shoulder, and The Polly Show begins – what is to be a three-hour soliloquy on Life as Polly. With a slide show and everything. Edited highlights next….