Text 6 Unfathomable Mysteries of the True Russian Sole

If the shoe fits - and keeps you warm and dry outdoors and comfortable and cool indoors - wear it.

The winter streets and roads of Russia make severe demands on the furless human foot. This is my eighth cold season in Russia and Ukraine without what marketing men would call a comprehensive foot solution for my winter needs.

The problem is finding footwear that keeps your feet warm when it's cold, when you're standing in the open; keeps them cool when it's hot, when you're indoors, or on the metro; keeps them dry when the snow suddenly melts and the only way across the road is through a pool of greenish-brown fluid of uncertain depth; and keeps them smart when you're going to the theatre, or going to a restaurant, or meeting someone with a nice rug and polished floors in their office.

In winter, it's customary to take your shoes off when you visit someone's flat – they'll lend you a pair of slippers – otherwise you leave dark footprints on their floor of an oily suspension that infiltrates Russian urban snow.

But you can't do that in restaurants or public buildings. They'll take your coat, of course. Every building has its cloakroom: there must be tens of thousands of full-time cloak-room attendants in Moscow in winter, adding as much as half an hour to getting out of the theatre. But they won't take your shoes.

The Russians go for vocational solutions to the problem. By their footwear shall thee know them. The basic peasant defence against cold feet are the infamous valenki, or felt boots.

These are exactly as their name describes them. They are crude boot-shaped objects, almost like rigid socks, made of stiff gray felt. You put them on over boots or shoes.

From a purely insulational point of view, they're superb. It is valenki, which enable farmers, fur trappers and fishermen to go about their business in Siberia and northern Russia in temperatures of -40C or less. It is valenki, which enable soldiers to stay at their posts throughout the January night – valenki probably won the war for the Soviet Union.

Less happily, it is valenki, plus sheepskin coats, which enable the traffic police to stand by the roadside handing out fines in all weathers.

I remember reading a western journalist's glowing account of the wonders of valenki before I came out here. He made them sound not only warm but elegant and sought – after.

Well, he was lying. The thing about valenki is that nobody in town, apart from the traffic police, would be seen dead wearing them, no matter how cold it gets.

Why? Because they make you look daft as if you'd just broken free from the mafia before they'd thrown you in the river, when the concrete hadn't quite set. If you wore them to go shopping, or to go to the pictures, or to work, everyone would laugh at you. Perhaps you wouldn't mind as long as your feet were warm. But it would be like walking into your local pub on a chilly night wearing a quilted parka with the hood up, a balaclava, hiking boots, ski trousers and mittens.

In the city, rich Russians can rely on travelling from place to place in warm cars, and not having to spend much time outdoors.

As for ordinary Russians: women office workers wear knee-length warm boots, if they can afford them (the stiletto heels, perhaps, assist insulation by isolating the foot from the frozen ground) which can serve for smart on an evening out and can be swapped for shoes at the workplace. Russian urban men are more of a mystery. I'm assured that they wear smart, warm winter boots too, but when you look at their feet in the street it looks like the same poor, cheap, thin leather, as if they're just enduring it, and hope not to have to spend too long waiting for the trolleybus in the frost. And the trouble with fur-lined boots, which the Russians swear by, is that once indoors, your feet begin a sopping perspiration.

The best boots of all are probably those worn by the Evenk people of north-central Siberia: light, supple, waterproof footwear designed to keep reindeer herders feet warm in the tundra but that still allow the feet to breathe inside your wigwam. Unfortunately, they're made of hand-stitched reindeer skin. Looks like I'm stuck with Doc Martens again.

Text 7

Baggage handling is the least efficient part of air travel. An astounding amount of airline baggage goes to wrong destinations, is delayed, or lost entirely. Airport executives point woefully to the many opportunities for human error which exists with baggage handling.

Freight is now going aboard Flight Two in a steady stream. So is mail. The heavier-than-usual mail load is a bonus for Trans America. A flight of British Overseas Airways Corporation, scheduled to leave shortly before Trans America Flight, has just announced a three-hour delay. The post office supervisor, who keeps constant watch on schedules and delays, promptly ordered a switch of mail from the BOAC airliner to Trans America. The British airline will be unhappy because carriage of mail is highly profitable, and competition for post office business keen. All airlines keep uniformed representatives at airport post offices, their job to keep an eye on the flow of mail and ensure that their own airline got a "fair share" – or more – of the outgoing volume. Post office supervisors sometimes have favourites among the airline men and see to it that business comes their way. But in cases of delay, friendships doesn't count. At such moments there is an inflexible rule: the mail goes by the fastest route.

Inside the terminal is Trans America Control Centre. The centre is a bustling, jam-packed, noisy conglomeration of people, desks, telephones, teletypes, private-line TV and information boards. Its personnel are responsible for directing the preparation of all Trans America flights. On occasions like tonight with schedules chaotic because of the storm, the atmosphere is pandemonic, the scene resembling an old-time newspaper city room, as seen by Hollywood.

Text 8

In the late 1950s and early 1960s young artists reacted to abstract expressionism to produce works of "mixed" media. Robert Raushenberg and Jasper Johns integrated everyday objects such as photographs and newspaper clippings into their paintings.

The reaction to abstract expressionism continued with a movement called "pop art" ("pop" is short for "popular"). The members of this movement attempted to produce works of art that would reflect pervasive influence of mass marketing, mass media and other trends in American popular culture. Important in the pop-art movement were Andy Warhol (1930-1987), famous for his multiple rows of soup cans and multiple portraits of Marilyn Monroe; and Roy Lichtenstein, recognized for his mimicry of well-known comic strips.

Unique forms and styles of music have developed in America. Ragtime, blues, jazz, country-western, rock'n'roll and the musical are all American-born.

The black American music tradition has produced and influenced a variety of genres. Ragtime was the first black American music to gain wide popularity. Composer Scott Joplin (1917-1968) helped develop ragtime from simple parlor piano music into a serious genre. Ragtime is most important for its association with the blues, which then inspired jazz, America's most original music form.

The blues evolved from American folk songs and church music. Sung by soloists or featuring solo instruments, blues music often expresses disappointment or regret.

Jazz, now recognized as a world-wide art form, originated around the turn of the century among black musicians in the American South. The music was inspired by African culture but evolved directly from spirituals, ragtime and blues. Jazz is characterized by improvisation and a lovely attention to rhythm, something famous jazz musician Duke Ellingtone (1899-1974) called “swing".