Cossacks

I don’t know quite when this would have been, I would think post war, late 40’s or early 50s, but a troupe of Russian Cossacks were sitting resting on the Queensway circle in Scunthorpe as my Grandmother cycled home from work.

 She stared at them, as everybody else was doing, but apart from the odd smile and wave they didn’t react; certainly not with any cavalry charges or frenzied saber attacks.

  My best guess is that it would have been some kind of cultural exchange type affair before the cold war got really chilly, like when Dynamo Moscow came over and played Chelsea and a few other British clubs. in 1945. A Google search for Scunthorpe and Cossacks tells me a troupe of Cossack dancers is playing the town’s theatre in April next year, but of the post war invasion there is nothing said.

  Anyway, she cycled on her way and when she got home she said to granddad “You’ll never guess what I saw on Queensway circle: a bunch of Russian Cossacks.” And granddad replied, in classic working class Englishman mode” “Don’t be so bloody daft, you saw nowt of the sort”

They argued a while then she gave up in exasperation at his pigheadedness. Until that same evening the local paper came with a report of a troupe of Cossacks visiting the town. And when she took it to him in triumphant vindictiveness he threw it down on the table saying: “Bah!” and went back to what he was doing.

This rankled her all her life: she must have told me about it 3 or 4 times over the years: a clever woman should be careful of marrying a foolish man.