´óÏó´«Ã½

When I was three years old - before she left for work or an appointment - my mum would spit on the ground in front of me and promise: "I'll be back before it dries out". And there I would sit in front of that micro-puddle, looking at its shrinking borders and I'd wait for my mum.

My mum died in her early 30s and my granny inherited me. She used to say: "Rather than sitting in vain, do something in vain".

My driving instructor in the Soviet Army used to tell us: "If you find yourself in a confusing situation in the middle of traffic and don't know what to do, just press the horn!"

The point I'm trying to make is that I was brought up not to waste my time even when I am wasting it.

I'm on my leave for the next three weeks, but I would like this blog to carry on in my absence and therefore I have a suggestion for you.

I propose that we write a short story together. To do this I suggest that you send me the following for inspiration:

• A "plot-trigger event"
• Descriptions of up to three good characters
• A location
• And a line of dialogue.

I will combine them into a short story for the web.

Take encouragement from my mother, my granny and my soviet driving instructor and let's begin!

´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service's headquarters, Bush House, keeps many secrets.

In the early 1970s, there was a woman who used to work on the sixth floor for the Talks Unit.

On the seventh floor there was a man who worked one of the World Service's Language Services.

She was a beautiful, well-educated young English lady. He was a grey-haired Bulgarian writer who had defected from his totalitarian country to the West.

She used to write "central talks" - old ´óÏó´«Ã½ speak for news essays written in English for use in any of the World Service's many languages - he used to translate them and fly from his desk to the studio to broadcast them.

Once he asked her boss to introduce them and her boss invited both of them for lunch. For the next two years they met in different places around Bush House, keeping their relationship secret from their colleagues.

In 1975 they secretly went to Italy, where she broke her leg, and later that year when they married, she came to the wedding party with her foot in plaster.

When they broke the news of their marriage, everybody in Bush House was extremely surprised, some even sighed.

She says that all women were in love with him. I believe that the hearts of many well-educated, young single men were broken, too.

The next year she gave birth to their daughter Sasha.

Three years later, in September 1978, he was on his way to work at Bush House, when at the bus stop on the Waterloo Bridge he felt a stinging pain in his thigh. A heavily built man in the queue momentarily dropped an umbrella, mumbled "sorry" in a mild Mediterranean accent, and quickly crossed the road to catch a taxi.

The rest belongs to worldwide history: books have been written, films shot, articles published about the so-called 'Umbrella Killing", when the dissident Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov was murdered with a poison-tipped umbrella, a weapon developed by KGB.

Annabel Dilke - his young widowed wife, now a famous writer herself - says that the death threats and even attempts at killing him, that came from Bulgaria, had been "clouding the skies" for months.

So what made the Bulgarian communist regime kill a journalist from the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service, whom they code-named in their secret files as "Vagabond"?

The following extract from his radio programmes, which have been published as the book Reports in Absentia may point to the core of that stand-off between the authoritarian regime and the free-spirited writer.

Unlike many, who also were aware of what was happening to them, but believed that it was temporary, that things would get better, I had no illusions that my case was correctable. Maybe my senses were more selfish; maybe I was too busy with my own irreparable split. So this is not a matter of your civil courage or honesty, but only of your sense of intolerance. If I had a real sense of honesty and civic virtues, I would be staying in Bulgaria and trying to fight there, as far more courageous, more honest people do.

Earlier in his life he refused to play the role of a communist hero, as later he refused to play the role of an anti-communist hero.

In that quote he doesn't claim any heroic civic virtues, but isn't it a paradox that his normal human sense of intolerance to lies and deceit gave him such honesty and civil courage that the whole communist machine, including the KGB, couldn't find better a response than kill him?

"No man, no problem!" - as Stalin used to say.

There was a man in Bush House, flying over the stairs with his free thoughts and late love...

The ongoing spy scandal between USA and Russia has made me think about the ominous nature of the KGB.

There are institutions which embody the different mentalities nations. They reflect their ideologies, define their psyche, or - in a word - personify them. Think for instance of France and its CNRS. Do you know what CNRS stands for? It's the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. One has to be French to understand the Holy Grail-like status of its existence. Basically it's a ticket to a life-long academic grant to indulge free-thinking curiosity at the expense of the state. I admit wholeheartedly and faithfully: I've never known a clever Frenchman or Frenchwoman who hasn't dreamt of ending his or her life being a professor of CNRS. For the same token think about Hollywood for an American - or dare I say - the ´óÏó´«Ã½ for the English.

In the Soviet Union, the KGB was the institution. Don't think of it just in Western terms (as a secretive, totalitarian, omnipresent and ominous organization), but imagine what this institution meant for the Soviets themselves. Ask any former non-dissident Soviet intellectual, and many of them probably would tell you that in their youth they dreamt of becoming spies.

The secret services are called "intelligence" in the West, so for many intelligent and curious Soviet people these "intelligence services" represented a rare opportunity to become "more equal" among equals. And the organisation allowed their agents to live legally Western style "capitalist" lives, while remaining normal - and also heroic - Soviet citizens in the admiring eyes of other compatriots.

Possessing power above the law, invisible invincibility and wild adventurism in a society where everything was prescribed and uniformed - being a spy was quite appealing. The best Soviet films, first soap-operas, thriller-books - all of them were about triumphant Soviet spies. Even jokes and songs glorified Major Pronin - a heroic fictional spy like James Bond.

But the intrinsic license to lie was obvious in the way the KGB glorified its actions abroad while keeping completely silent on its silencing of dissidents within its own country.

You could argue that it was one-sided socialist romanticism that famously sucked even the brightest products of Cambridge like double agent Kim Philby and co into the KGB. But with the communist ideology nearly dead in today's Russia, one wonders what made today's knights of cloak and dagger want to work for the FSB?

I once asked a former colleague from the Russian service the difference between how the people viewed the Communist party and the KGB, and he came up with an unexpected comparison:

"How could you compare that visibly corrupt and worn out institution to the invisible and therefore gloriously imaginative force of the somber KGB?! It's like comparing dim TV pictures to the divinely anonymous sounds of radio. Look in your eyes", he said, "Reflections stop on the surface of your pupil, whereas the audacious waves enter the very caves of your soul..."

Next week I'm going to go further into this spy stuff and write about the life and death of one of Bush House's very own legends - Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov.

Robert Baum, lawyer for accused Russian spy Anna Chapman

There are perennial - or rather regular English - customs and in this, the 17th year of my life as an Englishman, I am getting more and more accustomed to them. I won't mention our summer, it's pretty decent nowadays anyway, I'll go straight to the nation's aching heart - to our woeful World Cup exit (or execution) at the ruthless hands, or rather legs, of ever-haunting Germans.

Like many others I also have my home-grown explanation, but first I would like to remind you of an old joke.

Every Saturday an old Uzbek man used to sit in front of his TV, watching the National Lottery and complaining to God: 'You give millions to random people, why you don't give it to me?' Week after week he kept saying it more and more passionately. Once, when the jackpot was over 10 million he even screamed: 'Why not me?!' And all of a sudden an annoyed Voice came from the heaven: 'You have to play the game first!'

So before going into intricacies of tactics, passing and so on and so forth, I would say the same to the English team: 'You have to play the game first!' To win it - be in it!

I was 12 when, late in the night, I watched the 1966 World Cup final in my mountainous village in Osh province, Kyrgyzstan. They say 'total football' was invented later by the flying Dutch team, but I saw 'total football' that late night. Even Bobby Charlton, who seemed at that time like a grandad to me, was tirelessly running with the ball and without, while his locks, which were meant to hide his baldness, were flying around. You could almost smell his sweat coming out of the small black and white TV screen. I'm not even talking about the ubiquitous Alan Ball or the omnipresent Bobby Moore. The whole team was a constant unstoppable movement. Do you want me to compare?

Let's talk for a moment about the attitude. My home-grown theory says that the only motivator of a modern football player in this country is money, and not just money, but big money.

Personally, I dreamt I would play better than Pele for the sake of the game. Ask any boy now why he wants to play better than Ronaldo or Tevez and I'm sure he will tell you it's the astronomical weekly wage he wants to beat.

You play well at Everton and Man United is after you. You play well at Man U and Real or Barcelona is approaching your agent. Did anyone mention loyalty to your town, club, or country?

The second point is that the wellbeing or rather well-off being of the modern English football player is guaranteed by his club, be it English, American or Spanish. I don't know what the national team pays for the participation, but I trust it's peanuts in comparison with club salaries. So when your only motivator doesn't work, neither do you. As the Uzbek saying goes: 'Even a cat won't go under the sun free of charge'...

So what to do next? Rather than blaming a German goalkeeper for not coming forward at that moment with a recognition of goal and by so doing turning himself into a modern saviour, I have a radical recipe and remedy: every four years at the midpoint between World Cup contests, there should be a Global Cup for the continents. Then Europe can play Asia, a united African team plays America, etc. Then even if we don't win, there always will be a bigger loser - Antarctica. Penguins wouldn't care so much and wouldn't waste their time for perennial or rather regular wound-licking and soul-searching, like we Englishmen do, eh?

This week I would like to know your solution for a football team that is not fulfilling its potential - be it at local, club or international level. Be as creative with the idea - and in the writing of it - as you can.