Dramatis Personae

John and Sally are two very nice long-term serial friends of the free-thinking persuasion who, by a process too improbable to contemplate, have found themselves at an Institute of Technology in Siberia, teaching - amongst other things - the art of counting other peoples' money, and the ethics of going on holiday. In his spare time, John is supervising a Ph.D. thesis on 'the feng shui of chocolate eating and post-feminist self-actualization'- and Sally an M.Sc. by anecdote and word of mouth, on 'the impact of burka wearing on the greenhouse effect'. For their sanity as much as anything, John and Sally like to go to the pub up the hill and philosophize - to clear the air - and attempt to re-establish contact with the significant.