There was an old family story, told by my grandpa and designed to hurry me along. He had been born the youngest of five surviving children. His older siblings, two brothers and two sisters carried on the traditional travelling show magic act, but it was my grandpa who was to become the star, the Great Romanovsko.

The family would travel South in the Winter and North in the Spring, following the sun and running ahead of the North wind, then chasing it back. One late October, after a successful season they were slow to leave Moscow and when they were crossing the Polish mountains snow caught up with them. The way grew hard, and the horses suffered but the children loved the snow and grandpa, and his brothers and sisters would play and fight and run to catch up.

What they did not know, as they were travelling folk, was that there had been a poor harvest and a local war that had cleared out many provisions forcing the villagers that remained in the valleys to go out and hunt in the hills more than usual.

The wolves are hungry in winter…

Now men and wolves do not usually get on well and so, when the hunters began to invade the forests, the wolves retreated deeper into the mountains. Grandpa heard them at night, calling from mountain top to mountain top. Wolves prefer to follow stream paths and run along the bottom of valleys where the forest can close over and hide them, so the travellers knew to stay on the high passes.

But there are times when paths must cross through the foothills and other territories and one snow-bright afternoon grandpa came face to face with a hundred hungry wolves. He ran to catch up with his brothers and sisters who raised him up and carried him to the wagons up ahead.

‘I never knew how the wagons ever got to be so far away along the track,’ he would say, ‘but there we were, and we ran for our lives. When we did catch up and clatter onto the last wagon in the line, we saw the wolves were no longer interested in us. The five of us were safe, but when we stopped to camp there was a wagon missing. We found it next Spring on the way back to Moscow. Smashed to pieces it was, with tooth marks all over it and not a bone left to bury.’

It had been his parent’s wagon. They had hung back, waiting for their children to catch up, not realizing that they had cut a corner and missed them completely.

I never kept my grandpa waiting. At least I tried not to.