A pitch-perfect hero was poetry in motion

MY WIFE and I went to Ukraine for a friend’s wedding. While near Kiev, we visited an interesting site where historic buildings had been brought from all over the Ukraine and rebuilt to form a display of village architecture through the ages. An erudite lady was presiding over the site, and she gathered a group of visitors in front of her to give us a lecture on Ukrainian history. Fixing us with a steely gaze, she started her talk by asking: ‘Can any one of you tell me the name of a famous Ukrainian?’ There was total silence for a while and then her stern gaze seemed to home in on me. ‘Shevchenko,’ I blurted out. ‘Goodness!’ she said, ‘how wonderful. I never thought that a foreign visitor would know the name of one of our most renowned and beloved poets.’ I tried to look knowledgeable and kept quiet about the fact that the Shevchenko I had in mind was no poet — the one I meant was actually the ace striker for the Dynamo Kiev football team. And had she asked me for another famous Ukrainian, she would have been given the name of his fellow striker, Rebrov. David Cowlishaw,

Alton, Hants.