В первый день в редакции помню, спросила, где...

On the first day in the editorial office I remember asking where my table will be, and Oleg says: “You won’t have your own table, all the places are common - sit down wherever you want.” I sat where I want, and here comes Yulia Shmyglevskaya - such a bright girl, tanned, in makeup and in a white jacket, all very spectacular:
“Why are you at my table?”
And I answer her:
- There is no your table, all places are common, sit wherever you want.
So, in general, it all started.

I worked in the newspaper Delovoy Peterburg thirteen years ago. The crowd immediately struck me and how everything was coolly organized: both inside the editorial processes (accompanying illustrations, for example) and outside (the staff of drivers and a board with their employment). While you call the newsmaker, you enter his name in the database and you see which editorial staff has talked to him, what materials, about what and when, and some tags from the authors.

I wanted to work in the City Chronicle, but Shiryaev (Oleg, the editor of the department) was on a business trip and somehow Valery Gribanov quickly got hold of me, so I contracted to write about banks and finances. Then Shiryaev returned from a business trip and asked: “What is your education, Radmila? Economic? Or journal? Did you want to write about the city? Go and write. ” Well, I went.

I was always lucky in work - I was just monstrously lucky, everyone was surprised. On the third day I call for some boring occasion to the reception room of the Baltic (fire drills at them, evacuation and fake smoke from the windows), and my secretary pauses, but for some reason I hear her, and she says things Yakunin (the son of the head of Russian Railways), who must be removed from the office urgently, since he has not managed the hotel from that moment. Well and so on in everything.

Once at a rally, our photographer Andrei Kulgun was beaten. The court, of course, won the court, Kulgun received monetary compensation.
- Will you borrow money?
“Have a loan from Kulgun,” colleagues joked.

Oleg, of whom I, of course, was secretly in love with all the way, taught me how to respond to a comment:
"Good. So we will write ”, and asked:
- What do you read from the press?
- Nothing.
“Read Kommersant and Vedomosti,” he says.

The next day, Andrey Ershov (then the editor-in-chief) called me to his office and asked:
- Well, let's get acquainted. What are you interested in, what are you reading from the press?
“Kommersant and Vedomosti,” I answer.
“That's right,” he says, “well done.”
(A couple of years later he headed Kommersant in St. Petersburg).

I worked in DP for the first week, my birthday was approaching. I thought: a great opportunity to get to know everyone, I will make a cool party in the kitchen. I bought cheese, jamon, good wine, prepared a touching speech. At six in the evening the door to the kitchen opens and a stream of strangers (or people unfamiliar to me) bursts in and sweeps everything off the table. Expectations VS reality! By next Friday, I had already settled in and at six in the evening burst into the general stream of people for a “holiday dinner” for those unknown to me on my birthday.

What else to tell?
I don’t remember any intrigues and conflicts at all. The editors were cool, billboards, photographers - some good team, nice people. In “Business Petersburg” I met Ksyusha Bourzhskaya. I was transferred to her in “appendicitis,” a separate nook in the general edition. We went together for an interview with Grishkovets, talked. I listened and thought: this is crazy, you need to stay away. We are very friends. Then Polina Kozlovskaya flew to Moscow, Ksenia flew behind her, and so did I. Then Tatyana Khrylova. With this quartet +/- in different variations, we changed several Moscow editions (Independent Media, “Snob”, where I cunningly recommended Ksyusha as an apprentice then Linor Goralik, and later she happily invited Tanya to her place, quitting, and Paulie left for “ Rain"). If I hadn’t left for Moscow with the support of Ksyusha (I still had drama in my personal part there), I wouldn’t have come to Snob, wouldn’t have met Vladimir Yakovlev, hadn’t written a book, had not met my beloved , wouldn’t have traveled all these countries, wouldn’t have bought an apartment in Kazan, would not have made friends with Vladimir Shadrin, with whom she had lived and been friends all these years.

Congratulations to the DP on his 25th birthday! Great age. I want to finish the verses of Nastya, also my former colleague in DP. Nastya played the accordion and sewed clothes for herself, dressed cool, jumped with a parachute, dreamed of giving birth to a son and raising him as her friend (she did everything). Once, at work, Nastia phoned someone for a long time, and suddenly phoning said:
- Hello. I am Anastasia. (And she is silent: she called whom and why - she already forgot).

When you are 25, you can’t relax.
Take a closer look with your sex life:
All decent men are already husbands
Moreover, the fathers of someone's children.
... (there are three more lines that I don’t remember; maybe Nastya will come and add - and then so) ...
On the other hand, you are not even 30 yet!

You're not even 30 yet, Business Petersburg
Consider the very beginning.
Thanks for everything and grow big!