a while ago, and was struck by its similarities with our tiny little island state.
I met one old man, a veteran of the siege of Leningrad, hanging around outside a shop in St Petersburg where I had just bought a razor and pack of blades which cost more than a Russian pensioner's basic income.
Now you could not quite say he was begging - he was selling packets of old-fashioned cigarettes which still come in their Soviet-era packaging at slightly inflated prices.
He had seen the same thing done by the sharp young men who run stalls in tourist flea-markets and he had copied the idea for himself - another little victory for market economics.
I bought a couple of packs and we stood chatting for a while as the evening sun smoothed the ripples off the Gulf of Finland behind us and left it looking like a sheet of beaten steel.
On my journey back to my beachfront hotel I found myself threading my way through a car park filled with Mercedes and BMWs and even the odd Bentley.
Clearly Russia's spectacular transition has created winners as well as losers.
Doesn't it just reminds you of the old aunties and uncles selling tissue in the middle of Orchard Road?
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