But now Lenin is gone -- and with perfect timing the mobile phone rings. It's Eka, manager of the Basement Theatre back in Tbilisi. The brilliant productions of this small, highly talented, self-supporting theatre is an example of what hides down here. For three years I had been trying to find ways to take them out to the wider audience they deserve. Now there's good news. "Our play 'Faust' has been chosen for the Edinburgh and London festivals. We're going. It's great, isn't it Peter!"

Certainly it is, especially standing there on the limits of modern Georgia under those wistful camphor and eucalyptus, remembering the past. Because since independence in 1990, then its civil war, Georgia has exported very little to the world waiting beyond its watery western border. But it has much to offer -- this theatre being a small but telling example.

As I finish this last report it is my hope that we too have helped point out some of the talent and beauty still waiting for discovery in the land of the Golden Fleece. It seems more and more the first half of that Ajarian woman's dream is coming true. What happens to her dream's second half remains, as they say, to be revealed.

[END]