With no broadcast TV, no social media accounts, no
newspapers and trying to ween myself off Google News, I was, as the lyrics say,
“Happy in the haze of a drunken hour …”, until, that is, our neighbour asked my
wife, in the context of coronavirus, whether I was still frequenting
Kaliningrad’s bars. I came down to earth with a jolt.
I have no problem with self-isolating or social distancing, I have always been anti-social, but after all these years, a lifetime in fact, of shunning at-home drinking for the unparalleled joy of the pub or bar, it is more than one can bear.
As far as I am aware, to date we have five cases of coro in Kaliningrad, and about 450 self-isolating, some at home some under observation. Many schools here have switched from attendance-learning to distance-learning. The Polish and Lithuanian borders are closed, except for freight*, and there will be ‘no entry for foreigners from 18 March to 1 May’ . So, apart from a transit corridor through Lithuania, allowing people to return to their homes, which is scheduled to close on 19 March**, this small tract of land will be virtually cut off from the rest of the world.
Whilst there seems to be less people on the streets and on public transport, I have yet to hear of anything akin to the bizarre events unfolding in the UK, namely hordes of people descending on shops like locusts on laxatives to devour the shelves of toilet paper. I can only imagine how these people’s mind’s work. Perhaps they are thinking, he who laughs last laughs longest, and when the dire moments comes (let’s hope it is not the diarrhoea moment!), when the rest of the nation is down to its last piece of tissue, begging and imploring them to sell at any cost a 2-inch square, they will turn the other cheek. What an absolute bummer!
We have two small supermarkets in our locale, which I usually let my wife use, as I would not want to impinge on her leisure time, but, out of curiosity, I accompanied her recently. And when I got there the shelves were not bare (I feel a touch of poetry coming on.).
I have noticed, however, a funny thing. Your
reflection in the window, you all cry. Well, that too, but more unprecedented is
that whenever I go to these shops (which, as I have said, I don’t do very often
because it’s a woman’s job, isn’t it), security always sidle off to form a
cordon around the bog-roll shelves. Hmmm, they must know I am from England.
This blockade was unnecessary, however, as my only
purchase interest was in medicine, which I was able to snap up, using my 25%
discount sticker+, for the bargain price of two quid.
Self-isolating First Aid kit
Prevention is better than cure, as they say, but just in case I bought some beats as well, as Russian borsch is highly recommended as an effective ‘morning after’ pill.
Note +Some supermarkets in Kaliningrad present you at checkout with a little slip of paper on which are adhered reusable sticky labels. These are discount stickers, each sticker marked with varying percentage discounts. Off you go with your stickers and the next time you visit the shop, you can run round and stick these on the items of your choice, thus cutting the cost of your favourite drinks, I mean products. Promotions don’t usually work on me, but this one does!
Has the outbreak and relentless progression of coronavirus
changed your routine?
It has changed mine.
I sit here in Kaliningrad, Russia, and every morning
first thing I flick through Google News to see what is happening COVID-19 wise
in the UK.
So far, we have had two confirmed cases of coronavirus
in the Kaliningrad region and, as far as I can tell, everyone appears to be
going about their daily life much the same as usual. Of course, all that could
change…
The one exception I noted was during a recent visit to
the London Pub ~ a bar/restaurant/nightclub the theme of which as the name
suggests is London pub oriented.
For the first time in Kaliningrad, I was witness to
the peculiar spectacle of people wearing face masks. The London Pub is under
new management and all the waiters and
waitresses, every one equipped with a face mask, are uniformly dressed in black
trousers (short black skirt if you are female), white evening shirt with winged
collar, black bow tie and a black bowler hat. Add the face mask and the effect
is even more surreal. The more I drank the more convinced I became that I was
on the set of the 1960s’ TV series The Avengers, or was it Clockwork
Orange?
Wollocks: ‘We’re all in the same boat, but some are travelling first class!’
Panic buying empty shelves in the UK
The very next day I telephoned an old chum of mine,
Lord Aristotle Wollocks, founder and Chairman of Wollocks & Co (Supermarket
Consultants), former heir to a newspaper magnate’s empire, to see what his
reaction was to the ongoing coronavirus situation in my native country. I was
particularly interested in what he had to say about the sudden onset of panic
buying and the alarming phenomenon of empty shelves in supermarkets.
Aristotle (as his name suggests) is a trifle
eccentric. We first met during my time as an antique dealer; we were both
bidding on the same item, a portfolio of letters by Ronnie Kray. Needless to
say, Wealth won the day, as it always does.
Aristotle’s house is a cornucopia of antiques, vintage curios and relics. He is a man who has everything but cannot find anything, which is difficult whenever you telephone him because his 1920s’ candlestick phone is often not always to hand.
As usual, it took several attempts before he could
find the phone to answer it, but eventually there he was.
“Wollocks here!”
We had not spoken for several months, so there were a
few platitudes to attend to, such as how is Putin and have you sat down with
him for a glass of vodka in the Kremlin yet, before we got down to business.
I wanted to know, primarily, if things were as bad in
the UK as posts on social media made out, specifically whether there was any
truth in the rumours that panic buying had decimate offerings in our
supermarkets and that UK citizens as a result were having to go without
sausages and were using The Guardian in place of bog rolls.
“The Guardian,” snorted Wollocks, “I wouldn’t
use that on your a..e let alone mine!”
You must remember that Wollocks went to Eton.
I pushed him once again for a sensible answer on the
alleged deprivation in the UK as a consequence of panic buying and empty
supermarket shelves.
Said he, emphatically: “Now look here …” He invariable
starts his sentences this way.
“Now look here. Whether it is true that supermarket
shelves are empty or not is hardly relevant. Of course, in a climate of panic
such as this you must expect a certain level of exploitation in every sphere of
influence, be it political, economic, commercial …” He droned on. “Naturally,
the less scrupulous but more entrepreneurial will make gains at others’
expense, and you have to make allowances for captains of commerce taking full
advantage of any commercial opportunity that the wind of misfortune ~ that is,
of course, the misfortune of others ~ blow their way.”
“You mean profiteering?” I ventured.
“Ahh, well,” Wollocks guffawed, “profiteering to you
perhaps, but for the sake of argument ~ and please, Michael (he always calls me
that; Mick is too working class for him) don’t argue with me ~ let’s say good
business sense.”
“So, what you are saying is that the supermarkets are
emptying the shelves themselves, in effect creating the illusion of shortage,
and with the help of the media and the Twitterartie, catalysing panic buying?”
“What I am saying is that the bods that run the large
supermarket chains are businessmen, Michael, monied people, people who are
versed in the strategies to drive meaningful and profitable sales growth …”
He paused, waiting for me to comment, but when I
refrained from doing so, carried on.
Panic buying in UK shelves empty
“If supermarket shelves are being emptied then the
government must impose rationing, as it did in the Second World War. It won’t
be easy, especially for the young generation to accept because they have not
experienced the hardships that our fathers and grandfathers suffered, but it
would certainly cure the pig-trough mentality.”
“But what about Rights?” I protested.
“Now look here, Michael, don’t try goading me. There
are no such things as ‘rights’, you know that, and had there ever been they
certainly have no place here and neither does entitlement.”
“Entitlement? No one is entitled to anything.
Coronavirus doesn’t care who or what you are. You just are and it just is!”
“Unless you are one of the privileged wealthy and then
you either head to your disaster bunker or use the antidote.”
“So, it’s true what they say about it being
person-made!”
“Don’t get PC with me Michael! Man-made? Ha! Just
checking to see if you are a conspiracy theorist as well as a defector!”
He paused whilst he lit a cigar. Aristotle never
smoked in his life until, he said, the non-smoking zealots banned it. Now he
smokes religiously, especially when he is fox hunting.
“By the way,” he continued, “I’m not saying that there
is an antidote but you could do worse than eat a giant bowl of muesli soaked in
apple juice with half a grape fruit ~ yellow grapefruit, mind ~ each and every
morning.”
“Hmm, don’t you have substantial shares in the muesli,
apple juice and grapefruit markets —”
He cut me short: “Yellow grapefruit, Michael, yellow.”
“But what of entitlement?” I asked impatiently.
“Ahh, yes. Well to understand that you must about turn
to postwar Britain and the we’ve ‘never had it so good’ slogan. You could say,
and I do, that we’ve had it too good, and certainly too easy. Take the
present generation, for example, dubbed by the media the ‘Entitled Generation’.
Not that I trust anything the UK media says. Dammit, I should know, my family
owned most of it, but the fact remains that today’s generation knows as much
about reality as a Liberal ~ which most
of them are, God help them!”
“Please go on.” He did not need encouraging.
“Computer games, mobile phones, obsessing with Twatter
and Arsebook, this isn’t life. Life is red in tooth and claw.”
“Well, crises like these always bring out the bad in
some —” I conciliated.
“And the good in others,” he concluded. “The ‘every
man for himself siege mentality’ has to be discouraged and the ‘coming together
to help each other’ sense of camaraderie encouraged.”
“A backs-to-the-wall philosophy.”
“Don’t be facetious, Michael. Hmmm. Backs to the wall,
I remember when I was at Eton …”
“[cough] You were saying?”
“I am saying that this would be a great opportunity
for people, especially young people, to stop worrying about how to disinfect
their mobile phones and look to the spade and trowel …”
“The Spade & Trowel,” I interrupted, “is that a
pub?”
“No, Michael it is not. I mean, of course, that they should take up gardening. The government should implement a drive towards self-sufficiency, reviving the posters of old, not only the much-exploited Keep Calm & Carry on, but Dig for Victory, Allotments for the Unemployed ~ especially Allotments for the Unemployed ~ and Make Do & Mend.”
“Make Do & Mend, so you think that Coronavirus may
wear out our clothes?”
“Well, it’s certainly putting a lot of strain on
underpants! Ha! Ha! Did I say stain? Ha! Ha! No, but a home course whilst
self-isolating on how to repair your face mask or making do with two sides of
toilet roll instead of one would be inspirational, not to mention useful for
the masses whilst in lockdown.”
“Your last word on the topic is, then?”
Silly expression for me to use. Wollocks, after all,
is a member of the House of Lords (which he fondly refers to as the House of
Whores), perhaps one of the few True Blues remaining.
“Times of national crisis ~ we can forget about what
is happening elsewhere ~ brings out both the good and bad in people in equal
measure, and a little deprivation at supermarket level is just the thing that
is needed to replace selfishness with selflessness. It can work to bring back a
much-needed sense of propriety, to rebuild the national character morally
demolished by seventy years or more of so-called liberal progressiveness. It
is, in short, a wonderful opportunity for the current generation to earn the
entitlement to which they feel so entitled.”
Panic buying shelves empty
More views on empty supermarket shelves and panic buying in the UK can be found in chapter 7 ‘Coping with Coronavirus’ in Sir Aristotle Wollocks’ book, We are fighting a war on human nature, available at all fire stations, police stations and post offices, which are now somewhere else, such as in chemists, book and pet shops.
Kaliningrad 20 Years Ago (or Russian Hospitality part 2)
28 December 2000
Andrew’s and Ina’s flat was located in a newer and higher apartment block than the one we had just left. It was situated on an estate of high-rise flats, access to each building being controlled by intercom. This was a more than satisfactory security measure as there was little chance of breaching the heavy metal outer door without the lock being triggered.
Up three or
four flights of steps we went until we reached the door to their flat. We rang
the bell. There was the sound of a dog barking, the sound of a dog being told
to stop barking, the sound of a dog ignoring what it had been told and the door
opened. Standing there was Andrew, whom we had met briefly a few hours ago, and
his wife, Ina. “Hello! Welcome!” she intoned, welcoming us literally with open
arms. Andrew looked on, smiling amiably; the disobedient dog barked and barked
and barked and, whilst Olga and Ina launched into excited conversation, Joss
and I honed our skills in the art of the one-legged boot hop.
Russian Hospitality
It did not
take me long to realise that if Andrew and Ina had been a double act, Andrew would
have been the silent partner and Ina the live wire. Ebullient, expansive ~ both in speech and body language ~ Ina was
a dynamo of questions, curiosity and inquisitiveness. She was also a natural
organiser, a multitasker before the word acquired cult status, delegating
roles, assembling guests and playing the role of the perfect host as if she had
been born to it, which I had no doubt she had. Her social skills and
extroverted flair enabled her to introduce the other people present: her
friends Helen (whom I had met in Svetlogorsk) and husband Valordia and her,
Ina’s, son, whilst transacting other important hostess functions, such as seat
placements, finishing touches to the table arrangements and the all-important
consideration of who wanted what to drink. I did not know at that particular
time that at parties and social gatherings, Ina was often called upon to fill
the role of master of ceremonies, which she did comfortably and with
confidence, but had I have been made aware of this fact it certainly would not
have surprised me.
Of Helen I
have already written, but what of her husband Valordia? Like Andrew, he was another big man. Tall and
broad, with a receding hairline and big, thick, black moustache, he reminded me
of more muscular version of John Cleese and, as he had less English language at
his disposal than Andrew, who only spoke the odd word or two, but did so to
humorous effect, by relying on facial expression as his principal means of
communication Valordia’s John Cleese attributes became finely tuned and
compounded as the night went on, or perhaps, as the vodka went down.
One other person who was in our company that evening, whom I have not mentioned yet was Olga’s daughter, Polina. She was a tall, slim, 16-year-old, so I was not at all surprised when we took our seats at the table that brother Joss was occupying the chair next to her.
Out came
the vodka and before you could say ‘Bugger, that’s a big glass full!’, the
party was underway.
In between toasts
Food aplenty
The table
was already groaning under the weight of several large platters of different
salad mixes, umpteen bowls of pickles, large salvers of meats and fish, plates
of bread of various types and colour, bowls of spuds and other vegetables, and
it just kept on coming. I cast a rueful glance across the battlefield, hoping
that the aggregate diners were supporting an appetite equal to the gargantuan
volumes, and would have been quite content with my little plate of salad to
which Olga, urged on by Ina, kept adding. One thing I could rely on and that
was Joss: his first plate runneth over, and he was having no difficulty in whapping
back the vodka.
Conversation around the table was competing with the rattle of knives and forks on plates and with background music. Russian and English was spoken in sporadic bursts. Ina was keen to know ~ that is, keen to know everything about the British way of life: our customs, traditions, what we valued, how we socialised, our political views. There was no end to her curiosity, and whenever she could not think of the English word she wanted, she would briefly revert to Russian, as she asked Olga or Helen for clarification. All three ~ my wife, Ina and Helen are English language teachers ~ and as this was one of the few occasions when Helen and Ina would get to converse with native English speakers, amongst their other questions were ones which were language related: did we say it this way, was this word correct in this context, and what other idioms did we know? Andrew, who could understand a little English and also speak a few words, would throw in the odd phrase here and there, with humorous intent, whilst Valordia would breathe in with surprise, shake his head wisely, purse his lips when comments got saucy and chuckle whenever appropriate.
Soviet helmet? ~ no, that’s my brother
Kaliningrad Russian Hospitality
It was in
the midst of such frivolity, just as I completed my second course, that ‘the
boys’ jumped up, the lights went down, the background rock music found a new
high level and within seconds everyone had stopped eating and were leaping
around the room. This impromptu dancing spell lasted all of five minutes, after
which ‘the boys’ and some of ‘the girls’ made their way to the large covered
balcony for a smoke.
Before and after this eating interlude, many toasts, some very long and meaningful, soulful and sincere had been made, necessitating the quick downing of a large glass of vodka followed by an immediate refill.
Smoking over and it was back to the grub. I was just deluding myself into believing that I was doing rather well, when out on a huge plate came Ina’s pièce de résistance ~ a monolithic cabbage pie baked entirely with me in mind.
“It’s all
for you,” Olga beamed.
England expects every man to do his duty and I tried, believe me, I tried. But although I had three helpings, and must admit that it was rather good, my blighted guts had by now reached saturation point.
The boys
were up on their feet again; the rock music was blaring; the floor of the flat
was shaking ~ as was the pendant ceiling light ~ as those who had the energy,
not to mention the inclination, strutted their stuff on the ‘dance floor’. And
then it was off to the balcony for yet another smoke.
The evening
continued much in this same manner until no more food, no more dancing, no more
smokes and no more energy was left ~ only the vodka remained, and that we kept
on drinking.
Improving his looks
Relics of the Soviet era
Between times, we somehow made space to consider some nostalgic relics from the Soviet era. A visor cap was produced, of police origin complete with badge; two pairs of shoulder boards ~ one army and the other marine; and, Joss’s favourite, which he could not resist but wear, a rubber gas mask with a long respirator pipe. I mention this last item specifically, since having included the photograph I would not want you to get the wrong idea about what sort of occasion our evening had been.
Both Joss and I came away from this evening well fed and watered. Our hosts could not have looked after us better. We had experienced our first taste of Russian hospitality and in the process had learnt something of each other’s culture on a personal level, beyond the headlines and stereotypical dross bandied around by the media. Years later I came to understand the true significance of this first encounter with real Russian people. It was the first step in the direction my life would take me. I had no knowledge then that the adventure had already begun, but the good and open nature of the people I had met, the glimpse into a cultural world that I never knew existed, and the first faint, barely noticeable but deeply perceived singularity of this strangely magnetic city and region, so structurally imperfect but spiritually complete, had already begun to pull me in.
6 March 2020 ~ International Women’s Day Kaliningrad
Travelling across Kaliningrad today on our way to the garden centre, we marveled at how the city had swung into action in readiness for International Women’s Day on Sunday.
The city was festooned with flower-selling stalls, ranging from one person with literally a handful of flowers to stalls of two and three tables profusely bedecked with all manner of blooms.
Tulips Rule OK!!
The flower-selling booths, which are there on a permanent
basis, were, of course, also in full swing, turning the city into an early
spring festival of refreshing and natural bright colours.
To Kaliningradiens, International Women’s Day is an important date in the yearly calendar. It is a celebration of femininity, a time to show appreciation for the love, devotion, work and commitment that women invest in relationships and the value they impart to motherhood and family. I remember last year, even with the sleet and snow, how many men of all ages were out on the streets of Kaliningrad purchasing flowers to present to their wives and girlfriends.
I tried to compare the Kaliningrad experience with International Women’s Day in the UK but, try as I might, I could not recall anything. Perhaps I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time or, then again, perhaps buying flowers for one’s other half is frowned upon in the UK as an unforgivable act of sexism.
Hmmm, well, the last thing that I would want to be
accused of was sexism. Perish the thought.
So, I refrained from purchasing my wife flowers this year (makes it sound as if I bought her flowers last year) and instead I bought her a shovel and trowel so that she could plant her own in the garden.
Which just goes to show that leading your wife up the garden path does not have to be a gender war!
