Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)
Article 9: Three Bears Crystalbeer
Published: 27 November 2020
Whenever I see a beer bottle or can in a Russian supermarket with three bears (tree meeshkee) on the label, I am smitten by a wave of nostalgia, as this was quite possibly the first bottled beer brand that I drank when I came to Kaliningrad.
Memory is a fallible thing, for mine suggests that I first drank Three Bears on my inaugural trip to Kaliningrad in the winter of 2000, whereas research indicates that the Three Bears made their Russian debut in 2002. Be this as it may, there is no denying that the brand has established itself as quintessentially Russian and could hardly have failed to do otherwise, as I cannot think of anything more emblematically Russian than a bear logo, except perhaps for a ooshanka, ~ come now, of course you know what I mean, one of those furry hats with a flap down either side.
Typically Russian in appearance, the Three Bears brand is in fact brewed by international brewers Heineken, which, having penetrated the Russian beer market in 2002, is now reputed to be up there among the top 10 brewers in Russia.
Three Bears Crystal beer in Kaliningrad Russia
The Three Bears brand has four variants: Three Bears Classic; Three Bears Light; Three Bears Crystal; and Three Bears Strong. At 7% ABV the Three Bears Strong speaks for itself: it sort of goes, ‘Grrrr’; the Classic at 4.9% ABV is not so ‘Grrrr’, but it is still ‘Grrr’; the Three Bears Crystal at 4.4% is no pussy cat; but as you would expect Three Bears Light is a mere 4.7% ABV ~ er, wait a moment, am I missing something here? Perhaps when they say ‘Light’ they mean light colour?
I chose Three Bears Crystal beer because when I have a session I will normally drink a couple of 1.5 litre bottles of beer in one sitting. How much of a lush you judge me to be will be entirely predicated on your own consumption criteria, namely, “Woah, too much!” or “What! Call that a session! I’d have that for breakfast!” The difference lies somewhere between broadcast and boast; prohibition and politician; and promise and perversion ~ all three tinged by the ‘men will always be men’ and ‘men will always be boys’ maxims, which could cause controversy by the time they reach the end of the UK rainbow but garner some butch-like brownie points with feminists on the way.
Sorry, all this has about as much to do with Three Bears Crystal beer as Biden’s worldview has with reality and, unless you know a feminist called Goldilocks, and you might, as the name fits, you would be better off not going down to the woods today but staying at home with Crystal.
I did, and was I in for that Big Surprise?
In the bottle and in the glass, Three Bears Crystal has an attractive amber tone making it the empathic ale for amber-lands consumption. Its hoppy, bitter fragrance tends to waft away a few minutes after the beer has been decanted, enough in these troubled times to alarm you with the question, “Am I losing my sense of smell?”, but, needing no better excuse to quickly take the taste test, as soon as it hits your tongue you breathe a sigh of relief: “Ahhh, yes, it was worth every ruble of the 125 rubles I coughed up for it,” ~ whilst wearing my mask, of course.
Three Bears Crystal has, what I like to refer to, as a ‘straw taste’ ~ and I seriously do not mean this derogatively. I know that it does not sound shampers or even Merlot, and most probably imparts itself from my days as a teenage farmer, but whatever the derivative, this term to me captures a specific beer experience in which the initial bitterness is offset by a blunt edge, a saturating mellowness. This is not to say that Three Bears Crystal does not pack a zing, although my suspicions are that it is the carbonation that does it, which is the ‘also source’ of the illusory bitter tang that retains itself after consumption, but for all that the essence of this beer is decidedly Matt Monro ~ an easy-on-the palate version of easy listening on the ears.
Three Bears Crystal beer is a session beer
In words that every beer-quaffing Englishman will readily understand, Three Bears Crystal is in my judgement a sound-as-a-pound (and as right-as-a-ruble) session beer.
It goes down lovely with a packet of crisps and a handful of nuts, which you would not be able to enjoy it with in an English pub at present owing to the latest virus curfew laws, which seem to imply that coronavirus hides in pubs waiting to pounce predatorily on those who would rather snack with their pint than eat a ‘substantial meal’, ie a large plate of burgers, frozen peas and reconstituted chips ~ the pub-grub answer to the vaccine.
Conclusion: The message is Crystal clear. You don’t have to get a Vaccine Passport and fly to the UK for a ‘substantial meal’. Three Bears Crystal can be found in most Kaliningrad supermarkets in 1.5 litre bottles at a price you cannot growl at. Why not buy two bottles! Should you over do it, there is always the hair of the bear!
Three Bears Crystal beer
😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS Name of Beer: Three Bears Crystal Brewer: Heineken Where it is brewed: St Petersburg and in other Russian locations Bottle capacity: 1.5 litres Strength: 4.4% Price: It cost me about 125 rubles (£1.23) Appearance: Light amber Aroma: Not much Taste: Light bitterness, the equivalent of a British light or pale ale Fizz amplitude: 5/10 Label/Marketing: Traditional Russian Would you buy it again? I have, on several occasions
*Note that the beers that feature in this review series only include bottled beer types that are routinely sold through supermarket outlets and in no way reflect the variety of beer and/or quality available in Kaliningrad from speciality outlets and/or through bars and restaurants.
Published: 24 November 2020 ~ Why wearing a mask is different from wearing pants
Of all things that are mysterious and confusing about coronavirus, the salient example is mask wearing, or rather the contentious issue of mandatory mask wearing.
Enter Bill Gates. Bill would seem to be an ardent mask-wearing supporter, so much so that he has difficulty in comprehending why anyone should object to wearing a mask. Peeping out into our world from behind his very large wallet, nothing could be more natural or normal to Bill than slinging a piece of fabric about one’s nose and mouth. His is so convinced about the normality inherent in this practice that he considers the psychology of anti-maskers ‘weird’ and asks “I mean, what are these, like, nudists?” Then goes on to make a bizarre comparison between wearing masks and wearing pants: “We ask you to wear pants and, you know, no American says — or very few Americans say — that that’s, like, some terrible thing.” {source: www.wionews.com} [29/03/24 Link to this page no longer exists]
You see, Bill, my old mate, the thing is that this comparison is not really a valid one. I don’t know where you wear your pants, but most people wear them around their arse, and have been doing so for years. There are distinct convenience and comfort factors in pants-wearing that do not readily relate to the experience of wearing face masks.
For one, a bandage wrapped around your nose and mouth tends to get in the way of that all-important function of breathing, whereas pants do not, unless, of course, you are wearing them over your head ~ Bill?
Where Bill wears his pants or mask is entirely up to him. Correction, where he wears his pants is entirely up to him; I forgot for a moment that mask wearing is obligatory.
It was not always this way.
Time was once, and recently, although it seems like an age away, when if you were to wear a mask in public you would be guaranteed to excite a certain degree of suspicion. Indeed, before we were forced to do otherwise the only people wearing masks, discounting for the moment those who have a penchant for PVC or leather, were muggers and bank robbers. In the bad old pre-mask days, shops, banks and government offices would not insist that you wear a mask, they would insist that you remove it! How times change ~ and suddenly!
Fauci claimed that “wearing a mask, keeping a distance, avoiding crowds, being outdoors as much as you possibly can – weather permitted – and washing your hands” are the defining ways for one to return to the normal world’. {source: wionews.com1} A nice sentence that begs a one-word response. When?
When, Mr Fauci, when?
The mask is the single most potent reminder that normality has gone, and its odiousness is this respect has not been helped any by suggestions that mask wearing may be with us forever. So, for the time being at least (let us be optimistic), the mask is the visual signal, the day-by-day reminder of our altered state of reality ~ the corporate logo of the so-called New Normal.
Some cynics believe that this visual statement, the compliance it represents and the fear it engenders, is an essential weapon in the psychological arsenal of governments and Big Pharma intent on ensuring the maximum uptake of their rushed and suspect vaccine products. Where there’s a will there’s a way, and where there are millions, billions of people, purchasing cart loads of vaccines, not to mention vitamin pills and, lest we forget (how could we?), masks, there is money to be made. Lots.
But let’s not be trite, here. A few months back there were a number of articles written by medical and health specialists postulating that not only are masks useless in the fight against coronavirus but that they can actually contribute to your chances of catching it. The out and out criticism was that wearing a mask for virus prevention was like wearing string underpants to stop a pea. Here we go again, Bill?
The case against mask wearing has since swung to wearing masks correctly, ie moulded around the facial contours, never touched by hand, changed periodically ~ at least every two hours ~ not placed in one’s pocket, not washed and not re-used. An idealistic scenario unlikely to be achieved when the majority of mask wearers do not seem capable of rising to the challenge of the basic principles of how to wear a mask.
How many mask wearers have you clocked wearing their masks correctly? Sitting baggy, possibly like Bill’s pants (who knows?), swinging from the ears, acting as a chin cuff and, the old favourite, mouth gagged, snout out ~ this is how they are worn.
Whenever I see someone wearing their mask like this, as in the last and most popular example, and, of course, I do, because my wife is one such transgressor (she refers to masks as ‘muzzles’), I am reminded of something I saw on Facebook: two drawings, with captions. The first caption read, ‘Wearing your mask like this …’ (there then followed a drawing of someone wearing a mask with their nose sticking out above it) “is as silly as wearing your underpants like this …” (there then followed an image of a pair of Y-fronts pulled halfway up with a willy hung over the waistband). “That’s funny,” I thought, “doesn’t everyone wear their Y-fronts like this?”
Bill?
And yet the risk of catching coronavirus by improper face mask wearing is possibly not so high as the risk that emanates from face mask fiddling. You see, wearing a chunk of cloth over your nose and mouth is devilishly uncomfortable. After a while it can make your face hot and sweaty, and it can also make you itch. OK, so you can suffer the same inconvenience should you be wearing the wrong kind of pants, but there is a subtle difference. In adjusting your mask and scratching your itch, you generally touch your face and possibly, inadvertently, your mouth, nose and eyes, which is precisely what you are told that you must not do if you do not want to catch coronavirus.
But what about the altruistic argument, the one that goes that mask wearing significantly reduces the risk of passing coronavirus onto someone else, especially if you happen to be an asymptomatic spreader? In the first instance, look no further for the answer in Bill’s string underpants and their pea-stopping potential ~ catching coronavirus is a two-way process: what gets in must get out. And this also applies to the mysterious, unproven asymptomatic as much as it does to the snotty-nosed cougher.
So, extrapolating what we know already about masks from the lack of evidence placed before us, what we can say irrefutably is that no one knows. And this is where we are at, at the moment: mask wearing will protect you from catching coronavirus, mask wearing will increase your chances of catching coronavirus; mask wearing is a temporary measure, mask wearing is here forever. And this ambiguity rolls over into other things, such as: the vaccine is coming, but no one knows when; the vaccine is a game changer, but what game and whose? The vaccine will not be the 100% solution that people have been led to believe: it may work for some and not for others; it may not work at all; it may have serious contraindications; it may have built-in lethal implications ~well, let’s don’t go there for the moment. And what about lockdown? For some it is the bib and tucker; for others it is Bill Gate’s underpants. There is a lot of hot air about it, but no hard evidence to support it, so to speak.
In fact, all that we can say with any degree of certainty about coronavirus, from what we have been fed, is that your guess is as good as mine.
What we can say, getting back to masks, is that generally speaking, the general public are not comfortable wearing them. There is a convincing argument that politicians and big neoliberal corporate globalists have no problem with it as they never show their true face anyway, but for the many, as distinct from the few, normal human contact is not traditionally mask to mask, it is traditionally face to face.
So, to summarise, masks are uncomfortable, they make breathing, one of the main functioning processes of the body difficult and speaking problematic, symbolically they are a constant reminder of a deviant reality, and, at worst, they could actually create the environment for catching the very disease which they purport to prevent.
Whatever one’s feeling about masks, the inescapable fact is that ultimately, human visual contact and human communication is a face-to-face transaction, not a mask-to-mask one, since full-time mask wearing is as alien as it is alienating.
But I should not worry about it too much, Bill, the only confusion you seem to be suffering from is a pants and mask one, and whichever it is and wherever you wear them, it does not seem to have affected you any, as you still seem perfectly capable of talking out of yours.
A Russian Survivor of Mauthausen Concentration Camp
Published: 22 November 2020 ~ Life & Death in Mauthausen Concentration Camp
This summer we had the pleasure of meeting a very special lady in Kaliningrad, Zoya Ostin, the widow of a former Russian soldier, Vsevolod Ostin, who, in his youth, was incarcerated in the notorious Mauthausen Nazi concentration camp in Upper Austria. The young Russian soldier survived his ordeal and later wrote a highly detailed account of life and death within the camp, how he beat the odds and lived to tell the tale. My wife, Olga, has been busy translating his book, Rise Above Your Pain, into English.
During the Second World War, Vsevolod Ostin, a young Soviet soldier, had the grave misfortune to be interned in the notorious Mauthausen Nazi concentration camp in Upper Austria.
Whilst most of us in the West are familiar with the names of Auschwitz, Dachau and Belsen, the name Mauthausen may not be immediately recognisable, but Mauthausen was considered to be one of the Nazi’s most severe and brutal camps, so much so that it was known affectionately by the SS as the bone mill or bone grinder.
Life & Death in Mauthausen Concentration Camp
Mauthausen was the principal camp in an extensive complex of satellite camps operating throughout Austria and the southern regions of Germany. The inmates, mostly drawn from the Soviet and Polish intelligentsia, were used as slave labour for numerous German companies, both local and national, with the majority of prisoners working mainly in the nearby granite quarries, providing raw materials for the reconstruction of German towns and cities.
The regime in Mauthausen and the surrounding sub-camps was so relentlessly brutal that the average life expectancy was estimated to be 3 to 6 months at most. Vsevolod Ostin entered the camp in 1942 and miraculously managed to survive until 1945, when the camp was liberated by the United States Army.
Vsevolod Ostin wrote his account of life in Mauthausen in 1961 but not to the acclaim that he had hoped for. Publishing house after publishing house rejected the manuscript. Various reasons were given, but the main stumbling block seemed to be that the Soviet authorities considered it to be too international, too cosmopolitan, at a time when literary and historical accounts of the war had an urgent imperative to condemn Fascism as irredeemably evil.
Surviving Life & Death in Mauthausen
A man such as Ostin who had survived the horrors of Mauthausen was hardly likely to give up that easily, and he did not. But it would be 25 years from completion of the manuscript before he would see his work in print. Rise Above Your Pain was finally published in 1986, a year after perestroika.
By definition, Rise Above Your Pain is not an easy book to work on, neither is it bedtime reading! The subject matter is grim and grisly and in order to do it justice, to translate and edit it in the tone and spirit in which it was written, we have had to rise above our pain with each successive chapter.
This is because Ostin tells it as it was; he pulls no punches. He lays bare the worst excesses of human nature’s darker side, his book serving as a salutary reminder of how war unleashes the worst in us and how, in its consuming climate of hate, violence and death, the dregs of our societies, the malcontents, thugs and sadists, rise from the sediment into positions of power the consummate nature of which they could only dream of in times of peace and stability.
Nevertheless, between the cracks of inhumanity that the book so meticulously documents, reassuring glimpses of a human light shine through, and it is this as much as the depravity it delineates that makes Rise Above Your Pain a compelling lesson from history and a story that needs to be told.
Life & Death in Mauthausen Concentration Camp
Olga and I were approached to translate and edit Vsevolod Ostin’s book Rise Above Your Pain by Olga Tkachenko, Head of the Sobolev Children’s Library in Kaliningrad, on the recommendation of a mutual acquaintance, author and journalist Boris Nisnevich.
The translated and edited text is scheduled for completion in early 2021, with a view towards publishing an English language version later in that year.
Vsevolod Ostin, survivor of Mauthausen concentration camp, author of Rise Above Your Pain
An afternoon in the company of Zoya Ostin, widow of Vsevolod Ostin, survivor of Mauthausen concentration camp, author of Rise Above Your Pain. {Top middle picture, left to right: Olga Tkachenko, Head of the Sobolev Children’s Library, Kaliningrad; Zoya Ostin; and Olga Korosteleva-Hart.}
Place laid at table for the deceased in keeping with Russian tradition, with glass of vodka and bread
Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas ~ Cheer them up with a card and personal letter!
Published: 17 November 2020
So, what I have been doing for the past week? Did news that they had installed a Democrat in the White House appall me so much that I have not been able to focus and write? No, even stranger than that, I have been busy writing my Christmas cards ~ either a case of there’s forward planning for you, or its time he invested in a new calendar.
Nothing quite as spectacular. I have been writing cards to folks back home, to friends and family in the UK, and cognizant of the fact that the post from Kaliningrad to England is not exactly the 21st centuries’ answer to a hypersonic version of Pony Express, I hope to have mailed them in good time.
Another reason for planning ahead is that every year I include a ‘brief’ note with my card. This has become as traditional as Christmas dinner, party hats, Christmas crackers and auntie Ivy turning Christmas day into a rugby scrum as she insists on clawing open everybody else’s presents.
Important to keep in touch during coronavirus Christmas
My Christmas letter has become such an important element of the annual Christmas ritual that its up there with seasonal sayings like ‘just what I always wanted’, when it is quite obvious that you didn’t (I mean, who in his right mind would wear a jumper like that, and when did your gran lust after a WWII German tin helmet (or even a WWII German in a tin helmet?)) ~ and ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have!”, when you obviously didn’t: that’s the aftershave you were given by someone last year and which you personally would not touch with a barge pole and neither would anyone else. Mind you it makes the perfect Christmas present for social distancing.
The thing about my Christmas letters is that although you have to state out loud at UK post offices these days what you have in your ‘packet’ ~ and my letters are known for being rather bulky, so they always ask ~ they always get through, even though sometimes I cannot resist answering, at first in a whisper, “It’s an inflatable doll,” and then, in response to the lady behind the counter urging me to ‘speak up’, to call out stridently, “It’s an inflatable doll,” so that everyone can hear (you should try this sometime, it really is fun!).
No stopping those Christmas letters
Yes, my letters always get through. Like Reader’s Digest junk mail, electricity and gas bills, even if the Post Office had been sold to China (what’s that, oh, it has been) and my letters rerouted via the M25, carried in the pocket of a young thief travelling on a skateboard during rush-hour, my letters always get through.
They zip past defiled statues, hoody-wearing muggers on handbag-stealing mopeds and bearded men burning poppies. They cruise through ganja-stenched knife-secreted carnivals, through nice areas deprived by people. As slippery as Hope not Hate, they riot their way down Looting Street, defying all manner of social distancing, lockdowns and Tiers for fears and, before you can say Hoorah for Brexit or Joe Biden is as honest as Clinton, they sail up your drive, through your letter box and plummet onto your doormat quicker than the stink from a suspect scientific claim.
They are so popular, my Yuletide missives, that family and friends leave home for them, and come back after Christmas ~ a long while after Christmas. Some people board up their letter boxes, others disguise them as something intimate in such a way that were you to insert a letter through them, you’d have the neighbours shout ‘pervert!’. Some teach their dogs to savage them, and others, those with ‘Beware of the Cat’ on their doors, train their feline friends to hide them under the Christmas tree ~ and scrape the soil back over.
One year my brother shoved his letter under the mistletoe, prompting his gay friend to say that he would rather kiss his own arse. He is a lonely guy, but no worries, he is double-jointed and quite the contortionist.
Selfish people, those who stockpiled toilet rolls when they heard the word pandemic, convert them into paper hats and hide the Christmas crackers for pulling on their own when they think no one is looking. Ahh, but someone is always looking, especially in these days of essential travel only. Do they really think that they can get away with it?
“Where are you going in that Support Bubble Car?”
“I am a victim of self-isolation and social distancing, officer. I am shunning all that I have ever known and all those that know me, even those who have tried to lose me, give me away or pretend that I don’t exist, such as my mother. I am going somewhere where they can’t track and trace me, and there, in the privacy of somebody else’s Tier 1 home, I will hide from the world and pull my Christmas cracker.”
“Very well,” says the Social Distancing Marshall, “but no laughing at the joke inside the cracker, mind. This is no time to be enjoying life, and don’t forget to wear your mask.”
Sorry, that was uncalled for.
“Hello, I think I may have coronavirus. I have been trying to telephone the hospital for the past three hours and nobody has answered.”
“Sorry, the hospital is as full as boatload of migrants from France. Wait a moment. Oh, it is a boat load of migrants from France. Please hang yourself. I mean hang up and try the Samarlians.”
The Samarlians ~ a not-for-profit organization that will talk you out of the ‘easy way out’:
Answer machine: “Hello, you have reached the end of your tether. I am sorry, due to a high volume of excuses about coronavirus we are unable to take your call at the moment, please leave your name and telephone number and you will never hear from us again. You might like to waste what remains of your life by visiting our website, goingaroundincircles.con, where you can often never find what it is you want to know using our FAQ Offs ~ Frequently Asked Questions Offline ~ alternatively, you will find the end of the line at your nearest Midland Mainline Station.”
Once, all you had to do was press Button A to be connected and Button B to get your money back. Now ‘you have the following options’, more numbers than the National Lottery and about the same chance of winning.
What my coronavirus Christmas letters mean to the recipients
Rumour has it that carol singers have written songs based on the contents of my Christmas letters and sold the rights to Leonard Cohen.
Christmas vicars have read them out in their sermons and have been summarily excommunicated.
Edgar Allan Poe, who essentially travelled by TARDIS, was inspired to write The Masque of the Red Death having read my treatise ‘Lockdown ~ the most effective life saver since leaches’.
Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas {See end of article for image credit*}
My letters have tweaked the ears of statesmen, tickled the underbelly of boat-owning philanthropists and have sunk a thousand ships, or would have if I had my way ~ where is my letter to Sir Francis Drake?
Napoleon stuck his arm up his vest after reading one of my letters, and what would Lord Nelson have asked Hardy to do for him had he read my letter before someone shot him first?
Thank heavens Adolf burnt his letter!
As for ordinary mortals, some wrap their present to auntie Joan in them and still others wrap them around uncle Martin’s chestnuts, who would otherwise lose them on Christmas morn as he struggles to adjust his mighty pendulums attached to his very large grandfather’s clock (thank the Lord for Spell Check!).
Looking forward to my letters
People look forward to my letters so much that they ‘wish it could be Christmas every day”. One day they will write a song about it and play it every year with depressing regularity.
This year they are all busy singing to, ‘So this is Christmas and what have you done. Sat in self-isolation it isn’t much fun.” I know, let’s open one of Mick’s Christmas letters and cheer ourselves up (gunshot off stage).
My letters have a sentimental and emotional appeal. They are up there, tugging at the heart strings like that old romantic Christmas Carol, who your mother caught your father with (also Christmas Connie, Christmas Christine and Christmas Cordelia, well, Christmas comes but once a year).
Ahh, the old ones are the best (Connie was 73).
Lovely old Christmas carols
What memories these well-known carols:
“Drug King Wenceslas looked out from his boat to Dover
When the snow is not found out we’ll roll the UK over
Brightly shone the hotel sign, the waiting bus was free
It was worth the trip through several countries and across the sea, He! He!”
And do you remember this one:
“Away in a 4-star I don’t pay for my bed, the tax-payer in England pays for it instead …”
And how could you possibly forget:
“Twinkle, Twinkle celeb star who the F..K do you think you are?
Pontificating up on high?
Spreading all those EU lies.
Twinkle, Twinkle talentless star paid too much, too much by far”
NOW, WHO DOESN’T DESERVE A CHRISTMAS LETTER FROM ME? (Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas)
Dear old Christmas Carol, one of Charles Dickens’ favourites. This will be the one year that Ebenezer Scrooge will be looking forward to a visit from the ghosts of Christmas Past, anything has to be better than Father Boris’s Christmas Present.
Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas
Although it is very important to keep in touch during a coronavirus Christmas, I don’t as a rule send the prime minister a Christmas letter, besides he will be far too busy this year reading and listening to fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm. Chris Witty and Sir Patrick Vallance, sorry I don’t know them ~ and neither do you, but there is a sort of chemistry there. It reminds me of that Chad Valley Junior Scientists set I was given at Christmas a long while ago. As I recall, it was a very disappointing present, all smoke and mirrors, bits missing, as incomplete as a Liberal manifesto and it had a very funny smell about it, something slightly fishy.
Send them a Christmas letter? I would not give them the steam off my turkey. What I do like to do, however, is spice up my Christmas offerings with the odd anecdote from Christmases past.
“Please, pretty please do tell us one.”
Well, all right, if you beg nicely.
Once upon a time, long ago, when England was really England, I worked part time as a waiter. I was young once, and in those days I was a teenager. These were the bad old days, before teenagers became entitled and were able to live at home with mum until their 45th birthday (you can ~ could? ~ always take a loan).
Teenagers in those days were not deprived as they are today. They were lucky, in that they did not have the internet from which to plagiarise articles to pass their exams with and, without keyboards and computers, they had the fun of writing all of their essays out by hand, correcting them by hand and then rewriting them by hand for presentation. This meant that they had less time for anything else, which was good, because there were no smartphones in those days and nothing to twiddle on, no Twatter, Arsebook, Snapcrap and the like. Instead, after school teenagers went out and worked.
I worked at the Talbot Hotel in Oundleshire, a very prestigious establishment, with a long history dating back to Elizabethan times and with a staircase that was said to have come from Fotheringay Castle where Mary Queen of Scots lost her head and on which staircase I almost lost my job for telling two old ladies that Mary was always looking for it in the rooms that they had paid for.
It was a posh place, the Talbot of Oundle, and still is. Standards were high. We had to wear black trousers, white shirt, cummerbund, little white pointed tail jackets and a black dicky bow. We looked like clockwork penguins. We were always well turned out, apart from one person whose flies were never done up, as if, we suspected, by no fault of accident.
It was three days before Christmas, us well turned out and him with his flies undone, that we were called to wait upon a very important table, several tables in fact containing the governors and alumni from Oundle’s prestigious public schools.
I had two salvers: one with Christmas seasoning and the other containing peas on my arm.
Several of we waiters moved along in single file serving our guests of honour. And then it came to her.
She was gorgeous, stunning, wearing a low-cut dress. She had the most diaphanous orbs you could ever imagine ~ yes, her eyes were beautiful. Mesmerised by love, or something that starts with ‘L’ and has the same number of letters, I leant over her and with the seasoning in my hand, asked:
“Would you like stuffing madam?”
The timing could not have been more perfect. Hardly had I realised that I should have used the word ‘seasoning’ than my waiter friend at the side of me, my pal, my very good pal, gave a purposeful nudge to my elbow and off went a spoonful of peas straight down the lady’s cleavage.
Talk about Captain Kirk’s ‘Space, the final frontier’!
And really, what did it sound like: “Madam, can I help you?” As she is reaching down inside, red faced and all a fluster, for those penetrative peas.
Sounds like something out of a Carry On film? How about Carry on Down the Cleavage? Rather that than Carry on Down the Pandemic.
Important to Keep in Touch During Coronavirus Christmas
But what has this got to do with it being very important to keep in touch during coronavirus Christmas? I confess, I have digressed, when my real intention for writing this piece was to say how nice, affectionate and charming Russian Christmas cards are. Different again to the crass and vulgar things that they churn out in the UK.
Every year in the UK, Christmas cards get bigger, which is a problem for my family and friends, for it means that instead of a ‘short’ letter I can really go to town and insert a tome like War & Peace. But British Christmas cards do not just get bigger they become more vulgar each year. In keeping with declining moral standards, smutty innuendo ~which is as traditional as laxatives on Boxing Day ~ has given way to images of a semi-pornographic nature and to captions laced with obscenity. It is enough to make you lie and say that Rubber Band has comedic talent!
How much nicer these traditional Russian cards are. They remind me of the sentimental cards that were produced in wartime England ~ soft, delicate, romantic and affectionate
Of course, they are not really Christmas cards as such, as this is an Orthodox Christian country, and Christmas is celebrated on 7th January. No, these are, for the sake of accuracy, Happy New Year cards ~Snovam Gordams.
Snovam Gordam (Happy New Year!) I shouted that last year on the stroke of midnight. You did too? Really?
Hmmm, we’d better shout twice as loud this year, as I don’t think He was listening.
By the way, sorry if you did not receive my Christmas card and letter.
Illustration for Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death (Image credit: Harry Clarke – Printed in Edgar Allan Poe'sTales of Mystery and Imagination, 1919., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2348546)
Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 239 [8 November 2020]
Going down the Pandemic ~ or just when you thought it couldn’t get much worse …
Published: 8 November 2020
With all the gushing, fulsome and hypocritical talk in the western media of a ‘new dawn for democracy’, clearly it is time to steer clear of Google News for a few days until the gloating and rhetoric subsides, and the ‘New Management but Business as Usual’ sign resumes its rightful place among the beer cans and spliff ends of yesterday’s party aftermath. As sure as the Devil finds work for idle hands, he is sure to find soundbites for delusional minds. Best to keep busy.
My wife, Olga, and I are busy translating and editing a book from Russian into English about a young Russian soldier’s experiences as a prisoner in Austria’s notorious Mauthausen Nazi Concentration Camp, known at that time as the Bone Grinder. Not exactly bedtime reading, but it serves to remind us that the privations and hardships endured by the wartime generation puts our gripes about lockdown and the associated inconveniences of Covid-19 firmly into perspective and underlines the difference between the Grim Reaper’s mortality harvest now compared to then as one of existential proportions ~ a difference on the scale of a sniper’s bullet and the bomb that they dropped on Nagasaki.
I am not saying that the situation is good, far from it. You may be of the opinion that it is not good that ‘Healing’ Joe Biden is the new incumbent in the Whitey House, but it is one of those awkward things that we have to live with, and when we think of it in relative terms, coronavirus that is, not the resuscitation of globalism, we would do worse than recall Phil Collin’s words, “Hey, think twice. It’s another day in paradise.”
With summer having waved goodbye and taking with it further opportunities to socialise outside, in, as we have been led to believe, the relative coronavirus safety of pub gardens and on bar decking areas, and with the media everywhere ramping up second-wave horror stories, the imposition of lockdown in the UK and here, in Kaliningrad, self-isolation, or at best cautious socialising, is back with a vengeance.
Vaccines’ healing powers better be better than Biden’s
So, what do you do? Your mother who is about to turn 80 has been looking forward to celebrating this significant milestone in her life with friends at a restaurant. Arrangements have been made, but as the date approaches, one by one her friends shy away, taking the view that discretion is the better part of valour, that there is clear and present danger in social mixing. This is the coronavirus conundrum for older people, is it not? The older you get the more precious time becomes? So do you go for it, regardless? Get out there and live life whilst you can or allocate the time you have left for hiding in the house? It is, to say the least, a difficult trade-off.
The media repeatedly tells us that the infected world is on the cusp of vaccine roll-out, but what does that mean, exactly? A recent article in The Moscow Times1 claims that “The share of Russians unwilling to vaccinate against Covid-19 has risen to 59% in October from nearly 54% in August, according to the Levada Center pollster.” The same article makes the claim, “almost half of Russians would never vaccinate against the coronavirus regardless of whether it’s produced in Russia or another country.”
They are not alone. People in the UK who I know personally are on the same wavelength. When I spoke to a friend recently, a retired biochemist, a scientist, aged 81, he said that he had never been vaccinated for anything and would not be now. Mind you, I suspect that he owes his longevity more to a frugal diet of muesli and oily fish than to his lifelong avowal of the risk of medication-taking and his strict regime of non-medication use, but then on second thoughts …
Vaccines’ healing powers better be better than Biden’s
In an article from The Lancet2, it is affirmed that “Vaccination is widely regarded as the only true exit strategy from the pandemic that is currently spreading globally.” But, “Hold Hard!!” as my auntie used to say (unfortunately, and I am not sure why?), as we read on we find, “… we do not know that we will ever have a vaccine at all. It is important to guard against complacency and over-optimism. The first generation of vaccines is likely to be imperfect, and we should be prepared that they might not prevent infection but rather reduce symptoms, and, even then, might not work for everyone or for long.”
Having read this, you could be forgiven for believing that the vaccine has about as much chance of warding off coronavirus as Biden has of ~ according to the liberal media ~ healing America’s rifts, which the ideology that he represents ironically created. Why else did so many Americans vote for Trump initially and continue to vote for him now?
The vaccine vote still hangs in the balance, but not wanting to take it or, conversely, dying to take it (so to speak) is not a Russian phenomenon, it is global not Russian roulette.
Vaccines’ Healing Powers Better be Better than Biden’s
What we need now is a plethora of articles elevating science with the same degree of shameless enthusiasm as that used to hoist Joe Biden to a level that he does not really deserve. Or do we?
The tone of the liberal media on Biden’s election victory has Biden cast in the image of a crusading saintly Other, ordained by the deity and sent to earth, his divine mission being to restore the neoliberal globalist vision of an incongruous imperialist democracy. If Trump was the pantomime villain that kept oons of leftist scribblers in feverish employment during his term in office, and how entertaining their toil has been, Jo Biden is the Second Coming, America’s last great hope for the salvation of a dying doctrine, everything and nothing that stands between the meltdown of the melting melting pot.
On every American dollar you will find the words, “In God We Trust”. With Uncle Joe Biden about to be installed (they need a couple of days to attach the strings), these words could take on an entirely new and ominous meaning.
Over here, the Almighty is held in no less high regard, but it is also generally believed that vodka cures everything.
For the time being, at least, I think I will stick with that!
References (Vaccines’ Healing Powers Better be Better than Biden’s)
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/11/02/mistrust-grows-for-russias-coronavirus-vaccine-poll-a71929 [Accessed 8 November 2020]
Is Biden their Last Straw in a show of pantomime proportions?
Published: 4 November 2020
Because I write this blog and update my diary, absolute avoidance of COVID-19 news is impossible, and I must confess that recently I have fallen off the UK media wagon and relapsed into the inexcusable habit, which I managed to kick for three or four months, of ruining my day with Google News.
That is how I know that Boris Johnson’s 3 Tiers ended in tears …
Tiers for souvenirs are all you’ve left me Memories of a love you never meant I just can’t believe you could forget me After all those happy hours we spent (together)
Tiers have been my only consolation But tiers can’t mend a broken heart I must confess Let’s forgive and forget Turn our tiers of regret Once more to tiers of happiness
Thankyou Ken Dodd for this inspiration
… that open-door immigration policies are again in the spotlight in countries such as France and Austria and that there is an election going on in the USA.
How close is Biden to the brick house?
Regarding that election, I gather from Google News that has-been Biden appears to be on track to get his left-wing rump into the seat of power. At 12.30 (Kaliningrad time) today, the UK’s liberal left press is already teetering on the cusp of a great collective orgasm, albeit slightly ruined by the fear that if Mr B does not win by the landslide they hope for, then a further shadow of doubt will be cast on the liberal media’s ability to translate ideological bias into hard support, which, let’s face it, after years of banging the anti-Trump drum they desperately need for their own reassurance.
Consolation is that if Trumper is ousted, at least we may at last be spared the relentless barrage of vitriol and belligerence that exudes from the West’s anti-Trump lobby, together with all those go-nowhere stories about collusion and hacking; all we will have to stomach is a fat dollop of the sweet and sickly ~ the same thick icing atop of the stodgy pseudo-democracy cake that we had to endure when Obuma was in the hot seat (or was that on the very cool fence?)
Someone left the cake out in the rain I don’t think that I can take it ‘Cause it took so long to bake it And I’ll never have that recipe again Oh no!
Thank you Richard Harris
As for ‘he will do their’ Biden, is he having another one of his ‘senior moments’ or is he really that out of touch? I suppose that he has been just too busy winning the election to keep up with events in Europe. I see from The Daily Express* today that he has condemned Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Poland’s Andrzej Duda as “thugs”. Hmm, could this be because they have refused to back down to the EU’s demands that they unlock their borders and take in thousands of migrants? Why, whatever next! Holy Perfect Phobias, Batman!
Well, it’s their lookout isn’t it. I mean, if they want to miss out on enrichment, of the kind experienced by France, Austria, Sweden and the UK, then they only have themselves to blame.
Trump’s drainage plan has siphoned some off
Sometimes, in times of trouble (no, not Paul McCartney) you need to go looking for solace. And with Bill’s Bar closed (‘I’ll go down to Bill’s Bar, I can make it that far …’ ~ Thanks Mr Cohen), I went looking in the most unlikely of places, you’ve guessed it ~ Google News UK. And it was there that I found it, in The Guardian** of all places.
Bogs are not the usual place where solace can be found, but for some reason, call it another mischievous effect of coronavirus, I was in the mood for old clichés. I was not disappointed. I waded through the slush of appeasement and capitulation and derived a peculiar sense of déjà vu from the tired, sad and, in these post-liberal days, weary and worn out apologetic tone, before I arrived at Pipe Dream Station, just in time to see the last deflection train leaving for Desperation. “This is the last train to Desperation, calling at Propaganda, Political Correctness, Tony Blair’s Legacy, Vigilsville County, and Somewhere Nowhere Never Over their Rainbow (obsession).”
It was here that I read the writing on the wall, in a sentence so hollow that it echoes incredulity, “In the UK last year, police warned that the fastest-growing terror threat was from the far right”.
Far right? Yeah, right …
I have had this recurring dream, since 1997. I am trapped in a grotesque pantomime, every bit as fantastic and disturbing as Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘theatre’, The Conqueror Worm†. On stage, the plot, and the plotters, coerce me into looking in the wrong direction. It is Poe’s ‘bidding of vast formless things that shift the scenery to and fro …’ Fortunately, fortunately for me that is, there are still people in the audience who are not afraid to tell the truth. ‘Look Out! He’s Behind You!’ they cry.
The first time I had this dream I awoke at this very moment, and I have been awake ever since. Insomnia is not an easy condition to live with, but it is better than the alternative.
Wake up! They will never give you your money back, but at least you can leave the pantomime before it is too late!
(Image attribution can be found at the end of this post.)
And here is the happy ending you wanted:
You have heard it said, no doubt, that every cloud has a silver lining, but what hope is there of finding one if has-been Biden accedes to the [ ] House? Oh but there is one ~ to be sure, to be sure. It may not be much, but it was flagged in a media article today*** [4 November 2020]. Allegedly, Meghan Markle has vowed that if Trump wins the election, she will leave America. Now, come on, don’t let’s be too hasty!! Besides, the boats are full.
So, if you cannot find any other reason for rooting for, what’s his name(?), you know what’s his name, for the next U.S. president, then this has got to be it!
Image attribution: This image is available from the National Library of Scotland under the sequence number or Shelfmark ID Weir.8(6). You can see this image in its original context, along with the rest of the Library’s digital collections, in the NLS Digital Gallery, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33869245
Surely, the irony cannot have escaped anybody’s attention, that is to say the date on which Boris Johnson proposes to submit England to a new round of severe lockdown restrictions. When? November the 5th. Talk about pissing on your fireworks! Let’s hope that Guy Fawkes doesn’t own a time machine!
For me, personally, the sudden but by no means unexpected surge in coronavirus cases has solved one puzzle. It has ended my indecisiveness as to whether or not I should change the title of one of my post series from ‘self-isolation’ to ‘social distancing’.
Would I be resident in the UK, the choice would no longer be mine to make. The new title would be lockdown. But here, in Kaliningrad, Russia, no such lockdown exists and, as at the time of writing, there is no intimation of one being implemented sometime soon.
Nevertheless, this seemingly clear-cut situation compared to that in the UK has done nothing to ease the difference in opinion that persists between myself and my friend and sparring partner, Ginger Cat Murr, about how we approach life now that coronavirus is once again in the ascendancy.
The difference is a nuanced one. Both of us are batting from the same wicket when it comes to lockdown. We share the belief that any benefits derived from such draconian measures, and there aren’t any, at least proven ones, are offset by the detrimental psychological impact that lockdown is having in its breakdown and fragmentation of normal human relationships ~ proof of which there is plenty.
We both believe, therefore, that the role of those in authority should be to guide and not dictate, and that the decision to what extent he or she decides to isolate themselves should be a matter of individual choice.
Admittedly, at the outset of coronavirus, earlier this year, I fully supported lockdown, as it was, without doubt, a sensible precaution to take as we travelled into the unknown. But that was then and now is now. In moving on we would do well to consider the almost 100-year-old maxim: adapt, adopt and improve.
Thus, as much as I balk against using such media catchphrases as New Normal, if it has taught us anything it is that Covid-19 is here to stay and that there is not only no quick fix but at the moment no fix, full stop.
Less than three months ago, the media was awash with vaccine-race stories, the implication being that at any moment the Lone Ranger would be riding on down to rescue us from Black Hat Corona. Now, we are told that although the vaccine, or myriad vaccines, are on course and will be rolled out soon, there is no silver bullet. It makes you think that someone should be given the bullet, and that it would not be a bad thing if whoever it is fired at it should ricochet a while throughout the world of science and the media.
That being as it should, back to our argument; I mean the debate between Ginger Cat Murr and myself on the pros and cons of lockdown.
Where our opinions diverge is that whilst we are both anti-enforced lockdowners, I have no problem at this point in time of entertaining a limited period of house arrest in order, if it works, to take pressure off the NHS and to give the science community and pharmaceutical companies time to test, develop, produce and distribute the once-vaunted vaccines/drugs, even if, as realists suggest, the end result will be less of a precision hit as we have been led to believe and more like the discharge from a sawn-off shotgun. Well, better hit and miss than no hit at all.
Ginger Cat Murr, on the other hand, sticks like glue to the mantra that the policy should be to protect the vulnerable as best we can and allow the rest, those who do not fit into this category, the freedom and intelligence of individual choice, taking up the logic cudgel that shutting some venues, like pubs and restaurants, whilst keeping other places open is a bit like being in first gear and reverse at the same time. In other words, Ginger Cat Murr is firmly behind the Great Barrington Declaration.
England Lockdown Déjà Vu Scare
In the UK, the debate appears to be going the way Brexit went. The country is becoming polarised into two distinct camps: those that want and welcome lockdown and those that don’t. And here there is a funny (as in bizarre) thing happening. Take a look at these headlines from the UK’s online media:
The Independent [2 November 2020] ~ ‘We need better leadership to beat the virus – not more of Boris Johnson’s false promises’
The Guardian [2 November 2020] ~ ‘The Guardian view on a second lockdown: what took him so long?’
The Independent [1 November 2020] ~ ‘This lockdown is better late than never, but it would have been even better in September’
Making allowances for the usual, and inevitable, ‘party political broadcast on behalf of …’ does it appear to you that it is primarily the liberal left who are rooting for lockdown? If so, how strange? I would have thought that the very word ‘lockdown’ would be sufficient to ignite cries of totalitarian agenda from the usual suspects, and that any government, but particularly a Tory government, advocating such policies would be condemned out of hand for launching an assault against our sacred ‘uman rights! But then, as we all know, liberalism and rationale …?
England Lockdown Déjà Vu Scare
The insult-to-injury kernel of this nut, the lockdown debate, not partisan politics, and what I would hazard a guess will prove to be the enduring symbol of early 21st century angst, by which history will judge our governments, scientists and media, has to be the face mask.
Who would have thought, before coronavirus came along, that this little piece of material slapped across your face would be such a bone of contention? It alone defines the division between those who do as they are told and those who do otherwise? But it represents more than that, a great deal more.
The mask symbolises the confused messages that have launched a thousand conspiracy theories; obfuscated the issue like no other; completely and totally undermined our trust, not only in politicians but also, and more importantly, in the credibility of our scientists, whose case for and against mask wearing veers from claims that masks can trap the virus to masks are perfectly useless, with the disturbing caveat that in the worst case scenario the improper use of masks can aid and abet viral transmission.
What is the proper way of using and wearing a mask? Don’t ask, because once you have the answer you will realise that unless you are a walking ‘laboratory condition’ living in a hermitically sealed sterile environment, your chances of success are about as odds-on as winning the lottery.
Do I personally wear a mask? Don’t we all? [Leonard Cohen: “And if you want another kind of love, I’ll wear a mask for you.”] Well, that all depends, of course, on what I am doing and where I am. But in the ongoing struggle against coronavirus, I do just as much as the rules necessitate, albeit without conviction (in both senses!)
To end on a more personal note, I must confess that I do derive a certain degree of amusement from observing the relationships between individuals and their masks.
Whilst there are some people whose masks seem to have become a sort of never-to-be-removed fungus that they have assiduously adhered to their mug, others do seem to have adopted a loose, indeed very loose, definition of what mask-wearing entails and, by default, what they expect to achieve by it. The best example of this are those that plaster their masks about their mouth but have their noses hanging out, as if the proboscis during this particular pandemic has ceased to play any meaningful part in the respiratory process.
I remember seeing something on Facebook that compared wearing a mask in this way to the unlikely practice of men wearing their pants with their willy over the waistband. (I’m sorry? Have you something you wish to confess to, comrade?)
It would appear that coronavirus mask-wearing has led some of us to completely reinvent our faculty for breathing; why else would anyone wear their mask on their chin or tuck it into their throat as if it is a cravat? And what of those naughty people who in spite of ‘rules are rules’ deliberately flout them and do not wear a mask. Are they rebels? Selfish anti-social miscreants? People who have a justifiable grievance against mask-wearing, ie they believe that they facilitate viral transmission rather than prevent, or cannot wear a mask for medical reasons? Or, in the last analysis, could they be mask wearers of an unconventional kind, ie wearing a mask but not on their face!
Ask yourself this question: Every time you see someone without a mask, is he or she really maskless or have they got one secreted about their person, wearing it in the most unlikely of places? So far, I have not seen any authoritarian rules about how to wear your mask, only that you must wear one! So, where and how you wear it is open to interpretation. And there are cases, of course, where people should be exempt. Take The Invisible Man, for example, there would be as much logic in him wearing a face mask as, er, repetitive bouts of lockdown?
