Monthly Archives: October 2021

Are Progressives Progressively Less Progressive?

Great minds think alike and think for those who will not think

Published: 29 October 2021 ~ Are Progressives Progressively Less Progressive?

In my pursuit of all things bright and beautiful, which is about as hopeful and hopeless as the quest for the Holy Grail, I read all sorts of things from all sorts of news media sources, some more dubious than others.

This was how I came across a media outlet of which before I was blissfully ignorant, in which the contributors continually refer to themselves and their ilk using the self-elevating term ‘progressive’.

Sounds like a bit of back-slapping aggrandisement to you? Yes, me too.

So, what is the definition of ‘progressive’?

The first definition I encountered was this: “happening or developing gradually or in stages”. And the example given was, “a progressive decline in popularity”.

This is interesting, because when we think of the term progressive in relation to the word progress, which I am sure is how ‘progressives’ use the term, we think of positive movement, of ‘forward’ and ‘up’, not, as in the example given, ‘negative’ and ‘down’.

However, if we allow ourselves a little latitude of thought, how many times have we heard the word ‘progress’ used ironically and/or pejoratively?

For example, a beautiful Victorian house is demolished to make way for a 1960s’ block of concrete flats: ‘That’s progress!’

Or an old church or chapel is converted into a cattle-market nightclub: ‘It’s called progress’.

From these examples alone, we can infer that ‘progress’ is like the small-print easily missed by the naive when entrusting their hard-earned cash to investments on the stock market ~ ‘The price of shares may change quickly, and they may go down as well as up’ ~ and that by extension, progressives, who see themselves wholly in a saintly and hallowed light, up there on a pedestal, can also belong to the twilight world, down there in the deluding shadows of fanatical devotion.

So, in simple, layman’s terms, what is this thing that calls itself progressive? In language other than complimentary, you or I would probably be tempted to say that progressive is just a fallacious synonym for the colloquialism ‘liberal-lefty’ and that the users of the misnomer have merely forgotten how the latter is spelt.

Are Progressives progressively less progressive?

The article that I chanced upon which goaded me to examine this aberration of linguistic etymology was published by an American online source, but there is no reason to suppose that the misapplication of the term ‘progressive’ is any less misapplied in Boris- as in Biden-land.

The article itself is not worth reading, so there is little point in referencing it, but the premise is a revealing one as it illustrates beautifully the way in which a progressive’s mind works, or does not work as the case may be, and the way that as a group, progressives have no option but to conform to an ideological status quo that is about as liberal as a straightjacket. Succinctly put, the presumption is that ‘good progressives’, ‘good liberals’, do what they are told to do, say what they are told to say and keep their minds shut whilst doing and saying it ~ although, as even the most cursory observation reveals, in average liberal circles (are there any others?) there is an awful lot more saying than actually doing.

What do you mean, you already know that!

Please, no heckling!

Are Progressives progressively less progressive?

The story starts like this: Once upon a time in America there was a progressive living out his life in the New Restrictive Coronavirus Age. This progressive was thoroughly adjusted. He believed in and followed unquestioningly every rule and regulation handed down to him from the neoliberal globalists on high. Lockdowns, mask-wearing and vaccination in perpetuity were things that he subscribed to and, as is the way with liberal dogma, if he subscribed to them than everyone else in the world, or at least his world, must subscribe to them too, or else!

Loyal, devoted and brainwashed, this progressive nevertheless recognised that there are and would be dissenters, but the last place, the very last place, that he thought that he would find them was in the progressive heartland of the town from whence he hailed.

Thus, when he discovered that a number, and quite a considerable number, of folk from the progressive place that he had once called home, contained people who, in spite of their ordainment, were ant-vaccine oriented, he was shocked to his liberal core.

Are Progressives Progressively Less Progressive? Shock!

Unthinkable as it was, a faction of the party faithful had turned their backs on the official narrative and instead of baahhing like sheep, ‘Jab Today Pay-For-It Tomorrow’, were standing together in opposition to enforced mass vaccination. What were these people thinking of? Why were these liberals thinking?! Baaaahhhhh!

Devastated and confused, the author of this painful piece twists, writhes and hand wrings his way through something that is evidently quite beyond his comprehension. His fruitless journey takes him not in search of answers but in a desperate need to find an excuse, something, he hopes, which will look like a hook on which he can hang his confusion and leave it out to dry.

The decree handed down to loyal liberal subjects from the neoliberal globalists on high is as plain as the muzzle on your face: everyone should vaccinate and never cease vaccinating until either the word to halt is given or when common sense has been eclipsed and the Earth has frozen over, whichever happens first ~ and I think, children, we all know which of the two it will be!

The progressive author of this progressive article openly admits, as if he is pinning a badge of honour to his rompers, that he has severed ties with people from the blighted town to which he refers ‘because of their views on vaccines’. By which he means views that do not expressly conform to his views and the ideological credos in which his views are parroted. “Thanks for being my father, but I can no longer speak to or see you again because your views on enforced mass vaccination are different from mine. Your loveless, progressive son, A.W. Anchor.”

Well, throw my rattle out of my pram! A typical progressive reaction: do not agree with what you say, do not want to hear what you say, want to stick my fingers up, er, in my ears!

He then asks (and note how illuminating this is about progressives!), I paraphrase: how can ‘vaccine-hesitant progressives reconcile their decision not to vaccinate’, presumably with a dogmatic, unyielding, inflexible ideology that says that they must vaccinate. Here is the punch line: do they, progressives, ‘abandon progressivism and put personal choice first’?

So, there you have it in a nuthouse: an either/or situation. The implication is that personal choice is not something you can exercise if you want to be considered a good liberal and remain within the fold. (There are those sheep again!)

Back to the self-illuminating manuscript: With no ladders in his progressive mind, the author of this curious work continues to slide down the slippery snake, until eventually, with nothing else to appease himself with and nowhere else to go, he lands on square one, which is occupied by a female liberal journalist. Unfortunately, this female progressive does not provide him with the answer that he so desperately wants to hear, but the frustrated witch hunt ends with her.

Englishman in Kaliningrad sees liberal witch on broomstick

Poor, benighted, fallen-from-grace, gender-certain, female progressive ~ and you may all shake your heads sadly at this point ~ she does not see “any disconnect between” the progressive values she espouses and her willingness to lean towards the anti-vaccine lobby, which, as the media would have us believe, is a demoniacal cult that must be confined at all costs to the ghost town Conspiracy Theory, a town that they have conveniently buried many light years away in an arid socio-political wilderness, a town that bears, some say, more than a passing and chilling resemblance to Auschwitz, not least because of the motto raised high above the globalist gate: : ‘Mass Vaccination will set You Free’.

“Well, hello there! Aren’t you Enoch Powell?”

“Go! Hence from here, forthwith. This is no place for progressives!!”

{The sound of sheep can be heard in the background.}

This poor outcast of a woman becomes, in one fell swoop, the personification of the liberal paradox: a first-class liberal who yet possesses enough resilience and independence of mind not to cow-toe to stereotyping mandates.

To excuse, pardon and absolve this pathetic creature is more than clemency can brook. In Victorian times they would have had her committed. In days of yore they would have burnt her at the stake. But in 2021, the next best thing is to cast aspersions on her ideological credentials and curse her for eternity. Should she ever have the temerity to air her heresies again, she can be sure of falling foul of those juvenile snotty-nosed know-nothings who play at politics in university crèches, known as student unions ~ led in the UK, naturally, by Oxford ~ and, with the help of the ‘ban them, bar them, block them’ social media mafia, will suffer herself to be finally hanged on the public deplatform of her own making. And doesn’t it serve her right! The deviating Bitch

Thus for all their progressiveness, progressives, it would seem, are not so progressive as to eschew ritual or to emancipate themselves from thoughts and actions that repeatedly define them as tedious and predictable.

For example, when neoliberals, those saints, those Gods on high ~ you know who I am talking about, the billionaire philanthropists, technology tycoons and the super-rich banking families ~ throw crumbs from their banqueting table, their otherwise submerged progressive pets obediently rise from the depths where no thoughts of their own are allowed to exist and gobble up what’s tossed to them, hook, line and sinker. This is the liberal way.

Like fish in a fish farm they mindlessly swallow everything that is fed to them, mistaking the net that draws them in as their masters’ reward for loyalty rather than see it for what it is, and all the while the clock ticks down to the hour of harvest festival.

Progressive neoliberal hook for the less progressive

In conclusion, therefore, the article submitted by the angst-ridden progressive is nothing more than a touch of seismic disbelief: ‘How could this possibly be?’ ‘How dare they think out of the box?’ ‘How dare these liberals think?’ ‘How dare they?’ ‘Just how dare they?’ ‘How?’

Is this your last word on the subject?

Why not grant that privilege to Nigel Farage. He’s really rather good where last words are concerned, and if anyone can put a full stop to this, then surely he is the man!

Farage: Western leaders’ Covid policy pushing us to a two-tier society

Image attributions
Man stopped by giant hand: https://openclipart.org/download/168136/1329075888.svg
Shocked monkey: https://openclipart.org/download/236668/Shocked-Monkey.svg
Boat in clouds with hook: https://openclipart.org/download/263243/FishHook.svg
Go back to square one: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=278623&picture=back-to-square-one
Witch on broomstick: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Witch-with-broom/69518.html

German Recipe Beer in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Article 16: German Recipe

Published: 25 October 2021 ~ German Recipe Beer in Kaliningrad

On 26 April 2021, purely in the interests of writing these reviews and not because I have a drink problem ~ our local shop is well stocked with beers, is only a short walk away and is the same distance coming back, so no problem there ~ I wrote about Czech Recipe beer from Russian brewers, Lipetskpivo.

Finding it to be a zesty, hoppy beer with a refreshing aftertaste, I decided to improve my geographical knowledge by unscrewing the top on its sister beer, German Recipe. Disappointed that the 1.3 litre bottle did not come with a free moustache or the original helmet worn by the Kaiser, nevertheless, I was not deterred. There is something so German about drinking German beer or a beer with a German name in an old German house in Königsberg, and, although I was not expecting the taste to be earth-shattering, as I had enjoyed its sister so much, not to drink it would be bunkers.

I had already swotted up on the background of its brewery and the claims its brewers were making. They say that in 2005 the brewery underwent a large-scale modernisation programme and that, with the assistance of technologists from other parts of the world, they were able to fine tune their production to meet world-quality standards. An important end result from this investment was that it allowed them to produce beers to a microbiological excellence that negated the need to include all of the preservative gubbins often required for extending shelf-life, which, let’s not be coy about this, can only be a good thing.

My one wish is that I could find a way to extend my shelf life, but as I was drinking German Recipe in 2021, not August of 1944, at least I could drink with the relative confidence that, unless history was about to repeat itself, I would not have to grab my bottle and glass and hurry off to the shelter.

German Recipe Beer in Kaliningrad

So, settled in the attic, I ‘cocked a deaf ‘un’ to the air-raid sirens, which, thankfully, I was not around to hear 77 years ago, and boldly unscrewed the cap. No sooner had I done so than a strong whiff gave vent to the air. It was malty, peaty and definitely robust.

Putting the gas mask away, as it did nothing for my Tootal cravat or ties, I braced myself for the penultimate moment of truth and poured the liquid into my glass and then held it up to the light. Yes, I realise that this was inexcusably pretentious of me, but you must understand that in the UK real-ale devotees always do this sort of thing to elevate themselves in their own minds, whether at bar or at beer festival ~ particularly at beer festivals. Fortunately, after three or four pints they are forced to drop the ritual, partly because of alcohol-induced amnesia and also because by this time and quantity, they can no longer tell their glass from their elbow, and even if they could they are in no stable condition to prosecute the pretension further for fear of falling over. This, of course, is not the reason why I only hold my first glass of beer up toward the light, and then quickly leave it at that.

Anyway, drinking sensibly, as they say, having noted a light-brown haziness looking like the mist lifting slowly above the Curonian Lagoon, and a good dissolving head ~ beer drinkers get a lot of those, especially in the mornings ~ I went for the ultimate test: the first sip.

German Recipe Beer in Kaliningrad

The first thing I noticed from the first sip about this ‘German beer’ brewed in Russia was (shock, it’s Germanisation!) that the smell was stronger than the taste. This differential did not phase me, as the second and third sip were like ‘papers please’, and this brew had all its credentials. In fact, it could not have been more convincing had I been drinking it with my QR code tattooed on my buttock. Nothing counterfeit here! This German was surprisingly bright and fragrant (I once worked with someone like that; he was as bright and fragrant as a rainbow.) and, just like its Czech sister, was well zesty with a refreshing finish.

The after taste, and here I really mean the after-after taste, mirrored its appearance in the glass: it was a little bit clingy. It reminded me of the type of women whom I never knew but thought I would meet one day as I had often seen them in films.

With an OG of 4.7%, I felt confident that if I drank a couple of bottles I would not be clinging on to things to keep myself upright, except for the glass itself, which proved to me by the end of the session that my palate must have approved.

To be a little picky ~ I said ‘picky’ ~ after my third pint It did occur to me that the clinginess was becoming a trifle galvanised, and I hoped it would not go further so that the roof of my mouth would feel as if I’d been drinking Anderson Shelter. But the apprehension passed almost as swiftly as a low flying Messerschmidt and, before you could say the end of the war, I knew that I had enjoyed it.

So, thumbs up and chocks away. Buy a bottle of German today.

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: German Recipe
Brewer: Lipetskpivo
Where it is brewed: Lipetsk, Russia
Bottle capacity: 1.3 litre
Strength: 4.7%
Price: It cost me about 165 roubles (£1.72)
Appearance: Mid-amber
Aroma: Full bodied, hoppy and malty
Taste: Fragrant, bright
Fizz amplitude: 7/10
Label/Marketing: Suitably Germanic
Would you buy it again? I have done
Marks out of 10: 6

*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.

Kaliningrad Leaves Autumn to the Leaf Suckers

Leaves it out! I am dreaming myself to sleep

Published: 22 October 2021 ~ Kaliningrad Leaves Autumn to the Leaf Suckers

I am not precisely sure when it was, but I know that I converted to the religion of insomnia many, many years ago, during which time, having lived in numerous, too numerous to recall, properties, I have lain awake at night, or, indeed, have woken during the night, listening to the sounds of the world on the other side of my window.

Naturally, every different place in which we find ourselves sleeping, or not, as the case may be, possesses its own external world of noise, its own audible signature, and Königsberg-Kaliningrad is no exception.

For the sake of brevity and the object of this article, let us hastily pass over tempting references to unthinking ‘dugs’ and thoughtless ‘dug’ owners, both doing what they do because they haven’t the sense to do otherwise, and focus instead on a noise, or noises, the type of which are pertinent to and typical to no other but Kaliningrad at night.

During the summer months, night noises in cities and towns, wherever these places may be, are plentiful and variegated, because universally the heat of the night invariably brings forth denizens, particularly young denizens, whose expression of the first flush of yoof is noise. ‘Hey, I’m alive! I must make a racket!”: Bum, de Bum, de Bum (In case you are wondering what that is, it is the world-over urban sound of a delinquent’s ignorant base-beater.).

But even in the summer months, against the backdrop of predictable noises, such as someone staggering home with a skinful or someone with a motorbike thrust between their legs, there are strange noises, weird noises that once having entered your consciousness refuse to let go or give up, until, to the best of your ability, you either solve their mystery or surrender to their influence and fall asleep in spite of them.

For a long period, and the night is long when sleep is in an elusive mood, I focussed my deductive powers on the source of a low-humming drone. And yet it was some time, successive early mornings later, before the identity of my preoccupations decided to make itself known to me. What I had been listening to was neither a space ship nor banshee, a hover car or a hole in a trumpet, it was in fact a road sweeper or, to be more precise, a lowly street cleansing vehicle: a truck that trundles about the city sloshing water around the street when normal people are sleeping.

Kaliningrad Leaves Autumn to the Leaf Suckers

It was yesterday, at 4am. I was thinking about the usual things, the ghosts of pub crawls past, QR-coded existence, all I was going to do in life, should have done, might still do, but might not have time to do them now ~ you know how the gospel goes for we insomniacs ~ when I heard what at first impressed me as the sound of a distant street slosher. I lay there for a good twenty minutes, using the constancy of this sound, its soothing continuity, to lull me into further thoughts, tranquil and obsessive, before it eventually dawned on me that this was the month of October and that the days of summer dust-damping had been succeeded by autumn leaves.

There was the clue I needed! Fellow insomniasts will understand when I say that we who need sleep, just as much as you do, but don’t get it, are no strangers to Eureka moments that fly phantom-like from out of the darkness and keep us awake even more! That long, that mid-range humming tone to which my thoughts were singing and which had occupied my mind as if it was a reference library, was not the sound of water on dust, it was nothing of the sort. It was the steady rhythmic lilt emanating from the suction hoses of the pre-dawn leaf-sucking lorries!

Have you taken leaves of your senses?

Cast your mind back, if you please, to a post I wrote in 2020. In that post I stated that Kaliningrad is a green city, a city full of trees. Yes, in the summer of 2020, I wrote, Kaliningrad is a green city, to which I should add, and now will, that in autumn it turns yellow, as well as orange, red, russet, purple and many shades of brown. This is because trees, unlike many of us, are not known for insomnia. In the autumn they get busy, shedding their leaves in the imminent countdown to winter, when all as one will sleep. And in places where there are lots of trees about to bed down for winter, there are also lots of fallen leaves.

Thus, for the past three weeks or so, gangs of Kaliningrad leaf shufflers have been marshalling piles of leaves, stacking them at the sides of streets and raking them up from lawns and verges. Both by day, but mainly by night, when you are asleep and we are awake, the leaf-sucking lorries and flat-bed trucks crawl stealthily out of their depots to ply their trade on Königsberg’s cobbles and Kaliningrad’s highways and byways.

If you cannot shut them worry not, it is truly a sight for sore eyes, and the distinctive hum is not so bad. Think of it as an autumn lullaby, played for you and for me by the Loyal Fill Those Trucks Up Orchestra.

And so it makes you think. And lying there in the dark, steals you away to a time so far away in your youth that it may never have really happened ~ if it was not because in the night, there, alone in the dark, you have to place your trust in something, so why not your mind and its memory?

When I was a young boy, and I was never anything else when young, growing up in a small English village at a time when Arsebook and PlayStation were but devious twinkles in the ‘me, myself, I’ of a neoliberal’s bank account, I found that I was fascinated by the tarmac gangs resurfacing the road; the dustbin men collecting the rubbish; the drain unblockers unblocking the drains; the road sweepers sweeping the roadsides; and last, but by no means least, the crème de la crème of them all, the men who rode around in a tanker into which they emptied the house latrines ~ the all-important ‘Bucket Men’!

In fact, I was so took up with this last profession that when my well-to-do auntie and uncle visited us at our family home, and I was asked in an imperious voice by an omnipotent-looking lady all done up in a large fur coat, “So, tell me Michael, when you grow up what do you want to be?” Instead of answering a doctor, lawyer or banker, which is what I suppose she wanted to hear, I replied, with childlike candour, “I want to be a bucket man!”

Granted, perhaps not the most salubrious or rewarding of vocations, but at that particular time, when connection to mains sewerage was far from universal in small villages, the necessity of the bucket man, even more than the leaf-sucking lads, commanded a certain respect. However, every ‘dug’ has its day (bang!) and the day of the bucket man (I think it was Tuesday?) came and inevitably went, driven eventually to extinction by the triumphant rise of the bucket-man-free self-propelling flush lavatory.

How fortuitous then that I eventually went into publishing, and also how lucky I was to have narrowly missed working on newspapers. Mind you, if I had gone in for news media, would it have been so very much different in terms of substance, stirring and shovelling to what would have been my lot had I found an opening in bucket toilets. Let me in hindsight be thankful for one and romance lament for the other.

With the humming still in my ears, I returned from the place where my auntie still stands to this day. She has taken root in my memory; her face all shocked and dumbfounded. Meanwhile, in my thoughtful unsleep, I offered a prayer of thanks to the nocturnal Kaliningrad leaf suckers* for autumnal services rendered when everyone else, except for us, are sound asleep in their beds zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

(*sounds like the sort of lyrics Frank Zappa would have been proud of!).

Link to> Kaliningrad in Autumn Leaves it Out

Image attribution
Figure in bed illustration: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/US-National-Park-Maps-pictogram-for-a-hotel-vector-image/15796.html
Autumn leaf patterns: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Autumn-leaves-arrangement-vector-image/14926.html

Those Magnificent Gender-Neutrals in their Flying Machines

Woke Watch PC UK! {Case 4} Those Magnificent Gender-Neutrals in their Flying Machines

“This is your Captain speaking, I may have a male voice, but don’t let that fool you! Welcome to flight B for Bandit, three letters starting with a B, 0707 gender-neutral heaven. We are currently cruising at 35,000 feet under a rainbow with pink varnish on our toenails. Our estimated arrival at the Isle of Person is recommended as the weather is bright and gay, so I am not allowed to fly you anywhere else. Please continue to keep you seat belts fastened, as we are expecting some politically correctly turbulence as we fly through EU air space and flak over Berlin. May I take this opportunity to welcome you aboard. Thank you, whatever you think you are and what Nature will never allow you to be, for flying Woke Airlines today.”

Just when you thought that the UK could not get more Woke, the country’s flagship carrier British Airways leapfrogs into the PC queue with its announcement that it is dropping the very British and very correct salutation, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’. Presumably, concerned that the whingeing, whining, hand wringing, bed-wetting gender-neutral brigade might shoot them down with accusations of being too binary, British Airways have scrambled to copy airlines from other woke-oriented countries, such as Canada, for example, and Germany, lifting off on a non-scheduled flight to destinations unknown ~ in non-woke speak they have jettisoned an age-old and perfectly respectful tradition without, according to media reports, having any clear idea of what they will replace it with.

WOKE WATCH UK!

When I first heard the news that the Jerries had dropped the phrase ‘Ladies & Gentlemen’, it came as no surprise to me. I mean the Luftwaffe are well known for dropping things, usually thousands of tons of high explosives on Western Europe and the Soviet Union, and, let’s face it, they always were inclusive. I mean when they were out on a bombing spree, they didn’t fly around and around attempting to miss LGBTs. And then someone corrected me; not about the Luftwaffe and LGBTs but that it was another German company, not the Luftwaffe, that had dropped ‘Ladies & Gentlemen’. Sigh, some things never change.

Those Magnificent Gender-Neutrals in their Flying Machines

But what-a mistake-a to make-a. My sincere apologies. I am not much of a flyer. I would never have known that British Airways was anything to do with Britain if it was not written on the sides of their aircraft, and now that ‘Ladies & Gentlemen’ is about to be replaced with, what? ~ ‘Good morning LGBTs, its, others, refugees, multicults, perverts, terrorists, knee-takers, statue-removers and ‘I’ve had my vaccine’ Facebook clones etc’ ~ nor would you.

If it wasn’t for the fact that my suggested salutation is a fair appraisal of where we are at in modern-day UK, you would not know who they are, who you are and what that thing sitting next to you is, would you? Will they include extraterrestrials?

In the words of my retired scientist friend, Martin: “It’s all so peculiar. What shall we do first, blow the satellites out of the sky or gas the sink estates?”

That is probably not the answer. But, instead of ingratiating themselves with the wrong uns, couldn’t British Airways and the other dominoes simply have replaced the no-smoking symbol with an illuminated red bar that lights up across the word WOKE as their planes prepare for take-off? Or even just edit the old signs: ‘No Smoking’ to ‘No Woking’ ~ being careful, of course, to ensure that whoever undertakes this task knows how to spell the word ‘Woking’. There’s no point in being too accurate.

Those Magnificent Gender-Neutrals in their Flying Machines

If it wasn’t so amusing, it would jerk out more tears than Gone With The Wind ~ which just about sums it up really. It’s nothing but a storm in a teacup, or should that be an airline company in a colander?

Whilst I wait expectantly for the gender-neutral sequel of Star Trek, “to gayly go where no ~~man~~ thing has gone before”, previous generations of legacy English ladies and gentlemen observing our world from a better past might find consolation in the incontrovertible fact that as any street after 11 pm in any town in the UK denotes, there are very few ‘ladies & gentlemen’ left to address. In the present twisted nature of things, we could always argue our case on the basis of minority, but there really seems little point. If we are to ‘gayly go’ at warped speed to the gender-bending place that they are so bent on sending us, why make the trip in a handcart when you can travel first class Woke. Just fasten your seat belts, extinguish political correctness and don’t forget to laugh. History certainly will.

Thank you, Ladies & Gentlemen, for reading my post.

More Jiggery Pokery Hokey Wokery

Woke Watch PC UK! Introduction
Woke Attack in Pimlico UK!
London Woke Up to Khan
Keep Woke out of Football!

Image attributions:

Bomber: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Bomber-plane-vector-sign/9604.html

UK Flag Map: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/United-Kingdoms-flag-with-map/50789.html

Colander: https://freesvg.org/colander

Sun & Wind Vector Illustration: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Sun-and-wind-vector-illustration/28316.html

A new QR code era in Kaliningrad

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 579 [14 October 2021]

Published: 14 October 2021 ~ A new QR code era in Kaliningrad

ON THE 9^thOF OCTOBER, the day after the QR code restrictions hit Kaliningrad, Olga and I walked through the atmospheric autumnal streets of Königsberg and then whizzed off by bus across the other side of town on an errand.

Having alighted from public transport, we decided to stop for a coffee. If we had attempted to enter a café, restaurant or bar today, we would have had to produce a QR code, but because we were buying refreshments from a pavement kiosk, we were, at least for the moment, QR exempt.

Subliminally, the advertising gimmick had worked. I saw a giant cup and a cup of coffee I wanted.

As I waited for my brew, I could not resist contemplating what it must be like to go to work each day not in an office, school, fire station, police station, on a building site or in a city bar but inside a giant coffee cup ~ and an orange one at that!

Through the little glass windowed serving hatch it did not look as if there was an awful lot of room inside the cup, and I began to imagine some of the more expansive people whom I knew in the UK working there. I concluded that they would not be so much inside the cup as wearing it.

Coffee can be bought from kiosks during a new QR code era in Kaliningrad

Joss, my brother, could live in it. I could see the place slowly converting before my eyes. It had a television arial on top, a satellite dish on the side and protruding from the roof a long metal chimney that was smoking like a volcano. Outside, there was a crate of empty beer bottles and a pair of old pants and socks, both with holes in them, hanging on a homemade line strung across the front of the cup, looking like last month’s tea towels.

If this coffee cup was for sale in London, it would be described by London estate agents as ‘a most desirable property’, well-appointed and almost offering commanding views over the road to the bus stop. You certainly would not get much change out of a million quid for it. Five miles outside of Dover, with a 5-star sign above it, the cup would be housing a boat load of migrants. Why Nigel Farage is gazing at it from a hilltop through his binoculars the British government will never know ~ and don’t want to! But this is hardly surprising, as Nigel has a reputation for waking up first and smelling the coffee!

With no one any the wiser as to whether we had a QR code, a bar code, a one-time code, a code that needed verifying or a code that was Top Secret, we took full advantage of our incognitoism by finding a spot in the autumnal sun in which to savour our brew.

Giant pavement-side coffee cups, even bright orange ones, do not as a rule run to tables outside, but just at the back of this one there happened to be an old, long, green Soviet bench, where one could drink one’s coffee whilst ruminating upon the good old days when the proletariat sitting here would have been comfortably unaware that the USSR when it folded would eventually be replaced with coronavirus QR codes. This long and sturdy bench also facilitated my admiration of the pretty and well-stocked flower bed and enabled me to keep an eye on the plums.

Plums! What plums? Whose plums were they? And how had these plums got there? They weren’t aloft growing on a tree these plums but scattered upon the ground. Someone, I conjectured, must have sworn bitterly, perhaps a bit stronger than blaher moohar, when the bottom of the bag that they had been carrying split, plummeting plums all over the paving slabs.

The who and the why of the plums, whilst inspiring at first, soon gave way to the far more exciting realisation that by observing people’s reactions to the plums, I could play the psychoanalyst and categorise them according to plum personalities. Of course, the way they approached and dealt with the plums would not help me to determine whether or not they were in full possession of their QR codes, were evading pricks or considering vaccination at any moment, possibly when they least expected it, but when all was said and done the experiment would be an interesting one, and, besides, I had a cup of coffee to drink.

Twenty sips or so into my coffee and a substantial cohort of pedestrians later, and I had been able to determine that there are basically four types of plum approachers.

1. Those that spotted the plums and walked around them, giving them a particularly wide berth. Any wider and they would have needed a visa, not to mention a coronavirus test or six, as they inadvertently crossed the Polish border.

2. Those who spotted the plums but carried on walking anyway, chatting casually to their companions as though they were no strangers to plums in public places, yet who picked their way through them gingerly as they would a minefield on their way to buying a Sunday newspaper.

3. Next came the sort of people that you would not want to walk across a minefield with, since, seemingly oblivious to their feet and where they were putting them, they inevitably stepped on one or two plums, immediately looking down in alarm at the squish beneath their shoes, no doubt fearing that the lack of fines for Fido’s indifferent owners had landed them in it yet again.

4. Finally, it was the turn of “I’ll give them plums on pavements!” This category was mostly comprised of manly men; you know the sort, either their arms don’t fit or they have gone and grown a beard, not knowing why they have done it and because, quite obviously, it certainly does not suit them, it was the last thing on Earth, next to deliberately stepping on plums, that they should have gone and done to themselves, unless it really was their intention to make themselves look like a bit of a dick.

This category saw the plums but chose to pay no heed to them. They juggernauted along as if plums grew on trees and these boots were made for walking. Unbeknown to them, however, plums can be slippery customers and more than once were the over-confident nearly sent arse overhead. They would step, squash, slip a little, look around really embarrassed, hoping no one had seen them, and then hurry on their way, leaving behind the priceless memory of a bright red face burning like a forest fire in a beard to which they were both ill suited, as well as a boot-imprinted trail of squishy-squashy plum juice.

So, what I had learnt from all this plum gazing? Not a lot. It had been a different way of occupying one’s mind whilst drinking a cup of coffee, although it had made me wish that I was 14 years’ old again, so that I could shout, “Watch out for the plums!” or simply “Plums!” But you can’t go around doing silly things like that when you are (ha! ha!) a ‘mature person’, especially not when you are in somebody else’s country. I bet Adolf Hitler never shouted “Plums!” when he was cruising about the streets of Paris. Boat migrants to England certainly don’t. They just shout, “Take me to your 5-star hotel and give me benefits!” And liberals, who always find something to shout about, would, on seeing the black shiny plums in their path, have been unable to resist the wokeness of going down on one knee whilst crying, “My white knees are in trousers, please forgive me, I am too privileged”.

Conkers on the day of A new QR code era in Kaliningrad

Young boy: They ain’t plums!
Me: I know. But I just wanted to show that in Kaliningrad at this time of year there are also a lot of horse-chestnut tree …
Young boy: You put those there because you ain’t got any pictures of plums …
Me: Why you cheeky little f …

I finished my coffee, wished the entertaining plums good day, and off we went to complete our errand.

On the way, on this second day of QR codes, giant cups and plums (plums, no less, my friends, which had fallen by the wayside), we overheard a lady at a bus stop complaining loudly to anyone who had a mind (or not) to listen.

It was quite evident by her excited, ruffled and animated manner that she had recently undergone a most traumatic experience. Apparently, she had ventured into a small café to buy some jam and was horrified to discover that not only were most of the people inside the shop not wearing masks but, as far as she could ascertain, none had been asked for their QR codes. “I shall report them! I shall report them!” she wailed, shouting so loud that had her mask been properly in place, which it wasn’t, it would have fallen from her nose, like plums from a wet paper bag, to end up uselessly wrapped around her chin. It was fortunate, therefore, that such a calamity could not occur, as that is where her mask was anyway ~ swaddled around her chin protecting it from coronavirus.

On completion of our errand (there has to be some mystery in this post somewhere!), whilst sitting on the bus with my mask strapped to my elbow, I drifted into contemplation of the feasibility of QR codes extended to encumber access to the city’s supermarkets.

I wondered: “Does it mean that if you do not want to get vaccinated you will have to buy your own shop?” And: “What is the going rate for one of those giant coffee cups?”

Mick Hart on Day 2 of A new QR code era in Kaliningrad

If it does happen, if they do impose QR code restrictions on shops, I can see some astute entrepreneur, some Russian equivalent to Del Boy, quickly cashing in on the act. It is not difficult to imagine a fleet of shops on wheels whipping about the city from one estate to another, selling everything from buckwheat to outsize, wooly, babushka-made socks.

Alternatively, we could convert our garage into a Cash & Cart-it Off. Our garage stands at the end of the garden, some distance from the road, but in these coronavirus-challenged times what once might have been regarded as a commercial disadvantage could potentially be transposed into a positive marketing ploy.

All that was needed would be to install large glass windows in the sides of the garage, stack shelves behind them full of sundry goods, position two telescopes on the side of the pavement, preferably coin operated so as to make a few extra kopeks and, Boris your uncle, Svetlana your aunt, you’re in business!

Potential buyers viewing our wares through the telescopes provided could place their orders by Arsebook messenger. On receipt of their orders we would select the goods, load them on the conveyor belt and ship them from store to roadside before you could say, who’s making millions out of the sales of coronavirus masks? What could be better than that? Accessible shops, you say?

Come to think of it, there are probably not a lot more inconvenient places than shops where QR codes could be implemented, except, of course, for public lavs.

Imagine getting jammed in the bog turnstile unable to get your mobile phone from your pocket to display your QR code whilst the call of Nature grows ever more shrill!

This situation, difficult though not insurmountable, would stretch both the imagination and the resources of even the brightest entrepreneur, who would be faced with the daunting prospect of rigging up some curious contraption or other, consisting of a series of pipes, funnels and retractable poes on sticks.

On a less grand but no less adventurous scale, my wife has suggested that we plough up the lawn at our dacha and use it for growing potatoes, which is not such a bad idea, as it would mean no longer having to mow the lawn. But would it mean that we would have to get a statutory dog that never stops barking as a deterrent to potato thieves and to ensure that our neighbours are completely deprived of peace? “What is the use of having a dog that don’t bark? An intelligent lady once said to us. Answer: about as much use as one that never stops barking! Or about as much use as a dog owner who allows its dog to incessantly bark.

Whilst a constant supply of beer and vodka would not be a problem as we could always convert our Soviet garage back to what it was obviously used for when it was first constructed, alas ploughed up lawns will not grow washing sponges or cultivate tins of baked beans. And the last thing that I would want, even if my potato patch was the best thing since Hungary stood up to bullying EU bureaucrats, was to own something so useless that all it does is shite on pavements and bark as if a potato thief has thrust a firework up its arse before leaving the garden with a sack on his back.

Of course, all things considered, it would be far easier and, perhaps, far wiser, certainly less embarrassing, just to go and get vaccinated. But if you do that, will you be tempted to go out every night to the city’s bars and restaurants, just to say that you can? And if so, can you or any of us for that matter, be 100% sure that, even after vaccination and thirty years of boosters, whichever vaccine it is and from wherever the vaccine comes from, will we, the little ordinary people, be guaranteed at some point, preferably sooner than later, a return to the life that we had before? Er, or any life, for that matter. >>‘This statement is false!!!! (See G Soros’ Fact Checker). You will now be redirected to the neoliberal globalist version, which is as honest as philanthropy and almost twice as honest as the EU parliament ~ which is not exactly difficult (Source: An Open Borders Publication}’<<

Plough a straight furrow or walk a taut tightrope, whichever path you choose to take, do ‘Watch out for those plums!’

ON TOPIC>
A trilogy of games by that renowned board-game maker John Wankinson: the perfect way to unlock, unwind and vaccinate whilst taking your mind off coronavirus and the interminable elusiveness of returning to normality:
UK Lockdown New Board Game
Exit Strategy Board Game
Clueless ~ a World Health Board Game

Image attributions:
Yapping dog: https://www.clipartmax.com/download/m2i8Z5H7G6A0N4H7_barking-dog-animal-free-black-white-clipart-images-yap-clipart/
Plums: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/539028.htm

QR Codes Enforced in Kaliningrad

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 576 [11 October 2021]

8 October 2021, QR codes are officially introduced in Kaliningrad and across the Kaliningrad region. What are they? Think Vaccination Passports in the UK and you are on the right track.

Published: 11 October 2021 ~ QR Codes Enforced in Kaliningrad

Since the 8^th October 2021, it has no longer been possible in Kaliningrad to access restaurants, cafes, bars, canteens, buffets, snack bars and similar establishments, without flashing your QR code. From 1^st November the QR code restriction will be extended to cover swimming pools and fitness centres, cinemas and cultural institutions such as theatres, philharmonic societies and concert halls¹.

How all this works exactly, with regard to official documentation delivery and locating your personal QR code is explained in this article¹.

How do you get a QR code? You’ve guessed it, vaccination! Once you have completed a full vaccination course you will then have access to your QR code

Mandatory vaccinations for certain categories of workers have also been extended².

Here are some statistics about coronavirus in the Kaliningrad region²:

“Since the beginning of October, the Kaliningrad region has broken several records for the daily increase in coronavirus cases. Every day, more than 250 people fall ill in the region. In September, mortality from infection increased by 20%.”

And here are some more:

“As of early October, more than 330,000 people have been vaccinated against the coronavirus in the region. About 311 thousand people underwent a full course of vaccination. According to Rospotrebnadzor, these indicators are insufficient to combat the spread of infection.”

QR Codes Enforced in Kaliningrad

Rumour also has it³that somewhere along the line QR codes might be needed for visiting shopping centres. Just in case, I have stocked up the larder with seven tins of baked beans and 356 bottles of beer. Will it be bog rolls next?

Sources:

1. https://www.newkaliningrad.ru/news/community/23958084-kovid-fri-po-russki-kak-v-kaliningradskoy-oblasti-budut-rabotat-qr-kody.html

2. https://kgd.ru/news/society/item/97260-ne-menee-80-v-kaliningradskoj-oblasti-rasshirili-spisok-dlya-obyazatelnoj-vakcinaciikgd.ru

3. https://kgd.ru/news/society/item/97271-v-kaliningradskoj-oblasti-rassmotryat-vopros-o-vvedenii-qr-kodov-dlya-poseshheniya-torgovyh-centrov

Image attribution:
Bear slamming door: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/832345.htm

£1000 Fines for Graffiti Vandals!

Defacing public property

Published: 10 October 2021 ~ £1000 Fines for Graffiti Vandals!

Republished with kind permission of Defacing Public Property Inc

Coronavirus may have grabbed the headlines for the past 18 months, but it is not only a sea of sensationalism and disinformation in which we are drowning, the societal disease litter pollution is on the rise and continues to go unchecked as does noise pollution and, as for the king of urban squalor, graffiti, instead of it being addressed as the behoodied plague that it is, the usual partisan suspects are more than content to talk it up as the next best thing to a boat full of migrants on their way to a 5-star hotel.

Consider this definition of graffiti from a certain British newspaper that neither you nor I would want to cut into squares and tie to a piece of string in our outside toilet even if the last roll of bog paper had been snatched up by panic-buyers in an orgy of ‘aren’t they all gormless, let’s just have their money’!

“From its roots as a means of visual communication for disenfranchised youth to both hide and be seen, graffiti has developed into a bona fide art form, a legitimate force for economic, cultural and social good …” [their emphasis]

Well, it goes without saying that if they say it is a ‘legitimate force for economic, cultural and social good’ you can bet your life it ‘aint (the same as urban slang is not).

I suppose it all depends on whether it is your wall, your gate, your fence etc, etc which disenfranchised yoof are using as as an ‘art canvas’.

Legitimate, in the legal sense, it is not, although, because measures to tackle vandalism are taken lightly and hardly ever enforced, especially in the UK, for fear that the police and judiciary might have their work cut out and inadvertently step on too many ‘rights’ toes, nothing ever gets done.

In so-called disadvantaged neighbourhoods where the deprived don’t go to work and therefore have lots of time to run around defacing public property and lots of taxpayers’ money to spend on paint, great ugly globs of spray-can paint, garish meaningless scrawl and all manner of lols and innits, add to and reinforce the contemptible ‘art’ image much cultivated by sociologists, both professional and homemade, who it would seem have nothing better to do than get paid too much whilst they sit about applauding yobbos and celebrate acts of vandalism.

In better areas, the sort that the champions of such illegal practices despise, which is why they encourage it, shite on walls scrawled by the disenfranchised gormless using their dole money, lowers the tone of the neighbourhood, although it does have one positive, which is that it serves to remind us that as with the poor who ‘are always with us’ so, unfortunately, are the stupid.

£1000 Fines for Graffiti Vandals!

A quick, effective and timely expedient which would nip this pitiful practice neatly in the bud would be first to arrest the culprits (that would be a start!) and then sentence them, after a hefty fine, to a month of intense graffiti cleaning wherever it may be and, if necessary, make them restore the damaged surfaces to their original pristine condition.

The fine should be a meaningful one, say a thousand pounds, and the convicted should be made to wear high-viz jackets, preferably with graffiti sprayed across the back, ie ‘Lol what a Twat I am!” Something they would be sure to understand. Hmm, that’s not necessarily so?

As for the newspaper or its online media alternative who chose to publish such gnats’ bollocks, viz “graffiti has developed into a bona fide art form, a legitimate force for economic, cultural and social good“, I suppose that as they provide nothing worth communicating to anyone, the next best thing is graffiti.

If you suffer from graffiti in your neighbourhood and fail to agree with the Guardbunkle that it is a bona fide art form, or that it gives you a boner as it must do the staff of the (mention no names) Guardinnit, complaints should be written, preferably in spray paint, on your nearest police tunic, on the walls of the Guardbog or/and on the Benefit and Illegal Immigration Office at Number 10 DoNothing Street.

Here is an example of what to write: “Please do something!”

Please note: Graffiti originated in America, travelled to the UK through the porous borders of no common sense and then spread across the world like the benighted scourge in Roman Polanski’s Dance of the Vampires. Wherever it may be, it is up to you to stamp this evil out! 😎

😉Katie Hopkins Life After Twitter

‘Wot about this for garfitti, Leroy!’

‘Yer, innit. That’s a big mother f….. spray can! Where do me get one of them?”

(*Note)

*For those of you who haven’t quite twigged it, this is not bona fide graffiti, but bona fide and legal signwriting

Image attributions:
Graffiti alley: https://unsplash.com/@baptiststandaert?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText
Spray can: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Spray-paint-can-in-hand/85913.html

Pondering on the future of Kaliningrad Pond

Captain sinks with his ship off Königsberg Pond

Published: 4 October 2021 ~ Pondering on the future of Kaliningrad Pond

There are two lakes in Kaliningrad that are not lakes, they are in fact man-made water features and, as such, their real nomenclature is ‘pond’, even though rural English folk of a certain age will find it difficult and anomalous to reconcile such large expanses of water with their concept of a traditional pond, which used to be ~ as there are not many left now ~ a small, generally muddy-looking round thing sitting in a field or in the centre of a village ~ sometimes with ducks on top.

Pondering on the future of Kaliningrad Pond

Königsberg has two ponds, interconnecting: the Lower Pond is the oldest, believed to have been constructed in 1256, with the Upper Pond following in 1270.

The building that is the subject of my post today, must have appeared sometime in the early millennial years.

To say that the building was an odd fish to have been washed up on the side of this acute bend in the Upper Pond would be beyond the pale of understatement.

My first recollection of it was in 2015. We sat outside on a bright May morning, consuming a snack in the ornamental garden.

My first impression was that it looked like something that had sneaked out of a tired old British seaside resort, like Mablethorpe for example, and had taken root in this small corner of Russia on an even smaller corner of Königsberg’s Upper Pond in the dark depths of an unremarkable night.

From the water’s edge and the elevated pavement that runs along the pond’s borders, the front of the building is highly visible, since it occupies pride of place on a small but grandstanding eminence. Had it been built correctly, that is to say of the right materials and been less of a prefabbed rectangle, it may have added something exceptional to the attractiveness of the waterside scene instead of subtracting from it, but that opportunity has long since elapsed, and so here it stands today ~ at least for the moment but not perhaps for much longer, perhaps not even tomorrow.

Of no particular recommendation, all windows and block-like, but softened in summer by the trees that surround it, by the natural lie of the land and the happily gathering verdure, the front elevation of this building on a budget does not have much to offer and does not become particularly striking or even reasonably engaging until one turns the corner of the street, when then, and only then, does the full benefit of its maritime kitsch beguile one.

From this approach the building’s thematic premise offers itself for closer inspection. A man standing on a ship which is standing on the roof is an obvious place to start and might make sense if the restaurant on which they are anchored overlooked the Atlantic Ocean, but as the building does no such thing, it embroiders Königsberg’s pond, we will forego logic and place what faith we have left in the buoyancy ring of aesthetics.

At their lower level, the walls of the building are decorated with white and blue appliqués, which are clearly meant to resemble waves. The technique is replicated in the moulded bas relief of a wave-encompassed sailing ship that dominates the front-side wall and emerges again in the intertwining arabesque of mythical human forms set within trees of wave-like character, which flank an entrance aspirant to the essence of Art Deco.

Above the stylised wave formation, imitation wood cladding has been used to good effect to simulate the timbers of a 19^th century sailing ship. These rise steadily upward to form the hull of the stern, which juts out jauntily at roof level from the corner of the building above the pavement and people walking. On the quarterdeck itself, his hands astride the rails, stands an effigy of a ship’s captain peering out to sea, except there is no sea to see, just trees, pavements, people and traffic and perhaps if he cranes to the left a little an inkling of Youth Park.

Beneath this surprisingly detailed mannequin, just above floor level, resting against the ship, sits a large terrestrial globe. That’s it, over there: underneath the parasol on top of the ice cream fridge!

The nautical theme travels on around to the back of the building where, on the corner opposite Captain Ahab, stood, until a few days ago, a silvered-metal and rivetted lighthouse, partly reclaimed by nature, who, over the period of desertion, had garbed it in a thick green mantle of all-enveloping, cascading ivy.

Mock Lighthouse since demolished resturant Kaliningrad pond

Kitsch Lighthouse Kaliningrad pond restaurant

In Mablethorpe a building such as this would have gone down well amongst the amusement arcades, bingo halls, working men’s clubs, souvenir shops and candy floss emporiums, but here it looked a bit out of place. No, correction: it looked a lot out of place. To add to the ambiguous spectacle, the garden that belongs to it was once tasteful and rather twee. It consisted of four or five gazebos of differing shapes, with fretwork wooden walls and reed thatched roofs, tucked away and surrounded by exotic trees and shrubs that lent to the whole a secluded quality of oriental character.

Pondering on the future of Kaliningrad Pond

In May 2015, shortly after four of us had partaken of lunch in the gardens, these almost exquisite surroundings, through no fault of our own, closed, together with the establishment to which they had belonged, and remained closed, deteriorating month on month, year after year, persisting in that decline until something stirred in the garden this spring. That something was a chain saw. Trees and bushes were coming down and, swiftly with them, buildings.

Whilst the loss of the ornamental garden was a blow softened by the neglect and abandonment to which it had been subjected, what was destined to take its place prompted speculation. Presuming that the building would soon go the same way as its garden, I arrived at the conclusion that I ought to snap some pictures.

The photographs that illustrate this post were taken in the opening weeks of summer 2021 and later in September of the same year.

The garden as we knew it has, indeed, gone, to be replaced by? Well, you tell me. It all looks very functional, whatever that function is, but the organic nature of its predecessor, both regarding its planted ground and sequestered, blending buildings, is now nothing more than a pleasant memory, starkly superseded by what amounts to a bit of a mismatch.

The regeneration has already included the disappearance of the rooftop lighthouse. I always suspected it was a nuclear missile! And Captain Ahab, who still stares over the taffrail, looks decidedly nervous, as though he knows he is on the verge of losing his commission and having in the process his gimbals snatched away.

Witnessing what is happening up the garden path, the next question surely must be what is in store for the building? Will it be stripped of its nautical heritage and reclad as something more unfortunate? Or will it be knocked down? Will it rise again from the depth of demolition? And will it eventually be serving beer? Enjoy these historic photos and continue to watch this space!

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Kaliningrad Ferris Wheel at Youth Park
Kaliningrad: a green city adorned with flowers
Kaliningrad: City of Contrasts

Kaliningrad Artist El Kartoon

Let’s face it and the cost of fast food ~ Limitations and Silence by Kaliningrad artist El Kartoon

Updated: 4 October 2021 | first published: 28 July 2020

In my blog post of 9 November 2019 I wrote about an unusual art exhibition we had attended and how we had been seduced by a particular artist’s work. A couple of months ago, a number of artworks by this artist were up for grabs.

The artist, anonymous artist (nom de guerre El Kartoon) had placed a number of his works for sale on the internet and was about to advertise them via Facebook. However, before the works were posted on Facebook the exhibition organiser, recalling our interest in the artist’s work, emailed my wife, Olga, to ascertain if we were in the market for any of the pieces he was selling, particularly the half-face painted on metal substrate, as we had expressed an interest specifically in this item, together with another composition featuring Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins).

For a while, we ummed and ahhhed, as you do; Olga weighing up the cost of the paintings against the number of plants she could buy for the garden, and me, mentally converting the cost of the paintings into foaming glasses of ale. Eventually, we decided to compromise.

The painting we bought was that of the female face, or rather half a female face, painted not on board or canvas but on a sheet of rusty metal.

The painting in question, Limitations, certainly has an innate power. When I beheld it unwrapped and standing in the lobby at the foot of our attic steps I experienced an overwhelming and incisive sense of awe, which rapidly transmuted, becoming first privilege and then disbelief that we now actually owned this fascinating composition.

The artistic arrangement is simple but effective. The face has been painted on a metal sheet. The sheet is old and rusting. It has a turned edge on one side, suggesting that in a previous life it had an industrial-mechanical purpose.

The face is female and comprises exactly 50% of a full human face, the invisible proportion achieved by positioning the image on the extreme left hand-side of the substrate. Both the location of the image and the facial expression lends itself to the interpretation of peering anxiously out from behind something, in the way, for example, you might steal a glance from behind a half-opened door. The remaining portion of the metal base, approximately one-third, has been left untreated ~ rusting and tarnished.

El Kartoon ‘Be Seeing You!’ in our attic

I have suggested that the expression on the face betrays a sense of anxiety, to that can be added apprehension. The looker is uneasy, vulnerable. The one eye, brilliant blue, reflects something white and rectangular. The blue of the eye is as deep and beautiful as it is insistent; the glazed reflection upon its surface (could it be a window?) stares out at you above the dark well of the pupil, drawing you into its mystery.

Everything in the composition of the face itself, the broad, black serrated outline, the layers that form the contours of the face and the fine details, are jagged, frayed, fragmenting. There is nothing calm, nothing quiescent. Whatever it is that informs the expression, it is as unnerved as it is unnerving.

In this work, as in most of the artist’s works that we have seen, a striking and, I am inclined to believe, essential engine of the thematic enigma resides in the application of a curious overlay of geometrical lines. In this example, those lines are fainter than in his other creations and do not extend so definitely from the painting’s centrality into the outlying images or borders, but they are there ~ on the exposed and rusting metal and among the drizzle and daubed discolouration, the latter looking like natural erosion, perhaps from water exposure, as if, along with the fading black paint to one corner, they belong to the metal’s former existence, to its pre-artistic, functional and then discarded history.

To the beholder, these lines are key. They, above anything else, if there is, indeed, anything else, help to unlock all manner of ambivalence. But one is a constant, and that is that the lines emphasise connectivity ~ the inescapable interconnection between the realm of flesh and emotion and the hard, unyielding, material world to which, no matter how unforgiving it is, we are all hardwired.

Taken together with other paintings by the same artist in which this technique is employed, I am inclined to understand these lines to be not just an overlay on an overwhelmed human face extending outwards and then back again into and from the physical world but the circuit board of modern life, which speaks to us not just of hard engineering but in the technological idiom by which our life is controlled and defined ~ the ultimate interconnectivity from which there is no escape, at least not for us in our flesh and blood lifetime.

Given the nature of this unusual painting and its more than flirtatious relationship with negativity, I was surprised that it somehow fitted into Olga’s reality of butterflies, trees and flowers, but the mystery was made known to me when after voicing my confusion she declared simply that she did not find the composition unnerving. ‘Vulnerable’, yes; ‘unnerving, no’. Had she really failed to discern the connection between our vulnerability in this world ~ the world that others have created for us ~ and how this might be ~ indeed cannot be, anything else but unnerving?

I was pleased, however, that her second choice as to where to hang the painting, which was the kitchen, was discounted fairly quickly, not on the basis of my interpretation but, whilst she would not see the picture as often as she liked, on the wall at the bottom of the attic steps, which seemed to be the place for it. We agreed on this. It fitted perfectly. It was where it would have most impact without impacting mostly.

Anthony Hopkins

Since learning that Mr Anonymous’ paintings were on the market for prices we could afford, we had been arguing the toss as to whether we should buy another of this gentleman’s artworks, the one based on Anthony Hopkins’ fictional character, Hannibal Lecter, in The Silence of the Lambs.

El Kartoon's 'Silence' artwork — El Kartoon’s ‘Silence’ as seen at the 2019 art exhibition, Kaliningrad

We had negotiated a price for this second artwork provided we bought both, ie the half-face, Limitations, and Silence as well, and had just about talked ourselves out of it when our inquiries as to why there was a near identical painting masquerading as graffiti on a small brick utility building opposite Kaliningrad’s lake met with an interesting answer: apparently, the artist had been caught subjecting the aforesaid building to his aesthetic skills, had been summarily arrested and thereafter charged with vandalism. The case had gone to court but in conclusion had been dismissed*.

Kaliningrad artist El Kartoon — El Kartoon’s open-air work, sadly, since defaced*

*Note that this public stencil was painted over sometime in 2021 🤔

The artist’s compulsion to reproduce his painting as ~ ahem ~ an ‘urban art form’ had arisen, we were told, out of twin noble sentiments: a sense of civic duty and moral obligation. He had disposed the image where he did as a warning to young ladies who, reportedly, were apt to congregate there after dark to eat the stuff they had bought from a certain US fast-food chain nearby. The artist wished to say, ‘look out there are predators about’ and was not necessarily commenting on the quality, or perhaps the content, of what it was they were eating or who, in fact, they were buying it from.

The framed artwork has an interesting historical annotation attached to it in that it still bears the official tag it was given as a possible ‘exhibit’ in a court of law!

Bugger! We had to have it!

Olga beamed with delight when I suggested that she get on the blower right away and tell the lady in charge of the art exhibitions that we had decided to take it if the artist was prepared to wait for payment at the end of the month. She, the lady, opined that it was a matter of fate that we would buy both as we had expressed such interest in them when first we saw them at the exhibition. Like Olga she believed that we were meant to own them. And I believe they were meant to own us.

El Kartoon’s ‘Silence’ displayed in our attic

Further information on the artist and artist’s work:

A comment from my wife, Olga, on her Facebook account
Mick and I bought these artworks just because we like the feel and amplitude. They call the artist the Russian Bansky, because of his distinctive stencilling technique. His works have been featured on the streets of Kaliningrad. I wonder if he will sell the copyright? When he is as famous as Bansky (and I believe he will become so one day, as he has talent), his public ‘installations’ might be sold by removing the walls they were painted on!

Notes from the art exhibitor’s website [link no longer active as at 12/04/2022] Art Space Gallery
El Kartoon, artist
The main direction [of his work] is stencil graphics aspiring to painting. The works reflect the desire to reflect fundamental values, feelings and social problems through the prism of our digital age. Contemporary, about contemporaries, for contemporaries.

El Kartoon
And now in Russian …
Основное направление – трафаретная графика стремящаяся к живописи. В работах отражено стремление отразить некие фундаментальные ценности, ощущения, социальные проблемы сквозь призму нашей цифровой эпохи.Эта живопись – отражающая современников, о соврем…

El Kartoon
EL Kartoon начал рисовать граффити в 1998 году. С 2002 по 2009 год был творческий перерыв. С 2009 года работает в трафаретной технике.Единственный Российский художник, который представляет трафаретную графику на международной арене, в частности на крупнейшей международной выставке трафаретного искусства Stencil Art Prize, Sidney, Australia, а так же является участником The Kutz, Bristol, United Kingdom

О работе «Молчание…»

Причиной создания работы послужило случайное наблюдение за ночными “обитателями” парковки, которые в ночное время едят там Макдональдс.В процессе создания картины на стене близлежащего здания автор был арестован и доставлен в отдел милиции. Часы, которые должны были показывать время – 18:00, сделать не получилось, но благодаря этому работа получила “новую окраску” и новый смысл.

O работе” Limitations”

Металл – это ассоциация художника с окружающим миром. В работе “Limitations”- человек в какой то степени заперт, в какой-то степени ограничен. Эта работа является одной из серии уличных работ на тему “цифрового человека” – современного, технологичного, оцифрованного и запущенного в сеть, в тираж, и как автору казалось в процессе над работой – это время наступает стремительно. Недавние законы, принятые в Москве, подтверждают “теорию цифрового человека”.

And now in English …
El Kartoon
The only Russian artist who represents stencil graphics in the international arena, in particular at the largest international exhibition of Stencil Art, Sidney, Australia. He also participated in The Kutz Exhibition, Bristol, United Kingdom.

About the artwork Silence
Silence came from the accidental observation of the night ‘inhabitants’ ~ the young who congregate in the parking area close to McDonald’s to consume the food they purchase from the fast-food chain.

In the process of the creating the stencilled work on the side of a building close to the parking area, the artist was arrested and taken to the police department. The clock, which was supposed to show the time, 18:00, was not finished, but thanks to this unfinished touch, the work received a ‘new colour’ and a new meaning.

About the artwork Limitations
El Kartoon writes: “Metal is my association with the outside world. In this case, the subject is locked to some extent, to some extent limited …”

Limitations was a series of street works on the topic of ‘digital man’ ~ modern, technological, digitised and launched into the network, in circulation and so on. At the time when the work was being created, it seemed to the artist that the time of the ‘digital man’ was rapidly approaching. Recent laws adopted in Moscow suggest to the artist that the time of the ‘digital man’ has come.