Three President Putin T-shirts from across the decades
11 October 2026 – Rare 25-Year-Old President Putin T-Shirts Surface in the UK
I have no difficulty in remembering when I first became intrigued by hunting out and collecting things, which is rather odd in two respects: the one is reserved for aliens, who, terminally smitten by bland modernity, deduce no value in anything else; the other is because in noting when the compulsion first took impetuous hold of me, which it did unceremoniously and without provision of explanation, I was not much more than four years old.
Looking back, I was fortunate, or, depending on your point of view, not so very fortunate, to find myself born into a family who, for reasons unbeknown to me, yet nevertheless passed on to me without the benefit of enlightenment, unquestionably conceived that throwing things away posed a dangerous risk to sentiment, an inveteracy, moreover, that extended beyond my mother and father to encompass nearly the full contingent of the two families so conjoined.
My gran’s house, the cupboards within it and its collection of garden sheds, all of which resided but a short distance from our family abode, presented itself to my youthful inquisitiveness as off-limits treasure troves and thus seemingly intended for illicit investigation by little and curious prying eyes.
The magic here to be found was superseded only by the home in which I lived, which, for an 18th-century thatched cottage, appeared to be endowed with a content-holding capacity whose pretensions were truly Tardisial, though even it, as commodious as it seemed, couldn’t compete with the several surrounding outhouses, one of which was a large stone barn, and all of which were rammed with stuff, on whose being, and also in being there, where they had been for years, my father would often, presumably wryly, declare it was because the stuff was ‘wuth a bit’. He was constantly upbraiding me for indulging in a lawless habit to which he referred as ‘furraging’, although certain lapses in his vocabulary, such as mispronouncing ‘architect’ as ‘artitecht’ and his calling a ‘pizza’ a ‘piza’, indicated, perhaps, that the word for which he was foraging was that which now has just obliged me.
Given then my illustrious background in the art and science of foraging, it is hardly a matter of great surprise that on travelling to Russia for the first time, a trip that took place in the year 2000, I – as the old song goes – ‘packed up my foraging in my old kit bag’ and, together with my toothbrush, took it along for the ride.
Three President Putin T-shirts from across the decades
If someone were, therefore, to ask me, “Where did you forage and find that particular Putin T-shirt?” the one that forms the basis of the feature photograph for this post, sincerity would reply that my possession of it required no effort on my part, as the T-shirt in question was gifted to me.
I have mentioned the precise circumstances by which it was donated in an earlier post entitled 9th May Victory Day, but I don’t suppose it will hurt any to remark on it again. It was during my first attendance at a 9th of May celebration, which, as I am sure you all will know, is one of the most important national holidays on the Russian calendar, commemorating the Soviet Union’s Second World War victory (WWII in Russia is known as the Great Patriotic War) over Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.
In the Year of our Lord 2001, Kaliningrad’s 9th of May assembly, which takes place annually at the aptly named Victory Park, was graced by the presence of – you are anticipating the ‘presence of me’, but ego defers to a greater significance – a formidable string of trestle tables, forming a long continuous line that stretched across the furthermost point of the park. As I drew near to these tables, I beheld with constrained amazement, arranged upon their surfaces in neat rows and clusters, a prodigious quantity of plastic beakers, each ready and waiting, so I was informed, for the disbursement of a generous measure of vodka.
My second surprise was on hearing the news that the vodka was free of charge; my third then followed quickly on the heels of downing the first. Serving, on the opposite side of this magnificent row of tables, was a quantity of volunteers, young, busy, bustling, some of whom were clad in T-shirts identical to the one with which you are now familiar. No sooner had I exclaimed, “I really like your T-shirt,” than immediately, without a second thought but whilst decanting my second vodka – admiring T-shirts is thirsty work – the chap who was administering to me divested himself of the aforementioned article and, passing it over the table, said, “Here you are; it’s my present to you!”
You can’t have enough stuff!
I collect experiences even more avidly than I do material objects, but when the one fosters a link that is embryonic with the other and both combined collaborate in marking with precision a specific date, time and place, which at some point in their remembered past will enter the annals of social history, then this becomes the motivation and, as time elapses, the end result.
Therefore, of the three presidential T-shirts that I personally own, this then is my favourite. I recognise, of course, that the full-colour design and the heightened production standards involved in meeting that objective raise and place the others within a category above it, recommended by virtue of their more prepossessing aesthetic, but nevertheless my money, which on this occasion I had no need to part with, would yet, if it had been required by choice, have unequivocally been reserved for the simple black and white job.
The facial silhouette and distinct black-on-white lettering get the message across with maximum efficiency and minimalistic effort. And should your knowledge of Cyrillic be having one of its off days, which mine invariably does, the slogans on the shirt read, first on the front, ‘All is OK’, and then on the back, ‘Walking Together’. According to the translator, whom we have no reason to doubt, the caption beneath the portrait is a play on words from Putin’s name, with ‘Put’ in Russian becoming ‘this is the road, the pathway’.
Three President Putin T-shirts from across the decades
The T-shirt in the photo that follows, unless I am mistaken, and so what if I am, who would be any the wiser, was purchased from one of those small shopping kiosks, those standalone metal units that so effectively but intrusively augment Kaliningrad’s retail offering and which make such a world of difference in any active comparison of its city centre and urban districts with towns and cities in the UK.
I wouldn’t want to bet my Black-and-white Putin T-shirt on it, but recollection, though hazy, suggests that the acquisition of this second shirt probably occurred in the latter half of the 2010s or in 2010 itself. Knowing, as I do, that you need no help with the Russian translation, and, it goes without saying, neither do I, thus purely for the record, and for us to rejoice in our mutual aptitude, the caption on it reads, ‘The most courteous person in the world’. Well, I’m not about to argue with him, but I thought that person was me.
My third T-shirt rolls back the years to the middle of the second decade of the 21st century. This one was bought from a clothing kiosk at Kaliningrad’s central market. I recollect the occasion well, as I wore it shortly afterwards on a tour of the city’s retro market, which, once in a time now distant, was located on a nearby street in the centre of the shopping hub. Having deduced that I was English, Kaliningrad’s market traders seemed thrilled at the sight of me wearing it. One of them actually asked, “Are you really going to wear that T-shirt when you return to Great Britain?” Was I? And, indeed, did I?
And here I am, larger than life, sporting that very same shirt, now with it on in an English setting. You, whose keen sense of observation I have always firmly admired, will not, I am sure, fail to notice a rather younger me than I am at present and, standing to my right, a corresponding youthfulness in the portrait of President Putin. And could that be, in my right hand, a Russian bottle of vodka? The slogan here is, “We’ll get through!” I’m sure I got through the vodka.
This T-shirt, the one you see here, arranged around my seriously manly chest, which, when the image went viral, had modelling agencies ringing my number constantly day and night, and it put the fear up Beckham, was produced at a time when the UK’s media was ramping up yet another example of its ideological witch hunts, blaming Russia for almost everything, from cyber failure to the price of bog rolls, from raising mountains to making mole hills (has there ever been a single time in European history when the UK media hasn’t refrained from prodding the Russian bear?). Do you recall the satirical memes that were doing the rounds at that time? My favourite was the image of a puppy, a lovely little thing, that, having torn up a mass of newspapers and made a terrible mess, was depicted looking sheepishly into the lens of the camera, which represented its owner’s eyes, meekly in search of absolution. The caption mimicked the rallying cry of the sabre-rattling UK media: ‘The Russians dun it!’ It boomed.
Among my souvenirs
Together, these T-shirts span a distinct historical period. Once they hung on the walls of a socio-cultural corridor that led from wonder and curiosity down a long and planned agenda. In a small room at the end of this walk, the West constructed an image that it could, it believed, strategically, at a propitious time of its own choosing, having lifted it onto a public balcony, publicly demolish it.
Today, these T-shirts hang in an exhibition of personal memory, charting a passage of time that, for me, commenced some 25 years ago in the Russian city of Kaliningrad. They act as markers on a rare-chance journey replete with human experience and the wonders of cultural discovery.
I am a few T-shirts short of the full quarter century of that I am aware, but, like a woman’s work that’s never done until the fat lady sings – and then it is far too late – the collector’s quest knows no end. Perhaps that’s what being a content creator is really all about: people who are content with houses laden down with content, the content of which brings them contentment.
Michael, it’s time to refold your T-shirts and put them back safely into the drawer.
Seven restaurants under one roof, and that’s not all at the Kings Residence, Kaliningrad.
30 September 2026 -The Kings Residence Kaliningrad: it’s a big one alright!
When I first clapped eyes on it – I believe it was in the summer of 2015 – I thought, “My, what a big one!” Almost immediately, and certainly instinctively, a refrain from the 1970s began to ring in my ears, and I found myself singing, “I’ve never seen one as big as that before!” Which is understandable because at that time, even before the term became a Western media buzzword, I had become a disinformation victim due to someone wrongly informing me that the aptly named Kings Residence (Residence of Kings is the literal Russian translation) was a, as in ‘one’, bar and restaurant, when in actual fact it is a massive entertainment complex, a multi-purpose hybrid centre endowed with several restaurants, an elaborate children’s play area and a tavern built in the image of a traditional German beer cellar equipped with its own onsite brewery.
‘You are here!’ – the Kings Residence
From a distance, I was astounded. It wasn’t quite Disney World, but it was certainly Dizzy World. Architecturally, I attempted to assess it as I would if I was confronted by an exotic piece of antique furniture, highly carved and intricate in the various parts of its construction, by breaking down its components visually, step by step, by isolating the different elements of its structural composition and weighing up its aesthetic principles, a method I have discovered is as good a way as any of making the most of anything, including human nature, which at first sight blindsides through complication of detail, as in the cases cited here, referring to art philosophy and to human psychology, and which, by defying immediate sense, fly from mere mortal grasp into the clouds of the great beyond until all at last is perplexed and obscured.
Simultaneously thinking that the last time I experienced a confectionary of this calibre, I was visiting Bletchley Park, no sooner had I thought it than I amended the comparison. Whereas Bletchley Park, it is true, has icing touches on its architectural cake, it nowhere comes near as close to this palace of pastiche into whose mixed and confusing character several styles of historic note have been baked together.
I have heard discussions about its form describing the structure with words like ‘sprawling’, which is somewhat similar to the course of my life, but be this as it may, it sprawls with the very best of them, bringing together, as it does, albeit bizarre and haphazardly, substantial Baroque and Gothic elements, which it plays out in the manner of theatre like an adaptation of Camelot or as scenes extracted from coloured plates in a book that draws from myth and fairytale as illustration for its ancient lore.
Inevitably, as a thoroughly commercial enterprise, there are some among the architectural fraternity who have derided the building’s appearance as being completely over the top, and we will not attempt to defend it on that score, but as OTT as it is, it fails to give the impression of being completely out of place (OOP) by striking back with a palatial grandeur that does what it is supposed to do: stimulate your curiosity and get you over the threshold.
If first impressions count, then the second adds to the first: the one does not disappoint the other. If anything, the inside of this latter-day palace appears so bold, so huge, so sprawling that whatever overtures to magnificence may legitimately be ascribed to the grandness of its brash exterior, the grandiosity of its interior matches it card by card.
The Kings Residence Kaliningrad: it’s a big one alright!
So lavish and sumptuous does it appear that I thought myself fortuitous that prior to leaving home I had seized on the occasion to garb myself in smart attire, which would not have been even half that it was, or should I say it seemed to be, had I omitted from the ensemble my Regency cravat, to which, with the aid of afterthought, a further dash was cut with the timely installation of a three-point pocket handkerchief. By these material subterfuges to whom I imagined I was or could be, I saw myself as one who was confluent with surroundings that deserved no less from each of us, and in the mirror whilst strolling past – I think I might have paused – saw none no better in close proximity, as all were dressed in jeans and trainers. Thus, in me, I saw, if plausibly no one else did, a reason for proclaiming that the King was in his counting house – the Mick Hart flag flew not at half mast, which is more than could be rightfully said for his far-too-hitched-up trousers. This obsequiousness to extollation and the ego that went with it was soon, however, remediated when I almost, but accidentally, having handed my coat to the ‘hat’ check lady, discovered myself in the ladies’ bog. It is a hazard common enough when living in a foreign country, for which even a nice pocket handkerchief is insufficient to make amends.
Whilst always an advisable prelude is to book one’s table in advance before descending on any restaurant, at the Residence of Kings, where half-a-dozen eateries jostle for attention, booking is essential if you want to configure your choice of table with your choice of cuisine and entertainment or to repose in an environment that complements your cravat.
Dropping in on the off chance is not an illegal act, but should you incline to this risky purpose, it is best that you prepare yourself to play the part of intrepid explorer. However, losing yourself completely, the feeling is forever, should not be the problem you think it could be, given the size of the place, as the Kings’ staff have a vigilant eye. They are trained to spot lost sheep at thirty paces, and they are always conveniently there on hand to shepherd you to the nearest table if, and unless, they are not all taken, for although the complex is big, it often attracts big groups and not infrequently bigger parties, who gobble up the seating space quicker than sheep can graze a pasture. As I have said, it’s best to book.
There are seven restaurants at the Kings Residence Kaliningrad
Cafe La Russe (Russian: traditional Russian dishes)
Veranda (European: grill restaurant)
Giuseppe (Italian: trattoria)
Shafran (Oriental/Eastern: selected dishes)
Khinkalnaya (Georgian: khinkali is its speciality)
Korolevskiy Dvorik (Banquet hall, concert venue and courtyard restaurant)
Bretsel (German brew bar)
As in most Kaliningrad drinking establishments, the norm regarding receipt of alcoholic beverages is that they are ferried to your table by the waiter or waitress with whom you placed your order, but the Kings Residence does have a bar, where drinks can be bought and at which you can sit, and this bar conveniently lies directly in your line of vision as soon as you make your entrance.
The bar is a standalone job, which cannot be overlooked, which cannot be mistaken for anything other than a bar, as it stands out twice as much as it stands alone, similar, in this respect, to the console in Dr Who’s TARDIS when, over the course of the later series, it grew in size and proportion, and then, by some terrible quirk of woke, the Dr turned first female and then, unfortunately for the viewing ratings, no sooner had he grown a pair than he turned a funny colour. Poor old William Hartnell, bless him!.
Let’s go no further down that passage.
It’s got seven restaurants!
The Kings Residence boasts seven restaurants in all, each individually stylised, but mutual in voluptuousness. Each room or banqueting area has in its possession a sumptuous, mediaeval grandeur played out effectively in a distinctive and an eclectic range of decors fit, you might be tempted to say, for a king, every one of which is purposed to invoke innate and latent desires to be the one that wears the crown or at least to pamper personal fantasies of living it up like a lord.
Selection is nigh impossible: choose from the interior terrace that isn’t really a terrace, which sits below an arcaded veranda, which isn’t a real veranda, and from antique chairs which are not antique but whose arms scroll down so deeply that you could be persuaded to accept that they are no less antique than need be; or, if a real terrace is what you are after, where you can dine and look over the royal gardens, wishes at Kings can come true; for groups there are refectory tables stolen away in their own private booths with velveteen seats of a rich ruby red; or a vastly spacious vestibule appropriating time with the help of a galleried half-timber building, which looks as though in a previous life it could have belonged to a film set; or for privacy in a small group, traditional facing cubicled tables hived off snob-screen fashion, with button-backed seats in a deep blue leather, which you wouldn’t know is not the real thing but probably, if you did, would not be pleased not to know, if, like me, you are vegetarian: “I’ll have the button-backed faux leather seats, please, with a side-serving of cauliflower and a portion of sautéed potatoes.”
The cuisine at the Kings Residence is food that is fit for a … er, what shall we say? – how about ‘fit for a king’? Indeed, for the palates of many kings and all with different tastes. Inside this gastronomical ecosystem, one can dine not only on Russian dishes but also on recipes sourced from other parts of the world – Georgian, Italian, European and oriental nosh, all are on the eclectic menu. And just to ensure that the chefs aren’t cheating and taking it out of a tin, you can watch the culinary masters rustle up your grub through windows in the grand hall that beckon you visually into the kitchen.
Meanwhile, downstairs, and now you can be sure that I am about to reveal my favourite location, is Bretsel, a beer bar styled on authentic German legend. This inviting cellar bar, which isn’t really a cellar, as it actually lies at ground level with the entrance to the complex sitting above it on the first floor, but it seems in order to get to it because you have to go downstairs that you are descending into the castle’s dungeon, is where the beer is brewed. Yes, you heard me correctly: Beer is brewed right here on the premises: five delicious varieties of their exclusive Müller brand.
The Kings Residence Kaliningrad: it’s a big one alright!
As with every room beneath the giant roof of the Kings Residence, the space occupied by the beer bar is the opposite to mean; it is a sizeable retreat, but with cosy nooks and crannies. It is mood-lit and time-honoured with benches in dark wood, and its walls are hung with detailed frescoes that echo the legends of kings and pirates in homage to the dark ages. It also has in its principality an area put aside for those unable to help themselves but shimmer around the floor whenever music is piped to their ears, a species of spontaneity that is leveraged not inconsiderably by the magical influence of beer on the brain. And here it is helpful to know, if beer is your elixir, that the copious fermentation tanks finished in copper but shining like gold as though the precious nectar within radiates from out – mark that haloed luminosity! – that guests can observe the brewing process as they lovingly down the end result.
That’s all you get until I write about it later …
Lest we should forget, which hardly could be possible whilst one is on the premises because the sound of it reverberates around the many interconnecting halls, the Kings Residence, or as Russians say, ‘Residence of Kings’ (Rezidentsiya Koroley), is billed as an entertainment centre as well as a restaurant complex.
Musical entertainment, both vibrant vocal live-performances and their recorded equivalents, takes place at different times and on different nights across the multi-format halls and restaurants. The principal restaurants, such as Veranda, offer live music cabaret-style, mainly on Friday and Saturday evenings, with the starting times of gigs being typically 7pm. Guest acts by distinguished artists are complemented by the resident band, which has built a solid reputation for singing legendary cover hits.
Night-lifers, those with an irrepressible need to strut their stuff into the wee small hours, flock at weekends to Berry, which is the Kings’ karaoke and dance bar, where they give it all that they’ve got, and some might say far too freely, never mind too much.
The Kings Residence Kaliningrad: it’s a big one alright!
The big one, both in the sense of dining and in the luxury entertainment stakes, is the as-grand-as-it-sounds Royal Court, not to be confused with the ‘Royals caught in the act!’, which is something that Britain’s daily tabloids are constantly on the lookout for. The Royal Court (Russian: Korolevskiy Dvorik) is where one goes to banquet as distinct from commonly eat, and where the same ones eschew karaoke for more in-tune entertainment provided by touring artists who they like to think as they like to think of themselves, are considered a cut above. Such events are ticketed, and the Kings Residence hosts them regularly. You must wear a cravat to these!
I don’t think Elton John played this one …
Meanwhile, back in the German-style beer bar (where else would I be?), the option exists to hire the room and stage your own entertainment, as Bretsel is one of the Kings Residences’ more seclusive areas and therefore lends itself most admirably to parties of the private kind.
If music be the food of love, play on, but not everyone is into a raucous orgy where jumping around to a thumping beat and committing murder by karaoke dominates. The Kings have done well to recognise this, for it also caters for the serious drinker, we wont go so far as to say for the serious sober drinker, who likes nothing better than acquiring knowledge and then relating that knowledge at length in all its detail to all in sundry, whether they want to hear it or not, about craft beers and their brewing techniques. With these people in mind, the Residence of Kings thoughtfully provides instructive and enjoyable tours of its brewing facilities and tasters of its range of beers, and by the way, it doesn’t discriminate if you happen to love your karaoke as much as you love your beer. Stranger things, I have heard it said, are likely to happen at sea.
The Residence of Kings: The Brewery and its Beers The brewery-restaurant complex brews five varieties of its own-brand Müller beer. The beer is served in all of the Kings’ seven restaurants and also in its German-style pub, called Bretsel.
The five varieties of beer are:
Müller Light (Светлое): A classic, filtered lager with a crisp character
Muller Dark (Темное): A smooth dark ale with a strong malt taste rewarded with hints of caramel
Muller Wheat (Пшеничное): An unfiltered German-style Weissbier, the notes of which combine distinctive fruit and clove elements
Muller Velvet (Бархатное): A smooth, unfiltered beer with a dark complexion, slightly sweet taste and a velvet smooth texture
Seasonal Brews: These special-recipe beers tend to vary, depending on the season
It is said that in addition to learning the brewer’s code, also on these tours the participants get to hear about certain ‘mysterious legends’, surely not me in the ladies’ toilet, get to sample all Müller beers and are provided with a ‘beer lunch’, a buffet consisting of snacks that go down well with beer (this is an art in itself), and rounding off this unique excursion, they are invited to take part in a programme of entertainment in which contests are staged and presents awarded. For more information about these tours and reservation bookings, the number to ring is as follows: +7 (4012) 300 360.
He often pops in for one at the Kings Residence
This brings me to a feature in the Residence of Kings’ portfolio about which I have little or no detailed knowledge, having not been a child for quite some time – childish, yes, child, no – and who continues to associate children’s entertainment with a day out at Wicksteed Park, riding the swings and the slides.
From the looks of it, however, things have moved on since then. Young visitors to the Residence of Kings have the golden opportunity to wave goodbye to mundanity and migrate (not like migrants on rubber dinghies on a one-way ticket to Britain) to the exotic and charm-filled Faraway Kingdom – whose only relevance to the United Kingdom are the words ‘kingdom’ and ‘far away’.
Situated on the building’s third floor, the Kingdom functions as a multi-recreational centre, containing a superabundance of game machines, stimulating creative workshops and tailored entertainment programmes, and, pay attention to this, every Saturday is a free theme-party day.
And if this doesn’t keep the little darlings amused, there’s always the
*Inflatable jungle park *Rope town *Lego town *The dolphinarium *The electric car park *The wind tunnel
I think I’ll stick with the Bretsel bar.
To say that the Residence of Kings is a unique venue and to use words like ‘large’, ‘imposing’, ‘impressive’, ‘multi-functional’, ‘diverse’ and to describe it as an all-round restaurant, bar and entertainment complex presented under one big roof, or, for the sake of accuracy, a compendium of different roofs, is hardly an act of necessity, as I think that I may have touched upon some of these points already.
As an architectural fantasy, the Residence of Kings is an undisputed dream piece, an awesome tribute to the Gothic legacy which is part and parcel of Kaliningrad’s Königsberg past. In bringing its lingering presence back, the Residence of Kings takes it to another level driven by emulation and defined by 21st-century excess. On the outside it’s a curious palace; on the inside it’s palatial. On the outside it’s a modern monument; on the inside it’s monumentally modern, albeit with a retro twist. One thing that could be said of it and stated with impunity is you could visit it every day of the week, make that twice on Sundays, and, whilst eating your way around the world, never leave the novelty loop. Who says size doesn’t matter!
Things you need to know
The Kings Residence (Residence of Kings) Ulitsa Aleksandra Nevskogo, 10, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, 236041
Opening hours (Main complex and restaurants) Sunday to Thursday: 12pm to12 Midnight Friday to Saturday: 12pm to 2am
Note: Certain venues inside the complex operate under different closing times, for example the Berry karaoke bar and the children’s entertainment centre. For up-to-date information, contact the Kings Residence administration.
29 July 2026 – Racists in the UK! Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job
The images in this post have been generated using artificial intelligence and are intended for illustrative purposes only. None of the visuals imply any real-world endorsement, affiliation, or association with any specific product, brand, or entity. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), places, or events is purely coincidental.
[Posted in category Mick Hart’s Diary 2026]
In case you haven’t noticed or are a liberal lefty in lefty denial, there is, in the UK today, a severe and palpable sense of racially aggravated unease among the rightful heirs of our British heritage. Failed socially engineered multiculturalism, the daily arrival of ‘boat people’ flooding with open government arms into blighted Britain, high-profile racially motivated vicious crimes where the victim is almost exclusively white, a tension that is tangible and alleged two-tier policing are polarising the political spectrum into those who crave more woke and migrants and those who never asked for either and feel they could do quite well without.
Our esteemed former prime minister, the man who everybody likes to dislike, even by those of his own kind, who, in spite of loss of support, including from those in his own party, refused to take the glaring hint and would not pack his bags and go until he was given the royal arse-boot, was too busy during his time in office posing for cheesy, smarmy photos with Ukraine’s converted comedian, the ubiquitous Mr Zelensky, rather than do what Britons demand and ultimately deserve, which is to tackle the immigrant crisis.
Any hope that the new Labour hopeful, Andrew ‘call me Andy’ Burnham, and his newly elected cabinet (bye-bye, Mr Lammy) will apply themselves to this existential problem is not a hope that we should cling to. As long as the old two past-it parties continue to be voted in by the stuck-in-their-ways, heads-up-their-arses, gormless British electorate, the streets of Britain will grow more dangerous, and our towns and cities will become, as many are already, the unrecognizably menacing places that the prophet Enoch Powell predicted all those years ago.
Meanwhile, as Andy Burnham and his Labour cohorts celebrate accession into the breach, a little-known chain of public houses, once celebrated for common sense, seem bent on repositioning themselves as number one in the woke parade.
Racists in the UK! Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job
A few weeks ago, I ventured out for a pint at my friend’s local WokeForkers. It was that evening on the day of the week when I expected the pub to be quiet, which, indeed, it initially was, little knowing, however, that the latest roster of bar staff (these pubs seem to change their bar staff faster than I can change my underpants – old proverb, every gusset has a suspect lining) had just emerged from company training, from which, and I kid you not, not one of the dunces or dullards had mastered the art of anything, least of all, I warrant, the essential public relations skills which, for as long as hospitality has existed, have always been first and foremost for running a pub successfully.
This, however, was not the least among their greatest disadvantages, although the one begets the other, for they were also of that dismal generation, which, duly processed, packed and prepared by the corporate liberal sausage factory, the British education system, programmes the poor unfortunate wretches for a life of second-class citizenship, making them fat between the ears, ready for the country’s future, which many pundits see as comparable to a slaughterhouse.
I have no idea, do you, where some pubs get their staff from? They seem, by their dour expressions, surly, disinterested ways and chip-on-the-shoulder attitudes, as if, like Zelensky’s army, they have been dragged off from the streets. Whatever it is they teach them at Pub Mismanagement School, devotion to duty isn’t it, neither are the principal tenets required of the hospitality trade, such as amiability, affability, congeniality and conviviality, and above all and most importantly, the indisputable golden rule that customers should at all times be treated with respect – as the customers are those very people who, by putting their money over the bar, pay the barmaids’ wages.
Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that most of the staff are female, and those who aren’t are not much different, for even those whose gender poses difficult questions look and act as though every moment is a hormonal crisis. It only goes to show that in any mismanaged democracy, you need to be extremely careful who you give the vote to, let alone give them leave to stand mardy and daft behind the bar as if the menopause arriving early has turned off the smile along with the taps and all they are waiting to do is call ‘last orders’. Now, don’t call me sexist! Like the WokeForker’s staff who earole everyone, I am merely repeating what I heard someone say at a table whose conversation was personal, private and had nothing to do with me whatsoever. {The opinions in this post are not necessarily those of the person you might think I am.}
On the drinking night in question, the night I had anticipated would be pleasantly quiet, the one thing I had not bargained for was a themed evening revolving around “You can’t say that; it’s racist?”
Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job
Now this particular pub in Wellsford Garden City stands at a junction with Ethnic Street. And one of the reasons I like to drink there is that by sitting next to the windows, you can watch the world, such as it is or as it has sadly become, go by, whilst wishing it would go away. How much nicer it would be to gaze through those same windows and see on the other side of them Britain as it used to be before the migrant invasion (a cluster of wistful, heartfelt sighs!).
“You’re not supposed to say that!”
“I know. It’s a bugger, isn’t it.”
Psychologist, psychiatrist, anthropologist, social historian, time traveller, circus trainer, zookeeper, most emphatically zookeeper, but anyone, in fact, who is seeking a snapshot of UK life can get it from one of these window seats, and once you are over the shock of it – to do this takes two or three visits – the spectacle unfolding is almost as freakishly entertaining as it is distressing. We’ll say no more of that. Ungird your loins, as most of them do, and go and see for yourselves.
On the evening when my account took place, we had not long taken temporary residence in these very seats, which look out onto the madness at which I have hinted, when, flying around the corner on two wheels, like something out of an ancient Sweeney episode or a cartoon from the 1960s, came a cop car at full tilt.
Something serious must have occurred, but what? Had someone been making mean tweets on his phone? Had an act of terrorism taken place that urgently needed to be hushed up in the interests of ‘race relations’? Was the High Street under siege by a terrifying far-right rally attended by two old grannies; a woman who dared to call herself that; and a moved-from-Rochdale (quickly) choirboy who, whilst not yet supporting Labour, might be trained to do so when he’s given the vote at the age of 13? (Roll up! Roll up! Here exclusively in the UK, Labour’s young performing poodles!) But no, we were wrong on every count. Whatever it was that had kicked off, it was here, among us, at WokeForkers, whose highly intelligent bar staff had gone and called the old bill.
The marauding cop car screamed to a halt, as they so dramatically do in 1940s black-and-white films (careful what you say there!), and seconds later in they marched – two of Britain’s finest: one with a head that was really quite bald and the other wearing his colleague’s toupee, which, dislodged when the driver hit the brakes, had landed on his chin, lending him the appearance of the Wild Man from Borneo, which I suppose must mean he lives in Luton.
AI-generated image
As we were sitting miles away from the bar (it’s a prudent thing to do, out of earshot of the WokeForkers’ Stasi), we couldn’t at all make out what was going on, but we knew that it must be serious, for why else would the police have been called?
After a full ten minutes in which nothing happened at all, a tall gent, foreign-looking, wearing what looked like a Chinese face and carrying a populist tote bag (it had a Union Jack on its side) marched defiantly, with no police escort, as though he were guilty of nowt, apart from the tartan kilt he was wearing, across the space of the room and disappeared onto the street.
You would have thought that being let off by our more than lenient British policemen (well, I said that he was foreign-looking, or he would have been arrested), the accursed fiend would have counted his blessings and made himself particularly scarce, but this he did not do. No sooner had he exited than he was spotted by one of our party eating apples near the pub’s back door. Eating apples! Near the pub’s back door!!!! His unacceptable presence must have been detected by one of WokeForkers’ ever-vigilant CCTV installations (for if ever a street was in need of a camera, then Ethnic Street is it), as moments later, the dynamic duo – Baldy booby and Beardy bobby – were out there on the street giving the culprit a piece of their minds, which he, the ungrateful recipient, looked as though he neither wanted nor knew what use he could put them to.
At this point in time, we had not the faintest idea what it was that had gone down, so naturally we were all of a mind, “Well done, those boys in blue; it’s best you move him on!” The truth of the matter is, however, that this extremely dangerous man, for what else could he be, tried himself three or four times to move by his own volition, but whenever he made to walk away, the coppers were on him again.
Just as they, as a group, drew level with our viewing window, a female member of the establishment’s bar staff came to collect some empty glasses. Someone in our party asked her what the problem was. I think we were all expecting to hear a sorry tale of attempted murder – after all, it’s fast becoming a national pastime in Britain – but what we got instead was a sorry something else.
“Oh dear!” went the girl, her attitude and countenance struggling to contain the dreadful trauma she had just experienced. “He [the Chinese man in a kilt] was making racist remarks at the bar … saying things about !*!*… When I argued with him, he brought up the subject of !*!*and {here was the real big hit!} He mentioned Tommy Robinson!” At the uttering of Tommy Robinson’s name, she literally, physically shuddered, and I thought for a moment she would fade away like a latter-day Gothic heroine or crumple into insignificance like tomorrow’s and the next day’s and every edition before and after of that mamby-pamby left-wing pamphlet, now on the web, the Guardinistan.
“But he’s not a white bloke, is he?” one of our party asked, presuming by prescription that no one could be accused of racism unless they were unconditionally white.
We all peered out of the window to test the validity of this assertion: it was hard to tell just what the man was, standing there in his Chinese face, looking all Jock-like in his kilt and feverishly eating apples, but what he expressly wasn’t, or had no reason to look like, was a man that was guilty of anything more than not having chosen his pub too carefully.
“Oh yes, he is a white man,” returned the wilting maiden, in an emphatic tone of voice and a horridly fraught expression that clearly suggested he could be no other.
“But you have to admit that his eyes aren’t British and his complexion is …”
She peeped through the window alongside me: “I suppose he must have a suntan.”
What a lucky chap, I thought; he must have been somewhere nice, somewhere other than WokeForkers, as there certainly was a definite dearth of any sunshine here, or anywhere, for that matter, where sunshine is employed symbolically to reflect a happy cultural climate, the likes of which we no longer have in the Disunited Migrant Kingdom.
If the barmaid had expected a commiserative response from us, she would have been sorely disappointed, since we were all too busy trying to fathom why a racist comment, if indeed there had actually been one, and a verbal reference to Tommy Robinson (I always get his name mixed up with a certain lefty actor) justified the deployed resources and exceedingly precious time of not one but a brace of coppers – and they were not even hobby bobbies! – whose only contribution, from what we were able to discern, was a forty-minute ideological lecture.
At length, and quite a long length at that, the taken-to-task white imposter, for so he seemed to us, made his third or fourth attempt to quietly walk away, only to have himself recalled by yet another officer. Had someone mentioned Tommy again? They had brought in reinforcements!
Racists in the UK!
At this juncture, the harangued man was literally at a junction; he was standing on a traffic island in the middle of the road, and as he reserved his legal right not to return to the beckoning copper, Mr Plod-come-lately, who was rather of that group which included PCs Baldy and Beardy, the most pugnacious of the three, marched across the road to him, where the poor man duly received yet another remonstration.
This peculiar – and rational people might say – preposterous police procedural episode persisted for yet another twenty pointless finger-wagging minutes, with the man, who was no doubt ardently wishing he had gone anywhere else in the world but WokeForkers, standing, in every respect, head and shoulders above his inquisitors and responding to their pontifications in a cool, calm, and collected manner, giving, from what we could see, a lot better than what he was getting, as people do when knowing that by being in the right they have natural testimony on their side, finally, having had enough of it and not having lost his temper, as I suppose this is what the coppers wanted, waved his hands in tired conclusion and strode away in his riding-up kilt, his single man’s sack – full of apples – swinging in the breeze, like a man who had clearly won his argument and was off to a decent pub.
AI-generated image
The irony of the situation, as irony tends to lurk, don’t you think, around virtually every corner in life, like racist men in kilts armed with bags of apples, was that it wasn’t more than ten minutes after this extraordinary piece of theatre, which, according to our collective opinion, was a complete and utter waste of time, that I trekked off to the bar to replenish our party’s glasses.
The young barmaid behind the bar, who was entirely where you’d expect her to be, with a must-have ring thrust through her snout and her hair all dyed in a laughable colour, asked me what I wanted to drink. So far, so good, so proper, but I couldn’t quite make up my mind. WokeForkers sell mighty fine ales, unmatched, unfortunately, by their bar staff, and often one is spoiled for choice, which is sadly and far too commonly not the case with their bar staff.
It just so happened by a quirk of Time that a middle-aged chap had arrived at the bar contiguous with my own arrival, and with me being in full dither, he was given the option to order his beer ahead of me, but he, like me but for different reasons, was also finding the simple task of placing his order difficult due to the row from the TV set, which was showing a BBC broadcast of a gaggle of noisy migrants celebrating the short bus ride from the shores of Dover to a 5-star hotel.
He apologised to the barmaid for not being able to make himself heard: “I’m sorry,” he said, politely, “but some illegal migrants on the telly are talking rather loud.”
The barmaid immediately froze; her jaw shot down several metres like Frank Zappa’s Billy the Mountain’s; her ridiculous blue hair bristled; her face underwent a monstrous change, which wasn’t exactly a bad thing because it wasn’t particularly pleasant even in its ‘normal’ state, but now it appeared all bent and twisted as though savagely infected by a virulent dose of that plague exclusive to the liberal left called ‘outrage’ or was cast in a mask of tormented virtue like Hope not Hate’s at its most hypocritical.
“What did you say?!” she demanded.
I tried to prevent the middle-aged man from reiterating his previous utterance, for, being an expert on leftist ire, the motivation behind the question was all too plain to see: the harridan behind the bar was gunning for confrontation. But the inoffensive middle-aged chap, believing no ill in what he had said, merely repeated what he had said.
Those of you familiar with Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist will have no difficulty, I am sure, in recalling the manner in which Mr Bumble reacted when Oliver asked for more, and had our rancid barmaid been auditioning for Bumble’s part in the soap-operatic drama that she had taken upon herself to direct, I would recommend her before you could say, ‘Does she not know how to smile?’ but I wouldn’t employ her behind a bar for all the inflatable dinghies in France or all the beer at WokeForkers (OK, well even I can make concessions!)
With her hackles raised, which made her hair look dafter, and inconsolably rigid with outrage, she could hardly muster utterance, but when she retrieved her articulation, she suddenly cried out, “Racist! What you’ve said is racist!” and straightaway she was on it, like a chronic dose of the shits, calling loudly along the bar, “We’ve got a racist here!”
Immediately, in response to her wailing, a beanpole excuse for a man sporting a bun on his head, without an arse in his trousers and masquerading as something that was worth the space he occupied, lickety-splitted fast-like from the opposite end of the bar, where no doubt he had been lying in wait to pounce on the first errant customer (who, for public consumption, had to be white) for making racist remarks.
The female Mr Bumble reported her findings to him, and immediately he went from looking absolutely and totally gormless to adopting a posture of high alert, as if he needed his nappies changing and the only one he could trust with this task was wonderless woman the manager – well, lefties are known for their kinks. Not to dwell on that too much, a second racist in one evening had been unmasked at the WokeForkers’ bar! [Dramatic chords of music!]
The manager, female I think, but then I could be wrong, was on the scene like a butcher’s dog, but the amiable white middle-aged man, who was clearly racist because of this fact if not for any other, knowing what they were at, waved his hand contemptuously and with a rewarding complacent smile casually walked away, leaving his three would-be antagonists, all of whom he had made quite clear he wouldn’t touch with yours, which is to say, your resentment and anger, looking perfectly stupid. And one has to raise the question, could they look anything else?
AI-generated image
Left standing alone as I was, the dangling-in-the-wind manager had no one else, only me, to turn to, so rounding on me, it said, as if I really wanted to know, “Like every responsible pub, we adhere to a zero-tolerance policy.” Should I have been impressed? It sounded lame and weary.
I wanted to say it was a pity that we didn’t have a similar policy to stop the boats from flooding in as well as one to prevent the left from ethnically cleansing the white population and its sovereign culture, but I contented myself by thinking these things and tried to suppress a smirk as I said, with remarkable cheerfulness, “And what an effective policy it is to be sure (crikey, I was close to sounding Irish!), but as all I am trying to do is order a pint of beer, perhaps someone would be so kind as to take my order and serve me.” I almost had to shout to be heard as the illegal migrants on the telly were having such a raucous time here in dear old England that it sent a shiver of pride from the nape of my neck to my balls, er of my feet, and elsewhere throughout my body, or something of that persuasion, to acknowledge that I belonged to such a recklessly tolerant nation.
The immediate panic over, and the alarmist barmaid having returned from wherever she had scuttled off to fortify her troubled self with intakes of air and smelling salts, I promptly ordered my pint.
As she pushed the glass against the tap, it was then that she took her Marxist role just a little too far.
“I suppose you’re racist too?” she rasped.
Woke Watch UK!
Now call me old school or even old-fashioned, but in my long and illustrious career of supporting the British pub, I have had the belief instilled in me that barmaids are there to pull your pint, not to pull your chain.
The answer that I was ready to give was manifold, such as “Has your girlfriend left you? Is it the wrong time of the month? Or don’t you know what gender you are?” But I knew that she was goading me, so the compliant answer given was, “Yes, of course I am; I’m a white English male; how could I be anything else but racist? ” But then I went on to correct her, saying that I am not a racist; I am a realist, and that, whilst the words have a similar ring to them, there’s a world of difference between the two, and it is only the left who confuse them because it suits their divisive agenda.
Having failed to elicit the response that she was so keenly after and not knowing what further to do to advance her cunning plan, from then on she shut her trap and did what she was paid to do – poured the pint and took the money.
Racists in the UK! Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job
Now, you may be thinking, and rightly so, that all that I have related is a silly storm in a teacup, and in this you would be right; in itself, it is. But when you collate these issues — a ‘zero tolerance policy’, which works like a one-way street; an almost hysterical urge by giddy-headed girly staff to adopt the role of brain police rather than confine themselves to what they are paid to do, ie take your order and pull your pint; the praises sung of ethnic enrichment, in tones of a drugged-up parrot, when nothing could be further and more nauseatingly far from the truth; and the programmed decrying of racism aimed at native Britons living quietly in their own country, because it is their country and because it is their heritage, and they would like to keep it that way – when all these factors are added together, rollocks! A piece of general advice would be that people that work in pubs should do the job they are paid to do and never stick their oar in. Comprehendi lefties?
Should, dear reader, in spite of the evidence that I have laid before you, an element of doubt yet persist, then ask yourself the following: Did an alleged racist comment by a man in a kilt with a bag of apples standing at WokeForkers’ bar warrant the intervention of not one, not two but three police officers? Did the chap who stood at the bar and wryly referred to the noisy migrants deserve the reaction he received from the neurotically troubled barmaid? And wasn’t it, don’t you think, just a little bit on the impudent side, not to mention provocative, when the lowly underpaid serving wench overstepped her mark by calling me out as racist (not that he gives a f*ck, shouts an inconsiderate heckler) when all I had said and done was order a pint of beer?
A week or so in the aftermath of that evening of entertainment, how dire the weather was for June inserted itself, as weather does in English conversations, during a chat between yours truly and a stranger in a pub, which was not, I hasten to add, WokeForkers’, for you have to be careful, very careful what you say in there!
“Considering how vile the weather has been of late,” said I, “the UK has to be the last country on earth where you’d want to be faced with extortionate fees for gas and electric heating.”
Quickly the man addressed replied that these are not the only things that are wrong with this country today, and discovering from that moment forward that we were mutual travellers not only in kind but also in destination, off we went down the bumpy road on route to collapsing Britain, stopping off on the way at the cultural climate of fear engendered by accusations of racism and what it did for a man called Nowak; the knife-wielding migrant butcher prowling the streets of Belfast; the ethnic-obsessed two-tier cop shop; tragic Southport; indefensible Rochdale; and the saddo younger generation, whom our pied piper politicians are leading up the garden path and tossing over Culture Loss Cliff. We also took a detour to reflect upon the situation of an authoritarian incumbent PM, whom, no matter how many want him out, simply won’t F Off!* Naturally, when we had gotten to where we knew our journey would take us, which was around and around and around in circles, I apprised my fellow traveller about the ‘spot the racist night’, hosted by Wellford’s WokeForkers.
“Civil war,” is coming, he said, solemnly shaking his head. “Everyone you talk to is thinking and saying the same.”
One cannot deny the uneasy feeling that the hands on the doomsday clock identified by Elon Musk are moving inexorably closer to that retributive midnight hour.
Close the curtains, bolt the doors and turn the television on for a counter-intuitive narrative, if that’s the only defence you have against what is lurking out there on the streets, but confront, do not avoid, those disturbing images of the migrant boats as they keep flooding in, and if anyone calls you racist when you speak your mind, remember what terrors silence will bring and wear your antagonists’ failed agenda as you would wear a badge of honour.
How will it all end, you ask? “Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”
* He’s gone, and the panacea replacing him is ‘Nice to see me being nice’, good old Andy Burnham. What are you going to do about violence on the streets, Andy, the steamrolling immigration problem, and the boats flooding into Dover? Are we ever going to get a PM who is brave enough to grow a pair and save us from extinction, or are our PMs and our much-maligned country forever doomed to be controlled by pseudo-liberal globalists?
PS: If you are planning on getting stabbed in the not-too-distant future, you could do a lot worse and be a lot more stupid by doing it in Manchester, since ‘news just in’ informs us that in selected parts of the city, wall-mounted ‘bleed kits’ are being installed. How reassuring is that! Who needs law and order when you’ve got a political plaster?
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller, knocking at the moonlit door’
‘No!’ was the answer from Number 10. At least no one here who will or dares to give you the answer you’re looking for.
It holds a special place in my memory, for in a brief snapshot, a split second in time, it captures one of Victor’s most endearing character traits, that admirable part of his personality which demonstrates his ability to play down adversity and take everything in his stride.
Victor Ryabinin Artist: a man who continues to inspire
Staying with my recent focus on the small, Baltic coastal resort of Otradnoye, the aforementioned photograph was taken on Otradnoye Beach in January 2005, following an unseasonably wet November and December.
The high earthen banks skirting Otradnoye beach had, after two months of nigh-incessant rain, sunk sponge-like into themselves, and the underlying soil erosion, together with high winds, had, by the dual action of undermining and invisible climatic battering, caused the banks to slip and the trees to break and splinter. In the worst scenario, entire trees had been brought out by their roots, and those not already strewn across the beach were stumbling like a drunken orgy to join the ones that had.
Victor Ryabinin Artist: a man who continues to inspire
Somehow, our gallant little group, consisting of Victor, Olga, Olga’s son Daniel, myself and an English friend called Barry, had descended to the beach by way of the crumbling banks. Our walk from Svetlogorsk had been a dicey one, rain-soaked and windswept, alleviated only by a planned excursion to Brachert House Museum. Now, standing on the beach, ready to take that iconic picture, although the wind had dropped a little, the rain was with us again.
Whilst I huddled up in my totally inappropriate London city overcoat, which, being made of pure new wool, would, by the end of the day, thanks to the teeming rain, be twice as heavy as when I had taken it from the wardrobe, Victor, demonstrating typical nonchalance, lowered his umbrella. And that’s the spirit in which I knew him and also how I remember him. For all I know, he may have been privately carrying all the cares in the world on his shoulders, but if such had been the case, he certainly never showed it.
It is true his symbolist art betrayed a tormented sensibility. It had been with him since his childhood and was the driving force behind his work. Victor sometimes hinted that he was locked within an eternal struggle, with haunting apparitions of the ruins in which he had been born and the echo of the city’s suffering ringing in his ears. Growing up in this traumatised environment, his gentle disposition and vulnerable romanticism experienced at first-hand the slow, grinding metamorphosis from scarred and bombed-out shell to modern-thriving urban centre, but the world beyond which shaped his city never left his heart.
I sometimes felt this pain and made it mine, but for me it was but a fleeting impression, not something forged across a lifetime. I could drop the catch, whilst he could not, or give it back whenever I chose, or so I erroneously told myself, whereas for him his only escape, albeit one which spiralled inwards, was through consultation with his muse and by working daily through his recollections on the level of social history. However, if this had been his mortal lot, he rarely ever showed it. To us, he was always and forever a pennies-from-heaven man, holding aloft his open umbrella, a twinkle in his philosophical eye and a smile upon his kindly face, skipping over the Kaliningrad potholes and singing in the rain.
There is music in his memory, and I am privileged that it comes back to me almost every single day.
^Why is that man carrying that dog? That’s a good question. Because he was convinced that it was a stray. So, he carried it for a mile or more along a narrow and winding seawall, and when he put it down, the ‘rescued’ dog trotted calmly away up and over the bank and presumably went home.
Summery Scenes in Kaliningrad and its region 2024-2025
26 June 2026 – Kaliningrad weather? – A What You Need to Know Post!
Brr, that’s all I can say. That was a quick post, wasn’t it? My allusion, as distinct from illusion – that’s one of those that everyone who voted for Starmer has since become acquainted with and will no doubt once again with the installation of Andy Burnham; oh, how fools are easily fooled – is to my last post (It’s sounding over Britain!), the one in which I appear to ratify the collective delusion (delusion this time) that it always snows in Russia, which it most certainly does in a good many Frederick Forsyth and Len Deighton novels and in most mainstream spy films based upon their books. It even snowed in the pop video used to promote Elton John’s Nikita. I almost said Akido, but I’ve practised that enough (ooh, my aching joints!), and very nearly Akita, but that’s my brother’s dog, neither of which, as I recall, are remotely connected to snow. Do you remember Peter Snow and his infamous ‘swingometer’, replaced today by Sky News’ military analyst Michael Clarke, who is a hybrid of Peter Snow and a friend of mine called Greg? Sorry, it’s all getting so confusing. That’s flux for you.
In order to demonstrate, therefore, that it always snows in Russia, but it doesn’t, well, not here in Kaliningrad at any rate, I’ve whipped out the old photo album and borrowed from myself some lovely, summery, sunny pictures that rather prove my point.
Kaliningrad Weather? – A What You Need to Know Post!
My previous post was built around snowy scenes in Polessk, so I thought it only fair in order to dispel notions that it always snows in Polessk that I contrast those images with their summer counterparts. These photographs show the Deyma River and Polessk Canal, together with the landmark Eagle Bridge. The sun is shining, the snow has gone, the ice has melted, and the boats are out.
Here am I, sitting outside Königsberg’s Rossgarten Gate, outside the Rossgarten Gate restaurant. It’s not that they wouldn’t let me in, but the restaurant’s name, Solnechny Kamen, which, as you students of Russian know full well, translates to ‘Sun Stone’, subliminally inspired me to capture the first rays of summer, which were breaking prematurely over the city in the last month of May 2024. Incidentally, I’ve not gone mardy and am not refusing to eat my food because, instead of a pint, I’ve been given a cup of coffee; I’m just thawing out after a long, hard winter.
Summer in Kaliningrad and its region is not all about beer and sun lounging – more’s the pity. On the contrary, it’s a time to get things done! Do those knee pads suit me? I’m doing a real conquistador job on upcycling that old open-arm bench, and our good friend, artist and conservationist, and, quite frequently, Immanuel Kant, is treating our historic Soviet statue to a summer makeover.
When the sun’s out, you want to be outside with it, but as my friend’s father, Mr Wilcox, used to bawl at me whenever I was ‘holidaying’ at his farm in my youth, “We’re fighting a war against human nature, Hart!! There’s work to do!!” And you couldn’t say fairer than that, because you daren’t. As his ghostly voice echoes across the decades, I assuage his wrath by turning my hand to a little shabby chicing in the country house hallway. Alright, alright, I admit most of the ideas were Olga’s.
And when the work is done … (most of these ideas are mine.)
Celebrating summer’s divine attributes.
Am I responding to the dulcet tones of my authoritarian guardian Mr Wilcox, or is it just excellent weather to be doing it? All my own work? Leave it out!
And when the work is done … it’s time for a libation with the neighbours.
Going German bunkers on a hot day in Kaliningrad. Meanwhile, Ginger teaches himself how to hide behind a flower before venturing out onto the terrace to assess how invisible he has become.
Late summer: the last rays of sunlight falter over the Curonian Lagoon.
18 June 2026 – Polessk in Winter is Rather More Than a Frosty Atmosphere
Do you know there’s a rather rude English expression that goes, ‘I don’t want to piss on your fireworks’, wryly meaning ‘I don’t want to spoil it for you’, which, being a gentleman, I would never use, particularly as the opening line for a blog post, in the same way that I would never say, in the first month of summer, that in ‘less than six months’ time it will be Christmas’; for who, after a long, drawn-out, bitterly cold and exhausting winter, such as the one Nature treated us to in Kaliningrad this year, would want to be reminded at this escapist juncture of the unravelling seasons of the cold, ice and snow, from which it seems we have only just emerged, when we are yearning, body, mind and soul, for sun, warmth and pretty women wearing summer dresses?
You might well consider it perverse, therefore, that in the midst of my understanding almost all I profess to understand, I go ahead willy-nilly in the contradictory manner of a British politician doing exactly the opposite of what he promised before he was elected, but, as it is with politicians, memory rarely recognises the virtue of fidelity, so that being unfaithful to one season whilst embracing quite another suggests an equal portion of love for those devoutly courted in the past and for those with whom contentment brightens life at present, permitting you to pick and choose as and when and how you choose with self-proclaimed impunity.
Thus it is, without further, if any, considered apology, unless to make allowances for the damp condition in which you find your fireworks, that a perverse pleasure falls to me to introduce to you an unseasonal series of photographs that recollect a winter’s day in and around Polessk, a Kaliningrad regional town, which, long ago in German times, was known by the name of Labiau, with one or two appended photos taken somewhere else but on that same petrified day and not so dreadfully far away as to make my inclusion of them beyond the remit of my title.
Polessk is situated at the confluence of the Deyma River, which branches off from the Pregolya River, and the Polessk Canal (pre-Soviet, the Grosser Friedrichsgraben). When winter temperatures plummet, sections of both waterways can morph into super-thick ice plateaux, allowing the intrepid, the experienced, and those who are determined whatever the climatic conditions to dangle their rods in the water, to stroll across it nonchalantly as if the doing of the action were the natural consequence of a rash desire. Our camera spies a local chap sauntering back to terrafirma over the ice-bound waters, where his comrades have been perched for hours in pursuit of a fisherman’s tale.
Eagle Bridge
The following view is a glimpse of the historic Eagle Bridge, which spans the Deyma River on the edge of Polessk. Built in German times, between 1919 and 1922, when Polessk was Labiau, its landmark construction, immediately recognisable from its twin operating towers, accommodates a restored ancient mechanism which hoists the bridge in two to permit the transit of river traffic. Down-to-earth blog readers will from my brief description most likely, and correctly, visualise a drawbridge, whilst bods with technical minds are liable to protest, ‘The term that he is searching for is a double-leaf bascule bridge. Don’t you just love an engineer!
Here’s me, standing on Eagle Bridge. I’m glad I invested in that thermal-lined coat– and pants!
Curonian Lagoon, Frozen
This ice-bound scene is not in and of itself Polessk but, recorded on the same day when the other views were photographed, it captures the fate of the Curonian Lagoon in its transformation to a frozen expanse, as seen from the coastline of the former German fishing village Labagienen, renamed Haffwinkel in 1938 and renamed again Zalivino by the Soviets after World War Two. Look carefully at the photograph: those little human specks lurking in the distance are by virtue of their courage akin to something like ice warriors, or you might presume just nuts. Observed in the twilight hours, with a low of minus 30 degrees nipping at your nose and with your eyes misting over, an eerily atmospheric sense replaces objectivity, inducing me to half expect a figure ominous in proportion skimming past on a dog-pulled sled followed in frenzied pursuit by Baron Frankenstein.Does it affect you this way, too? No, I didn’t think it would.
On your bike! It’s the Phantom Cyclist!
Stone the crows! I’m not sure about them, but you’ve got to handlebars it to him, he certainly frightens me. As scarecrows go, he is a lot more original and effective than a plastic bag hanging on a stick. The only time you have to worry is when, on your own and in the dark, you hear the sound of the cycle wheel whirring close behind you. Er, let’s walk back via the other route; it’s been such a long while since we went that way…
The Ponart Brewery Beer Shop
Now, this is a very interesting place. It stands on the corner of a narrow, weaving road, hemmed in by old German apartment blocks, overlooking the combined waterways of the Deyma River and Polessk Canal (historical name, the Grosser Friedrichsgraben). A local distribution outlet for the historic Ponart beer brand, brewed again to traditional recipes at the restored Königsberg brewery complex, which was built in 1839 and converted in recent years into a multipurpose cultural centre of which Kaliningrad is rightly proud, this worthy Polessk trading post is a convenient stopping-off point for stocking up on vital goods before and after excursions.
I imagine that this photograph is self-explanatory. Here am I inside the Ponart beer shop, situated at Zavodskaya Ulitsa, 1, Polessk, Kaliningrad Oblast, ordering one of their fine draft ales. Better than soup with a hot water bottle, it’s just the job after a two-hour stint of walking around in conditions that mimic those of the Arctic.Can you see my nuts?
A water tower cast in the image of a Gothic castle
11 June 2026 – Water Tower Otradnoye (Georgenswalde) is outstanding
Among the Kaliningrad region’s many examples of red-brick Gothic architecture, water towers are an interesting group. Towers in a broader architectural context are one of Gothic’s principal aesthetics. It is these that best achieve the soaring vertical and steep perpendicularity by which structures in this genre, be they standalone or an integral part of more complex compositions, are canonically determined.
The Kaliningrad region’s water towers, whilst sharing design characteristics of a fundamental nature, are, when considered on a one-to-one basis, by no means indistinct.
Each tower is engendered with structural and stylistic traits that lift them out of rigid conformity.
Water Tower Otradnoye (Georgenswalde): a functional folly
K. Fischer’s Otradnoye (formerly Georgenswalde) tower is of a standard rectangular tapering build, with a four-section, snow-arresting flanged-metal triangular roof. Elevated to a height of approximately 147 feet, the mediaeval replica exhibits typical red-brick Gothic elements but with distinct and personalised variants, such as, in its mid-section, lancet-inspired indentations which, although they are tall and narrow, are capped with rounded ends and used to produce a sunken frame in which to display conforming windows arranged in a vertical sequence. Other arrangements of note include a recessed crenellated frieze, a triangular pediment with matching corner buttresses, cement-rendered horizontal bands which divide the building into vertical sections, blind niches of different dimensions, and deep, stepped-back door alcoves typically arched but wide in form.
As with many civic buildings of this type and of this period, the overall exotic impression borrows for its impact from romanticised notions of picturesque castles, bold and grand in stature, whilst concealing behind its fortified mask a utilitarian purpose which, at the time of its inauguration, was rarely excelled in practicality and, in contradiction to its appearance, more modern and useful in application.
K. Fischer’s Georgenswalde tower is a prominent local landmark in the Soviet-renamed coastal town Otradnoye. Its historical and architectural value is reflected in its official status as a protected cultural heritage monument.
As sanguine and sagacious as you are, you would not, I am perfectly sure, have jumped to the conclusion that our esteemed Headmaster, Sir Keir Starmer, had completely dropped his marbles when he allowed the loony left, a motley ragbag of Labour MPs, cabbage-looking Greens and limp-wristed Liberal Democrats, to railroad him into disallowing UK airbases to be used for the deployment of US aircraft required for service in the Middle East. If Sir K knows nothing else, he sure does know his onions when it comes to choosing strategically between the preservation of the centuries-old US ‘special relationship’ and running the risk of riots, which, had he not capitulated, the anarchistic left and its unholy migrant confederates would have no doubt unleashed upon Britain’s lawless streets.
Rampant riots on Britain’s streets, with their concomitant rape of the already endangered public purse, cost a third-world ransom and are, moreover, when televised for all the world to see, an embarrassing indictment of failed political leadership unless brought swiftly under control with the sort of robust measures that Britain never employs; the only exception being when those that protest are white, whereupon rest assured that every last man jack of them, as distinct from last man Ali, irrespective of sex or age, can expect their impudence to be met with the ‘full force of the law’. Another downside to be had from riots is that they are bad for happy endings as written at the ballot box; indeed, they incur the unfortunate consequence of lingering in the collective memory and then later, in wild abandon, leaping out in the voting booths as ‘Xs’ in rival MPs’ boxes.
Bearing this conjunctively in mind with the volatile state of Britain and the clear and present danger of nationwide civil unrest, even the most vehement of Starmer opponents would probably have to agree that in refusing ‘bad-ass’ Trump’s request for U.S. planes to land on British concrete was the better part of valour, as also was, it might be opined, his subsequent refusal to send one of His Majesty’s rowing boats to assist with the tricky political task of de-mining the Hormuz Straits.
Now, the less charitable among you, ie those who refuse to read The Guardian on the grounds that it might incriminate their reputation and common sense, might be inclined to paraphrase my diplomatic articulation in preference for words less minced and state with convincing clarity that the Starmer way on this occasion, and indeed on many others, had less to do with standing up to Trump than it had with appeasing the migrant masses of whom he is, to borrow freely from Northamptonshire’s vernacular, most possibly rather ‘frit’, although we should ameliorate by admitting not without reason. But then what can one expect if one continues to fill the country day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year and forever until it’s goodbye to us with hordes of people who just don’t fit and from countries wherein is found Britain’s most implacable enemies? I wonder how much room there is behind the settee at Number 10 and if nationally it is large enough to accommodate us all when Elon Musk’s prediction of something akin to a civil war kicks off across our imperilled nation from ‘Hoots mon’ to Cornish pasties.
Much is made in parliament and in the eager-beaver media about the looming threat from historic adversaries, Viking-like would-be aggressors romping in from abroad (you notice I mention no names). There is so much bandied hype about a conventional country-on-country attack upon our sceptred isle, which, although it is not impossible, remains, at least for the moment on the bright side of improbable – let us take as our chosen analogy that it is not entirely impossible that one day ousted Prince Harry might actually wake up and also grow up, but that there is nothing so far in his behaviour to suggest that this possibility will ever transcend improbability.
Nursery rhyme heard from an open window of the Primary School for Blatant Publicity…
Prince Harry went to Ukraine He isn’t a prince just an exported shame And after he came home again (Although he hasn’t got one.) Nothing was changed; all was the same The news of him of which we are sick Make him, for the many, look like a dick.
Perhaps he should change his name to Prince Richard Head.
Life in the UK – it’s all so peculiar
Like the many that preceded them since the end of World War II, this Labour government, which you went and elected – alack a day and fie! – has no plans, no strategy and no backbone, absolutely no political will and, one keenly suspects, no real executive power to halt the migrant invasion from France or to send the buggers already here back to whence they came. As Elon Musk’s, we must conclude, credible prediction, that civil war is on its way takes root in the nation’s consciousness, all that the present government does is continue, as the Tories did before them, to apply to the vicious gaping wound the ointment of capitulation and the accommodating sticking plaster whilst casually sticking two fingers up at the concerns and ultimate welfare of the indigenous population.
The normalisation of policies that contradict, confound and confuse the actions expected of government in pursuit, one would ardently hope, of an outcome that favours the country’s health in all its myriad forms – and these not by a long chalk from Starmer’s lacklustre lot alone but as a legacy laid down by a series of not-fit-for-purpose governments stretching back to the end of the Second World War – is red-carpeting the migrant march to the accommodation tune of a tidy eight million pounds a day, costing the British nation dearly, not only in misspent ackers but in the loss of the cultural sense of who we are, the bewilderment of what we are becoming and the fear of what will become of us. as personal and national security are compromised like never before.
Eight million pounds a day is an awful lot of money – an awful lot to spend on people whom we neither need nor want and could very well do without.Think of all the positive things that could be done with all that money. Think of the potholes in Britain’s roads that long to be repaired, of homeless Britons on British streets deserving a roof over their heads, of a most inadequate military, underfunded and demoralised; of new hospitals, new schools, funding for the NHS, real investment in real renewable energy (if you feel that you must think of this) and a thousand other etceteras, etceteras, along with so-ons and so-forth.
The British media is a spilt piss pot, an overflow of alarm stories bent on dunking us into the slops of the country’s parlous economy, rancid with predictions of an economic slowdown and a terminally stagnating GDP. And yet, with all this talk of the United Kidthem heading for the skids and becoming ever more potless, hardly a mention is made, you could say not surprisingly, of the exorbitant and unholy drain on the country’s faltering economy by the perpetual and perpetuated infinite migrant invasion. Bookmark how much it costs to house these delightful darlings: it’s £8,000,000 a day*! And this expenditure in a country where many of its inhabitants cannot afford, in the depths of winter, to switch the domestic heating on. Let me repeat that figure again for the liberal hard-of-hearing: £8,000,000 a day! (*These figures are taken from an assessment made in 2023, which equate to a total annual cost exceeding £3 billion.)
The rocketing cost of home energy bills Over the past five years, the annual surge in costs of domestic gas and electric bills has been successively and neatly blamed on a jamboree of circumstances ranging from coronavirus to Ukraine and now the war with Iran. I, personally, am glad about this because I have long distrusted my suspicions that the energy crisis is all to do with greed and that everything used to talk it up is nothing but excuses. The sticking point for me is that as each and every crisis that forms the basis for the hikes subsides or, as in the case of coronavirus, vanishes overnight, the higher cost of energy never returns to what it was before the crisis was invented.
There are among our energy companies, who seem to be raking-it-in, some who seek to explain away these sudden precipitous peaks by recourse to pious allusions to the investment they are making in the nicely named renewable energy, but I think we all know by now, or if we don’t, we certainly should, that the imposition of net zero, paying 30 pence at the supermarket whenever we need a shopping bag, and all those other touchy-feely save-the-planet schemes are hand-in-glove with another suspect cause, the humanitarian industry, that global ideological racket belying the altruistic motives of philanthropic billionaires (so-called), hidden-agenda NGOs and need-to-be-scrutinised charities. We’ll just stop short of coining the phrase ‘ideological gangsterism’.
Mass building projects, new towns, associated infrastructure and net zero defined
If you want to know what topsy-turvy means in its relationship to net zero and all the other save-the-planet rackets, just head off into Cambridgeshire and take a look at Peterborough – a sprawling conurbation of the most utterly reprehensible kind.
The same urban sprawl is possibly being masterminded for the rural area of North Bedfordshire. South Bedfordshire has already become a save-the-planet farce: a rotten, unsightly mess of sprawling Lego-type house developments and noisy traffic-spewed roads that crisscross and run in fume-ridden, thundering parallel across a blighted and shattered landscape. This kind of urbanised vandalism is a thin-end-of-the-wedge scenario that is about to be driven like a stake through the heart of North Bedfordshire’s slumbering countryside.
Already, thousands of wonderful new homes are poised to be built on the outskirts of Sharnbrook next to the A6, turning a small, grey stone village with centuries of rural history into yet another example of the corrosive link between profit motive, white flight and overpopulation.
A fleet of ‘War of the ‘World’-type excavators are already tearing up rural Bedfordshire.
The A6, which at the best of times is already overburdened with heavy traffic, will, thanks to those lovely new homes and the masses due to occupy them, fall foul to a glutting influx of cars, the majority of which, with one or two exceptions in the shape of those funny whining things powered by electric that most of us don’t understand and more significantly cannot afford, will soon be belching CO₂ in ever-increasing volumes across the choking, stricken landscape. As the victim’s health deteriorates, a frustrating and clogged A-Sick will compel the rabbits in the new-build hutches, for which they have paid most handsomely, to seek out alternative roads on which to boldly go to get them into Bedford and beyond. Towards this competitive end, they will be rat-running their daily way through every local country lane in droves, forever in search of the Golden Fleece, the illusory traffic-free thoroughfare.
This same area of North Bedfordshire is also earmarked as the unlucky recipient of acre upon acre of environmentally unfriendly, ugly, intrusive solar panels; so many of them, in fact, that they will literally gobble up not only some of the county’s best and richest arable land but also turn what is today a truly beautiful example of English countryside at its most precious into a hideous plastic eyesore. Once the topsoil has been removed from century-old fields and meadows, it won’t be long before the relatively useless solar panels are pronounced dead and buried, like the arable land they’ve deprived us of, whereupon, hey presto, like a magician’s rabbit pulled out of a hat, all that sacrificed verdant land will turn, by a smoke-and-mirrors strategy, into a massive brownfield site, and before we can shed a validatory tear, up will sprout thousands of houses where wheat and barley used to be, like an overnight rash of toadstools.
This scheme, and the scheming behind it, though it may look topsy-turvy to some, discounting, of course, the duped disciples of the environmental racket, is as plain as the nose on Pinocchio’s face.It could literally pave the way for those hundreds of thousands more houses which Labour so rejoices in, transfiguring, in this case, a magnificent part of rural Bedfordshire, as so many shires are being disfigured, into that deadly urban sprawl that once was the noted cathedral city of Peterborough.
Standing on the crest of the valley overlooking tranquil Bedfordshire, the question might enter your head, ‘Why would they want to bury such splendiferous natural beauty under piles of bricks and slabs of concrete?’ And the answer might come back to you, quietly but convincingly, carried on the melodious sweetness of freely given bird song and suggested to you in the whispering breeze, ‘To pave the way for white flight, as the UK’s major towns and cities devolve to third-world ghettos, the rich therein behind gated compounds and murder incorporated out on the streets. Is this England I’m describing or am I confusing it with South Africa? Perhaps, as E.A. Poe would say, ‘It’s all but a dream within a dream.’ Meanwhile, at the carnival, you pay your money and you make your choice!
Crime matters
Yonder, about 12 months hence (my, but doesn’t time fly – ay up, think of the planet. I wonder how many of them do when they are up there in the sky), I was standing at the checkout in Bedford’s wonderful Wilko’s when a skanky individual – there are a lot of them about – looking like one of Kenneth Grahame’s weasels, went strolling out of the shop, his arms laden with unpaid items. Like the conscientious citizen that I am, and also to test what I had been told, I drew the attention of a store attendant to the undeniable fact that Wilko’s had just been robbed. Rolling his eyes up to the ceiling in a manner that suggested he would rather I had kept this to myself, he nevertheless pursued the thief and came back on this occasion with full retrieval of the loot. As for the robber, he went scot-free.
The new deal in the UK is that shop assistants and shop security can watch but cannot touch: shoplifting in effect has become a kind of spectator sport or retail-sanctioned voyeurism. Shop staff and security are corporately disempowered from apprehending shoplifters for fear the company may be prosecuted for violating the criminal’s human rights. Moreover, the unverified story goes that should you ring the Old Bill and report the crime of shoplifting, you’d simply be wasting your time as well as the cost of a phone call, as they, the UK police, rarely, if ever, respond to such incidents, unveiling the reason, at a guess, why Britain is currently overwhelmed by a shoplifting epidemic and suggesting to the intelligent that this in part explains why good-old Wilko’s Bedford branch closed down.
Understandably, as a customer, the daily scourge of shoplifting may not be as high on your list of concerns as it would be if you owned a shop, but crime in all its variations, particularly crime to the person and serious crime at that, has reached an all-time UK high, suspiciously coinciding with profound cultural changes in the nation’s composition, with disproportional representation in certain ethnic groups and by conflicting, hostile creeds.
To be chatful of it, you could say that crime in Britain is ‘rife’, and yet it’s a funny thing, I’ll have you know, and you may think so also, how Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, known as the FCO, is altogether exceptionally good at passing judgement on other countries, warning us not to go there for fear of falling victim to crime at street and also state level, but never tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth, in fact any truth it would seem at all, about the dangers of visiting and living in Britain, especially when that living and visiting pertains to the city of London, which as every honest fellow knows, grows more dangerous every day.
‘Edith Binstock has lived in Golders Green for more than 70 years and says when she was young it “was the most amazing place to live in”.’
‘” I don’t know how it’s got to such a state… I don’t know when it’s going to get better. I doubt it.”’
I hope the left are listening …
In daylight, UK towns and cities look exactly what they are, but when night descends on Gotham, it’s best to scurry home, and once inside what used to be but isn’t any longer the revered and impregnable Englishman’s castle, quickly bolt and bar the doors. The real, fictional Gotham City had one distinct advantage: when the dregs seeped upwards to the surface, it could always call on Batman, whereas in Britain we think ourselves lucky if we see a copper from one week to the next, and when we do catch a glimpse of them, they are roaring rapidly past in their cars. What the eye don’t see, the report don’t mention.
But whilst visible policing may be a thing of the past and there’s no solution to crime, two things that we do have are a glut of fatuous politicians and a disingenuous media making blatant false assurances that there is no such thing as ‘no-go areas’ in our major cities. Of this they may be right. Take Londinstan, for example: here you can go wherever you like, just don’t expect to always come back, or always come back in one piece.
Where’s that policeman when you need one?
Life in the UK – it’s all so peculiar
No write-up on the topsy-turvy fragile state of Britain would be worth its weight in Asian barber shops without a word or several on the behaviour of Britain’s yoof, and in this respect I will not disappoint.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the ‘pleasure’ of spending an evening in a large Bedford pub, which shall here remain unnamed, although I know that my secret will not stop you guessing which one it is I am talking about.
The night it was a Saturday, and yoof were out in force.
This particular boozer, which is renowned for beer that is sensibly priced and grub that is affordable, acts on Friday and Saturday evenings as a meeting place and springboard from which, following an alcohol primer or seven and having strutted their stuff – their very noisy and raucous stuff – the country’s dubious future spills out of the frenzied pub onto Bedford’s bedighted streets like a carnival of zombies. The next stop for Hysteria isn’t exactly the Twilight Zone, but it’s as near as damn it is to swearing. They are heading off, one and all, and in all sorts of bold undress, to abandonedly disport themselves at one or other of Bedford town’s overpriced and over-rated cattle markets, which some, those we must assume deprived of the good fortune to have ever been, or have ever been taken, to anywhere half decent, like to refer to as nightclubs.
Does my arse look big in this mermaid costume
In observing this unruly and indescribable disembarkation, I asked myself the searching question, has anything really changed since the 1990s? The decade that tried to redefine woman.
Sporting hilarious bouffant hairstyles, massively square and padded shoulders and parroting to anyone awake enough to listen that their careers were all they lived for – even having children was a bind! But occasionally, if it had to happen, they would take time off to do it, providing they were back in the boardroom at 9am the following day – these larger-than-daft career women symbolised the prototype model for the upwardly shafted female; she who had been deliberately conned into giving up her home life for sitting in an office. Led to believe herself empowered, all she had really achieved was emancipation from common sense. Now she would face the grim task of juggling home and working life, while creating feral latchkey kids, stressing it out wage-slave fashion and giving it all to the taxman.
It was during this time, or shortly after, that perfectly innocent programmes, like the comedy On the Buses and the long-running Benny Hill Show, came under the feminist cosh. Indeed, poor old saucy Benny, after years of treating us and our fathers to a feast of tits and bums, was driven out of business by the ‘It’s far too sexist!’ Stasi.
New Woman, especially feminists, wanted it to be known that they were volcanic hairstyles and padded shoulders above the leering of mucky old men’ (although the old but rich and ‘toy boys’ appeared to be exempt). Sexual jokes and innuendoes were no longer to be brooked; the Italian pinch or pat on the bum became strictly a bridge too far, and as for those cheeky construction workers bound by tradition to wolf whistle whenever they clocked the cheeks of, or cast their eyes across, the various assorted feminine goods purposefully displayed to them, their interest in the freely on offer was ordered to cease forthwith; the whistling had to stop, although the setting out of the carnal stall continued unabated.
Now, I have no idea what goes through your mind when you first clap eyes on or meet a woman, but I’d hazard a layman’s guess that it has little to do with her credentials as a hot-shot exec female or whether she can or cannot hold an in-depth conversation on the philosophical works of Kant (Careful with that spell checker!) or has practical skills in woodwork. But the real question is, and has been since the 1990s, when PC first appeared, if, as we are led to believe, UK women regard themselves generically, that’s wholesale, as distant cousins to sexuality, demanding to be identified by their labour skills and brains, then why do so many still in this age of Ms equality, professional or otherwise, dress in what is defined traditionally as outfits worn by tarts (apologies to jam and biscuits)? Like charity that begins at home, sexual objectification begins primarily with the object itself, not, as alleged, the objectifying.
Anyway, getting back to this certain pub in a certain part of Bedford. Bedford isn’t Bedlam, and neither is this pub – on a Saturday night it is worse! You might want to call it a clusterf*ck! Liberals would describe it as a hip and vibrant venue, a popular haunt for the dynamic young – ‘inclusive’ and ‘diverse’, they would quoth – a lively, relaxed and fun-loving crowd just wanting to let off steam. And in this respect, indeed, they were. Some sights, I must confess, were steaming up my glasses, testing my resolve to define women in the new-age light as prescribed by liberal doctrine, but steel myself as I might to ignore what my eyes beheld and its impact upon my reprobation (Forgive me, Lord! For I am male!), I could not altogether resist Aphrodite’s timeless charms and the wish she would have me entertain to become, and instantly, younger – by about 100 years, I’d say.
Other ‘ladies’ there were who were steaming in a different fashion, and yet, although they were out to get the same thing as their nimble counterparts, as they lumbered around like steamrollers with huge, tree-trunk, cellulite legs clad in bum-hugging skirts or shorts that were much to short for them into which they had awkwardly squeezed, and sometimes squeezed far too tightly, making them look like sausage meat overstuffed in skins, I wondered if they would ever get what it was they were after or remain for the rest of their days in a limbo state of disappointment. It’s exactly times like these that I’m glad I’m vegetarian. Had Stan, Jack and Benny been here, they would have had a field day! And here’s the topsy-turvy of it, for in spite of all we’ve been led to believe about modern British women, I think I can honestly say that I’ve never seen so many females embracing objectification since I worked on the local pig farm. Ah, so that’s what it reminded me of: that terrible shrieking din of youngsters and the letting off of their clouds of steam!
The contention of to what degree, if any, women ought to be obliged to take responsibility for the manner in which they dress and behave in public, if not merely for their own safety, then out of common respect for Modesty, is an issue framed in the larger debate of whether a rights-obsessed society should encourage every member of it, from politicians to media moguls to the happy-go-lucky migrants to women out on the town, to adopt the type of double standards that circumvent and short-circuit moral codes of responsibility, shaping the world’s wise opinion of the kind of society that Britain wasn’t but now, sadly, has become.
And if the answer is ‘no’, then where should such standards trickle from if not from the highest office in the land? Should the backdoor to double standards be left off its Yale lock here, then the thief that covets morality will perceive the right to go amongst us, sacking and plundering without redress and mugging us at will.
From turning your back on an ally, to turning the other cheek, as Labour’s Rochdale councillors did as cheeks were being turned; to letting the boats come flooding in; to ignoring the rising tide of crime; to an attitude of ‘sod their morrows’ by endorsing Sodom and Gomorrah; to paying perpetual homage to the one-way god of rights – this, then, is the topsy-turvy life, a life of confusing contradictions, that we live in the UK today. Thus verily unto you I say, and I am sure you will agree, that in pausing to examine it, it is all so peculiar.
Revised 19 April 2026 ~ Russia Kaliningrad Visa Information
Airspace Closures
Russia has closed its airspace to airlines from multiple countries in direct response to airspace closures effecting its airlines, which were introduced by western governments opposing Russia’s military operation to ‘demilitarise and de-Natzify’ Ukraine. Airlines on the banned list are prohibited from landing in or flying over Russian territory. As a result, air travel disruptions are widespread. If you intend to travel in the immediate future, you should contact your airline or travel agent for further information. Links to Airport/Airlines websites can be found at the end of this guide
To visit Kaliningrad, you will need to apply for and have been issued with a Russian visa. For those of you who are not sure what one of these is, it is an official document that permits you to legally enter a foreign country, in this case the Russian Federation. The visa is valid for a specific duration of time. It contains the date of entry to the country and the date of exit, as well as your name, travel document (passport) details and the purpose for which you are travelling.
There are various types of visa depending upon the nature of your visit, but, for the sake of this blog, let’s assume that you are visiting Kaliningrad as a tourist.
Russia Kaliningrad Tourist Information: Tourist Visa
A tourist visa will allow you to enter Kaliningrad and leave within a specified time frame of 30 days. This means that the maximum length of stay in Kaliningrad is 30 days and no more. It is important that you leave the country before or on the date of exit.
Before a tourist visa can be issued, you will need to have confirmation of where you will be staying throughout the duration of your visit. Two documents are required, commonly referred to as ‘visa support documents’, and they consist of (1) a voucher and (2) a booking confirmation.
If you are staying in a hotel, you will need to ask the hotel to send you a hotel voucher and confirmation of tourist acceptance. Once you have received these, you are then ready to make your application.
To complete your visa application, you will need the following:
1. An original passport, valid for more than 6 months, containing at least 2 blank pages for your visa and entry/exit stamps
2. An application form
3. One valid passport-type photograph
4. Payment for application
Note: The Russian Service Centre (the Russian National Tourist Office) can assist you with all stages of your application, including visa support documents. You can contact them by telephone on 0207 985 1195 and/or visit this page on their website: https://www.visitrussia.org.uk/visas/getting-a-russian-visa/
Their location and postal address is:
Russian Service Centre Russian National Tourist Office 202 Kensington Church Street London W8 4DP
However, you will still be required to go in person to the Russian Tourist Office at 202 Kensington Church St, London W8 4DP, for biometric scanning. This sounds worse than it is. Biometric scanning means that you need to supply your fingerprints.
Russian Tourist Offices (also referred to as Russian Visa Application Centres) are also located in Manchester and Edinburgh. However, the Manchester office has been closed for some time now, so that leaves you with the choice of London or Edinburgh. The address of the Edinburgh office is 64 Albion Rd, Edinburgh EH7 5QZ. Tel: 0131 661 7279. Visa applications operate by appointment.
The time it takes for you to receive your Russian visa depends on which service you pay for. Visas can be received within two days of the completion of the application procedure.
Electronic Visa (E-visa)
Yes, Russia does implement an electronic visa (e-visa) system for entering the Russian Federation. The citizens of sixty-four countries are eligible to apply using this fast-track system, but, unfortunately, as Britain is officially designated an ‘Unfriendly Country’ by Russia, those holding a British passport are excluded from this list. Visa applicants from the UK are thus requested to apply, using the old-fashioned paper route, via Russian Visa Application Centres in London, Manchester or Edinburgh.
Russia Kaliningrad Visa Information: Professional visa support company
To make things easier for you, there are various visa-support companies that you can contact, which will take you through the entire process. My support company of choice is Stress Free Visas, if only because if you do get stressed whilst using them, you can have a good laugh at your own expense! Their website address is www.stressfreevisas.co.uk.
When using their service, you will be asked to fill out an application form online. It is as well to know what to expect before you start, since when they start asking you questions, such as ‘What is your inside leg measurement?’, it will be difficult to do so unless you have a tape measure already at hand. OK, it’s not that bad, not quite, but there is information that you will need that you might inconceivably not have thought of.
To this end, please see the following:
Q: Who is paying for your trip to Russia? A: [If it is you, put ‘independently’]
####
You will be asked ‘information about your financial
situation’. You will need to enter your ‘overall monthly income from all
sources’ and various other financial details.
####
You will need to include your National Insurance number
####
You will be asked to enter ‘place of birth’ and ‘date
and place of birth’ of your spouse
####
You will be asked to provide the following details
about your parents:
Name Date, country & place of birth Nationality If deceased, date & place of death
####
You will be asked to provide the name of the hotel you
will be staying at, plus address and telephone number
####
And that, as Bruce Forsyth used to say, “is all there
is to it!”
To assist you in all visa-related matters, here again is the web address for Stress Free Visas: www.stressfreevisas.co.uk
Russia Kaliningrad Visa Information (Useful links)
Note: The London centre offers couriers or mail-based applications as well as in-person visits. The Edinburgh Centre operates an in-person system only. All in-person visits must be booked in advance.
Three President Putin T-shirts from across the decades 11 October 2026 – Rare 25-Year-Old President Putin T-Shirts Surface in the UK I have no difficulty in remembering when I first became intrigued by hunting out and collecting things, which is rather odd in two respects: the one is reserved for aliens, who, terminally smitten by… Read more: Rare 25-Year-Old President Putin T-Shirts Surface in the UK
Seven restaurants under one roof, and that’s not all at the Kings Residence, Kaliningrad. 30 September 2026 -The Kings Residence Kaliningrad: it’s a big one alright! When I first clapped eyes on it – I believe it was in the summer of 2015 – I thought, “My, what a big one!” Almost immediately, and certainly… Read more: The Kings Residence Kaliningrad: it’s a big one alright!
I think those chaps at RT write a jolly good article … 22 September 2026 – RT Breaking News: Why Don’t They Want You to See It? 😱 If you’ve arrived at this page from the EU, look away now!! So, there I was a few weeks ago flicking through the western news channels which… Read more: RT Breaking News: Why Don’t They Want You to See It?
More money for Ukraine and migrants, but shhh, don’t mention the boats! 9 September 2026 – Britain Goes Balaclava as the Boats Keep Bowling In On the day that it is proudly announced by an Andy Burnham’s Labour Party that the UK will give away £100,000,000 to Ukraine’s air defences this winter, whilst spending approximately… Read more: Britain Goes Balaclava as the Boats Keep Bowling In
Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: Old Bobby Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad 29 August 2026 – Old Bobby Ale – is it what it says it is? At a time in history when it is no longer possible to define what exactly is British and what is… Read more: Old Bobby Ale – is it what it says it is?
A little of what you fancy does you good – and so does a little more of it. With an essay prefacing the status of ales versus victuals and what a restaurant means to some when a bar can be seen by others.
10 April 2026: Art Depot Kaliningrad – beer for a one-track mind
As a seasoned pub-goer, nay, a patriotic supporter of what is undoubtedly one of the UK’s most important cultural assets, the British pub, qualified to say so from having lived a so-called pub lifestyle from the age of 14 and, during the time I was resident in London, reputed to have required an A to Z knowledge of London pubs, may I say without equivocation – and why not, indeed? – that the quest to boldly go and seek out hitherto unknown drinking venues, whilst as exciting as it is dutiful, does not rule out that there is a lot to be said for returning to the scene of the crime, which many a splendid bar or pub might unfairly be denounced as by stay-at-home abstemious naysayers and those who would rather drink from the bottle whilst sitting in front of the telly.
“Pubs and bars are like women; some are worth a second visit and some most definitely not” –The Sexist’s Guide to Male Dominated Traditions by Lord Wollocks.
When I first landed in Kaliningrad, in the year of our Lord (Wollocks!) 2000, there were so few bars to go around that if it hadn’t been for the Sir Francis Drake and the most exceptional 12 Chairs (R.I.P.), the only way of not returning to drink in them would have been not to go out at all.
Thankfully, in more recent years the situation has moved in the right direction. Kaliningrad is now a city with an eclectic range of bars, all of which would come in useful even if you never used them, which is something I would never do, as I use them whenever I can. ‘Roodly do’ is a phrase that inconveniently comes to mind at this juncture, not because I ‘roodly do’ use bars, but because it was a favourite catchphrase that rose to prominence in the 1980s through my aunt’s repeated use of it.
Thought I: “That expression will come in useful even if I never use it”, and, to prove it, although I have just used it, it has served no use at all.
Art Depot Kaliningrad
Now, some of Kaliningrad’s bars identify themselves as restaurants, which is a taxonomy I can live with, as the food that they serve is hardly limited to a humble packet of crisps bolstered by the insertion of an acquired-taste pickled egg, once standard fare in British pubs when I was too young to be drinking in them, although I always was.
The introduction of ‘pub grub’ was heralded in the UK as a major breakthrough by those who like to take solids with their drink, but its impact on the established consensus of what a pub should traditionally be was, like allowing kids to run riot in pubs, anathema to the old guard, among whose sagacious ranks I proudly claim to number. Indeed, Rolly Smith, a valued friend and respected drinking partner, confided that his father had condemned the arrival of food in pubs as a flagrant assault on the honoured conventions of that most noble of British institutions: “It’s only pigs”, he used to say, “that eat and drink at the same time!” Being a one-time pig farmer and now vegetarian convert disqualifies me from commenting on the veracity of this statement in recognition that a conflict of interests could lead to anything that I say being taken down, twisted round and used in evidence against me.
I can say, however, and should say, however, and therefore I will, that as a devoted beer drinker, food is often off the itinerary when drinking beer in bars and pubs. It is not so terribly difficult for me to apply myself to this golden rule, as food is an unfair competitor in the allocation of volume stakes when it comes to imbibing beer; moreover, whenever temptation may suddenly strike, I am reminded of the words of wisdom conveyed to us by Mr Rowbottom, my primary school headmaster, who sanguinely divided the world into two distinctive camps defined by him as eating compulsion, namely, those ‘who live to eat’ and those ‘who eat to live’, with my allegiance solemnly sworn to the minority sect of the latter. However, posit the question, if you must, ‘Do I live to drink?’ and it is not so easily answered.
The best thing to do with that, therefore, is to leave it gently dangling, turning at last, as you must be growing impatient, thinking, ‘Where is he going with this?’ to apply all that which has gone before to the subject of this post, which, as the title gives away, is Kaliningrad’s Art Depot Restaurant but which, according to my perception of it, is Kaliningrad’s Art Depot Bar.
Art Depot Kaliningrad – bar and restaurant
I am sure, to the vague extent that I can be sure about anything, that, as on my previous visit, I must have dined on something, and I am almost just as certain that whatever that something was, it must have been up to snuff, but the reason for my return was that I was desirous not of the food but of the range of beers that there are on tap and a second chance to soak them up whilst also imbibing the Art Depot atmosphere.
The novelty of having one’s drinks delivered in the rolling stock of a large model train is one of those things that can never grow old and goes exceptionally well with the vaulted cellar ceiling and the detailed dioramas of the railway stations and resident districts of the various Prussian towns to which the train delivers its vital cargo.
Above: Art Depot’s train reversing back into Königsberg/Kaliningrad rail station, ie the bar, to load up with another cargo of beverages. Below: Model architectural, urban and village district scenes lend to the unusual.
The horseshoe-shaped curved banquette booths ensure a plush, cosy, comfortable and intimate dining and drinking experience, especially should you be able to boast of sufficient friends or relatives to descend there as a group. But no matter how much you fall in love with any one seat and location, permit me to offer a little advice: on subsequent visits, be adventurous; go for a seat you haven’t yet sat in, as each location around the room has a unique perspective to offer.
On the evening to which the photographs here pertain, we were seated close to the bar, a location to which I am eminently suited, for not only did it allow me to feast my eyes on the beer stock and watch the barman playing the taps, but I also spotted a namesake whisky whose brand I was unacquainted with. Though not, as a rule, a spirits drinker, this Hart Brothers’ distillation was far too much of a bold coincidence to let it pass unsampled, and I am sure had both of my brothers been present, they would not have foregone the opportunity to have joined me in a wee dram.
You can’t get enough of a good thing
The Art Depot Restaurant is part of Kaliningrad’s intriguing Ponart Brewery complex, a restored 19th-century, multistorey, redbrick building with a superlative brewing history surrounded by an assortment of shops and other cultural amenities. Brewing has been returned to the premises (yummy); there are guided beer-tasting tours, and, preferably whilst your head is still clear, you can, if the mood so takes you, clamber into the viewing tower and survey the old industrial site and the district it inhabits.
I tend to put my faith in history, because I do not trust the present, and the future has all but expired. Beer and history have been going steady for as long as I can remember. So, let’s toddle along to the Art Depot Restaurant and raise a glass to both of them.
Here’s where the good thing is:
Art Depot Restaurant, Kaliningrad Kaliningrad, Sudostroitelnaya st., 6-8 (on the territory of the historical quarter ‘Ponart’)
