Author Archives: Captain Codpiece

Konig Power Russia’s Ultimate Tribute to Deep Purple

Kaliningrad’s Konig Power had the pleasure of Mick Hart listening, dancing, and drinking to their Deep Purple tribute. How did they rate his performance?

12 November 2023 ~ Konig Power Russia’s Ultimate Tribute to Deep Purple

I’ve learnt the hard way never to expect too much (Out of life, Mick? Please let me finish.) from tribute bands.

I learnt this lesson in particular during my Rushden Bowls Club years. Not that I have ever played bowls, mind, even if by age I was qualified then and am more-so qualified now. For us, the Rushden Bowls Club was a handy venue from which to run antique auctions and, occasionally, 1940s’ concerts and dances. However, since the club also functioned as an entertainments hosting centre, we were sometimes in the right place at the right time to catch several tribute band performances.

Needless to say, the professional quality of each band veered from downright dandy to downright dastardly. When they were good, they were good, and when they were bad, they were very, very bad.

Sadly, one or two ‘sank beneath the water like a stone’, and whilst this did not happen often, when it did it had you asking, “Why did I spend good money to listen to a bunch of wannabees butcher the songs of my favourite band, when I might just have easily stayed at home and listened to the real thing courtesy of YouTube?”

The answer to that rhetorical question is that the ‘real thing’ on YouTube is not the real live thing, and when the real live thing is not available, we go for the next best live thing, which, in case you haven’t guessed, is the tribute band.

And so, we come to a recent event, not staged at the Rushden Bowls Club or anywhere vaguely near it, but at Mr Smirnov’s Badger Club tucked away on the Kaliningrad outskirts. Would admission be dependent on the wearing of badger-head codpieces?

Konig Power Russia’s Ultimate Tribute to Deep Purple

The night in question was the 4^th of November; the tribute band in question was Konig Power and the band they were representing was Deep Purple.

As all you know-it-alls know, Deep Purple is an English rock band formed in the late 1960s. Together with British bands Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, they made a name for themselves as the ‘Holy Trinity of hard rock and metal bands”. Deep Purple started out as a psychedelic/progressive rock band, but later moved out and moved into hard rock and some say heavy metal. In its lifetime, the band has undergone numerous line-up changes and nuanced shifts in its musical style but has always maintained its place at the summit. The recipient of numerous accolades and coveted music awards, including, after an uphill struggle (which some believe was motivated by institutional cronyism) induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Deep Purple, like their ageing peers Mick Jagger and his Rolling Stones, may not be as young as they used to be, but the pioneers of heavy rock continue to shine the light for new wave bands to follow.

A bit of heavy rock trivia
Deep Purple toured Russia on a number of occasions. It did so from 1996, and in February 2008 appeared in concert at the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow.

During the 1970s (My, doesn’t that sound a long while ago!), when heavy rock was in its infancy, I cannot claim to have been a celebrant of it. I was certainly into heavy rock, as I was working in demolition, demolishing disused U.S. aerodromes built in England during the war, and I was also into heavy metal, as I was selling it on the side.

However, at some point during my early teens I turned away from commercial pop, having stumbled upon what is known today as psychedelic and progressive rock.

Bands like Deep Purple, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, featured on the periphery of my new frontier in music, but my inclinations ran more to the likes of Pink Floyd (strictly in their earliest incarnation), Emerson, Lake and Palmer and other truly progressive bands. Then, in 1971, a close friend and collaborator pulled out of his record collection a white album with nothing on the cover but a facsimile handwritten scrawl.

The artist’s name and the name of his band sounded rather silly (which appealed to me immensely), and I certainly had no knowledge of them. Had I missed them on Top of the Pops? That album was the Fillmore East. It was recorded live at the Fillmore in June 1971, and the band that was playing that venue was Frank Zappa and his Mothers of Invention.

I played the album and was immediately hooked. I hadn’t heard anything like it, because there had never been anything like it, and there’s never been anything like it since. Having played it more than sufficiently to drive my parents to distraction and annoy the neighbours no end, I then raced out and bought, in rapid succession, Freak Out, 200 Motels, We’re Only in it for the Money, Chunga’s Revenge and another half-dozen Zappa albums at £2.20 a pop from Peterborough’s Woolworths. It was an Overnight Sensation; Zappa had converted and, some admonishingly said, thoroughly perverted me.

So, onto this recent tribute concert, where I was going not, as I have intimated, as a dyed-in-the-wool Deep Purple fan but as an open-minded listener with a knowledge of and interest in heavy rock and heavy metal music.

The night before the gig, I had a nocturnal gig of my own ~ insomnia, which ended in a dose of Nytol. Throughout the day of the concert, I was not up too much. It was all I could do to scan one of my old hand-written diaries, the 1976 edition, for storage in the ‘cloud’. It is an ongoing and laborious task, scanning the pages of diaries (I am sure you do it all of the time.) but the upside of it is, it does not entail much mental effort. So far, I have scanned diaries spanning the years 1971 to 1976; only 25 years to go before I catch up with the time when I swapped my pen for a keyboard.

The point is, just in case you think I’ve forgotten what the point is, that my insomnia had left me with a not unusually dull and heavy background headache, which Nytol had exacerbated: just the thing one needs, I thought, when attending a heavy rock concert! But, to quote my old friend Frank, “I was born to have adventure …” So off we went, headache and all.

On our way to the Badger Club, we stopped off at a nearby bar where I sunk a pint of beer. It seemed to do the trick. Doesn’t it always? I cannot for the life of me begin to understand how non-drinkers get over their headaches!

Konig Power

The Deep Purple tribute band that we would witness this evening goes by the name of Konig Power. The line-up consists of: Yuri Koenig, vocals; Viktor Markov, guitar, solo and backing vocals; Dmitry Isakov, bass guitar; Alexander Nazarov, keyboards; and Alexander Kazbanov, drums.

Yuri Koenig, lead singer and founder of the band, may be Russian but he sings his Deep Purple cover songs in perfect English. Before launching into his act, Yuri came to our table and in conversation revealed the sixteen or seventeen tracks that the band would be playing this evening. They must have been among Deep Purple’s most famous hits for, with one or two exceptions, I seemed to know them all.

During our conversation, Yuri revealed that as well as Deep Purple, he was a lifelong fan of the Beatles. This did not surprise me any, as the greater percentage of Russian folk over a certain age seem to have a perennial soft-spot for the mop-top band from Liverpool.

My sister was a Beatlemania victim. I suppose in the Beatles’ hey days it was hard to be anything else. Youth culture at the time was simplistically split into two cult camps: you either went with the Beatles or favoured the Rolling Stones. I leant towards the Stones, but my favourite ‘commercial’ rock band of that era was neither of the big two, it was the third spoke in the music scene’s wheel, the one and only Kinks, and out of that 60s/70s trio, it remains so to this day.

None of the groups that I have just mentioned fall into the generic category occupied by Deep Purple.

Deep Purple’s music is heavy rock, and if any of you reading this are unsure as to what that is, ~ maybe because you have suffered the inconvenience of having been born too late, when there is little more to listen to than rap-crap mediocrity ~ it is heavy and it rocks.

The opening chords of Konig Power left no doubt in anyone’s mind what brand of music it was. The ‘heavy’ passed like a shockwave through our bodies and the building in its entirety actually, physically rocked.

Konig Power Kaliningrad Deep Purple TRibute Band

Indeed, so heavy, strident, loud and utterly surprising was the initial amplification that had my badger’s head codpiece not been properly secured by a pair of lady’s suspenders, I would have run the very real risk of losing it. It could have shot right off! As it was, I discretely adjusted it just in time to hear Yuri cry what he had no need to cry, “I want to smash this wall!” He very nearly succeeded, with the help of my flying codpiece.

My codpiece was not the only victim of the band’s explosive intro. The dramatic opening chord seemed also to have blown away Smirnov’s leather outfit, for, having put away his pipe ~ I didn’t know he smoked one? ~ he appeared from the back rooms of his TARDIS looking every bit the caveman in a short-sleeved furry waistcoat open from chest to midriff. Aleks is one of those alpha guys. He has a hairy chest. My shirt was well done up.

The first track of the evening was Deep Purple’s signature tune Smoke on the Water, based on the 1971 fire at Montreux Casino*.

Understandably, it is a powerful song, requiring a lot of clout from the vocalist, and for guitarist Dmitry Isakov a tightly scripted performance to live up to a guitar riff which has gone down in rock history as one of its most memorable.

*Do you not believe in coincidences?
Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water song is reputed to have been inspired by the burning of Montreux Casino in 1971. My favourite band is The Mothers of Invention. My favourite album is The Mothers of Invention live at the Fillmore East, recorded in 1971. The casino burnt down as a result of a Mothers of Invention fan firing a flair gun during a Mother’s of Invention concert. I wasn’t there. I have an alibi. On the night in question, I was sitting quietly at home playing roulette and blackjack whilst listening to my Fillmore East album. I think I was wearing flared trousers and smoking a cigar.

This, then, was the moment of truth. It was the first track of the evening. Deep Purple’s headline song, the one that would sort the tribute men from the boys.

Success! I am pleased and relieved to report; Bravo!; and a standing ovation! Konig Power had not disappointed. We could settle in for the rest of the evening. Yes, I will have a glass of vodka.

It has to be said that lead singer Yuri Koenig excelled himself. He has a good, strong, voice, with a flexible range and tempo and had no difficulty in oscillating between the low growling guttural notes and clean, high-pitched screams which characterises the Deep Purple sound.

A vital clue as to how he reaches those high notes could, I quietly ruminated, be the very tight trousers that he was wearing. They looked like a pair once owned by the Bee Gees. I didn’t say a word. However, you, being less diplomatic than I, might have been tempted to say, “Pardon me for asking, but were you ever awarded the Badger’s Head Codpiece with Two Golden Globes?” I’m rather glad that you were not there.

Guitarists, Dmitry Isakov and Viktor Markov gave dazzling displays of nimble fingers, which were expressively more than capable of drawing perfect musicianship from the instruments they were wielding. I tried to work out how they did it, how they were doing it so well and doing it so rapturously, but just like seasoned magicians with professional cardsharp skills, if it wasn’t simply down to their fingers, it must have been up their sleeves. Their extraordinary and excellent playing hit the spot like it ought and certainly contributed to ‘smashing’ Yuri’s wall, as though smashing walls to them was second nature.

A heavy rock group without drums a-rockin’ is almost as inconceivable as a globalist without tentacles. Manning the drums this evening was Alexander Kazbanov, who effortlessly, or so it seemed, brought it all together in an assured style and with a classic sense of timekeeping that his alter ego, Ian Paice, could only have applauded.

Whether his keyboards colleague, Alexander Nazarov, wanted to or did distort the sound of the organ he was playing in emulation of his Deep Purple counterpart, the legendary Jon Lord, is not for a novice like me to say, but the rhythm he produced rode along with the heavy rock beat without becoming lost in it, either utterly or partially, adding, not subtracting, and holding its own quite comfortably within the epicentre of the storm of sound.

In fact, there was nothing to complain about in the band’s rendition of the band they loved to play, and nothing by way of syncopation that failed to fit the tribute bill.

Whilst Konig Power paid homage in the best and most professional way to every Deep Purple song to which they treated us, by far the most accomplished in my opinion was the last song of the evening, a reprise of Deep Purple’s signature tune, namely Smoke on the Water. Already sung and sung well, beyond the level of prosaic competency, the striking difference between the earlier rendition and this, the evening’s sign-off track, was the well-appointed inclusion of Mick Hart guesting on chorus vocals.

Mick Hart with Konig Power's lead singer Yuri Koenig singing 'Smoke on the Water'

Although it could be argued that Konig Power had no need to add this particular cherry to the icing on their cake, all I can say in response to that is stand by Wembley Stadium, and yes, if they ask me nicely, I’ll sponsor a toilet door . I’ll even throw in a photo of me as well.

You know, it’s true what they say about fame: it can quickly go to your badger’s head!

Pardon me for badgering you

Badger Club Kaliningrad a Bohemian Night on the Tiles
Made in Kaliningrad Exclusive Badger Underpants
Kaliningrad Gothic in the Chimney Sweep’s House
True Bar Kaliningrad the City’s Latest Music Venue

Butauty Beer in Kaliningrad How Good is It?

Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: Butauty

Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad

6 November 2023 ~ Butauty Beer in Kaliningrad How Good is It?

Quillfeldt! No, it’s not the name of a beer and neither is it a term of abuse. It is in fact the name of a gentleman, Charles de Quillfeldt, to be precise, the inventor of the ‘flip top’ or ‘lightening toggle’ bottle stopper, whose name is eponymous with his marvellous creation.

Qillfeldt’s bottle closure system consists of a hinged wire frame attached to a stopper which, being harnessed to the bottle neck, allows it to be removed and replaced with ease and relative swiftness. (Just the job in a thirst emergency.) Since the stopper is attached to the bottle, it is impossible to misplace it, enabling the bottle to be opened and closed at will, a thoughtful contraption and that’s a fact, although in my experience a quality bottled beer once opened will never have need to be sealed again.

Butauty Beer in Kaliningrad

Butauty beer, by Lithuanian brewers Vilniaus alus, has such a top, or should I say had, as recent information discloses, without revealing why, that production of this beer has ceased. That being noted, however, as recently as last week I discovered a shelf full of Butauty in one of Kaliningrad’s Victoria supermarkets, so either someone is telling porkies, or the beer displayed is remnant stock.

Nevertheless, as I drank it, liked it and also made notes about it back in 2022, I shall now proceed to review it, even if it has become just an affectionate bittersweet memory.

It isn’t, not bittersweet that is. It has a slightly bitter twang, but overlaying that a predominantly burnt, smoky, caramel flavour, slightly aromatic, one might even venture to say subtly aromatic, with a deep and generous peaty aroma.

When my Quillfeldt flew off, a bit like my toupee did last summer, as I was racing along in an open-topped car, the aroma genie popped out as if it was old Jack from his box, and started into shouting up my nostrils, “Get a load of this! It’s deep and richly peaty!”

And isn’t it just the truth.

Butauty Beer in Kaliningrad

In the bottle, the beer looks as black as your hat, or most parts of South London, but once you’ve outed it into your glass, it could be any one or other of fifty shades of grey.

Butauty gives good head, the sort of rich, frothing, foaming head that they used to like up North in England before the Daleks invaded the area and everything went south ~ although it didn’t help them any. But like a lot of endangered English traditions, the head shows little resolve. It fizzles, farts and splutters and by the time you’ve come back with your crisps, it’s as shockingly gone as a case of white flight.

I, personally and in particular, have never cared much for a big creamy head. As far as I am concerned, beer can be as flat as a triple ‘A’, as long as it retains its zest and unique flavour. There’s nothing much flat that I can’t handle, although I don’t care much for the Fens. Mind you, with its rich peaty smell and Fen-like hue, Butauty beer, at 5.5%, has an earthiness about it that would fable well in the Cambridgeshire Badlands, ‘Ay up, and Jip Oh!’, except, of course, it hails ~ or did hail ~ from Lithuanian brewers, Vilniaus alas ~ sorry Vilniaus alus (with a four-letter word like ‘alus’, it could have been far worse!).

Among Butauty’s internet reviews, many are rather scathing. I just don’t get it (You’re not the only one! Have you any suggestions?). And, if what is written is not a black lie, and the beer is no longer produced, no one will be getting it.

I, for one, and some others I imagine, can honestly say that I like this beer. It smells like good beer should smell and is right tasty, I’ll tell you that!

Should the rumour of its demise be credible, it will indeed be a sorry day for beer connoisseurs wherever they are, and yet we must take heart, for there is consolation in everything: as Bogart once famously said, “We’ll always have Quillfeldt.”

BOX TICKER’S CORNER
Name of Beer: Butauty
Brewer: Vilniaus alus
Where it is brewed: Vilnius, Lithuania
Bottle capacity: 1litre
Strength: 5.5%
Price: It cost me about 280 roubles [in 2022] [Note: recent supermarket price is 490 roubles, £4.30]
Appearance: Dark
Aroma: Caramel and peat
Taste: Complex taste of all things dark and beautiful
Fizz amplitude: 4/10
Label/Marketing: Olde Worlde Parchment
Would you buy it again? If they ever start producing it again, anytime

BEER RATING:

About the brewery: Vilniaus alus
Vilniaus alus’s claim to fame is that it is the only brewery of beer and natural drinks in Vilnius. The brewery is proud to assert that no chemical additives are used in their beers, guaranteeing quality products wholesome in natural ingredients. Both bottled and draft beers are produced, and the company exports to Europe and to the USA.
Vilniaus alus

Wot other’s say [Comments on Butauty from the internet, unedited]
😊Caramel bitterness, like a pleasant surprise, Doesn’t taste bitter, but pleases with its taste, like a little whim

😒Butter, caramel, diacetyl. Powdery mouthfeel. Nutty with a bitter note. But destroyed by rancid butter.

🙂 Good chocolate stout

😮Lithuanian Shit! [I say! Steady on!]

The right connections
Cultura Kaliningrad ~ a world-wide beer bonanza
Variety of beer in Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad Gothic in the Chimney Sweep’s House

It’s Gothic! But what kind?

1 November 2023 ~ Kaliningrad Gothic in the Chimney Sweep’s House

There’s no spires, towers or turrets silhouetted against a full-moon sky above an impossibly craggy, precipitous cliff top, no sinister Baron Frankenstein or bat-metamorphosising sharp-toothed count, no film-set outsized lightning rod rising from the roof poised for that life-giving thunderbolt to kick-start the borrowed heart and incite the cadaverous limbs of a grizzly patchwork embryo ~ at least, I don’t believe there is. But remembering where we are, within the eternal shadow of German Königsberg, there’s more than a whiff of the Hoffmannesque both in Aleks Smirnov’s chimney sweep image, as fabled in German history, and his Badger Club/studio complex.

The Gothicism that forms the basis of Mr Smirnov’s public image (some would say his soul) and suffuses his club and art is a meeting place of invocations, each containing the traceable elements of folklore, legend, superstition, witchcraft, dark-side sorcery, imaginative tall-tale flights and dream-like childhood fantasy.

His grotesque artistic compositions, sometimes risibly ironic, often tormented and twisted, always enigmatic, are an intercopulation of various Gothic sub-genres that attain apotheosis in the legend of the Green Man and the anything-goes enchanted forest.

Aleks Smirnov’s world, let us coyly qualify that and say Aleks Smirnov’s ‘artistic world’, is a meeting of the ways; a rum place wherein the fantastic, unsettling otherness as explored in TV programmes like the 1960s’ Twilight Zone, 1970s’ Thriller and in fictional tales that you may have heard of, featuring bespectacled Harry What’s-His-Face, come together with Freudian fantasies to hold each other as if they are one.

Kaliningrad Gothic

It is not by chance or accident that Alex’s art is skewed by snatches or glimpses of something half-seen, sometimes almost invisible. For example, wall plaques of barely discernible faces blurring into and partially erased by stylised foliate overlays; mythological creatures, devoid of detailed features, ill-defined in form, swooping bat-like from daubed textured ceilings; the cruelly twisted disfigured face masks that impel you to put them on but more quickly to take them off; the sack-cloth and ashes hessian gowns, lightly touched by tapestry and the heavier hand of superstition that dwells in ancient lore and in Little Red Riding Hood subterfuges, which help to conveniently explain away the dangers that lurk in dense, dark forests in terms of ghosties and goblins; the clumsily grandiose over-the-rainbow other-world helmets and repertory theatre gilded crowns ~ indeed, everything you’d expect to find in a parallel world of magic and sorcery, you’ll find in the House of Smirnov.

And yet, viewed from another angle (and there are plenty of those in Smirnov’s art) could they be distorting props taken from a surrealist film set, or things of which we never speak but which, both in our sleeping and waking hours, exists in each and all of our minds? Like the mirror of life itself, the shapes that we are permitted to see in Mr Smirnov’s visions are a cradle to the grave experience where “more of madness, more of sin and horrors the soul of the plot”.

But the madness, if it exists, is not opaque. The House of Smirnov has many mirrors. And the sin is hardly original: pleasure is what pleasure does and has been doing since time immemorial. Like everything in the Chimney Sweep’s lair, it may be in your face, but you can only ever really see it through the spectacles of your senses. It is a kind of delicious confinement and is all the more enticing for it!

As for horror, if it exists, then this is the vaguest face of all. Now you see it; now you don’t. It is easy to look in the mirror when you’ve prepared yourself to see someone else, but which side of the mirror is throwing the reflection? As with E.A. Poe’s mysterious Usher, the House of Alex Smirnov, could well be Smirnov himself.

Kaliningrad Gothic in the Chimney Sweep’s House

Personality is everywhere, and it runs through almost everything. Like a phantasmagorical current it links the disparate parts. Every shadowy, half-complete (or so we are led to believe), vague, ambiguous, ambivalent emblem, be it cast in the form of a bronze planished wall plaque, painting of a symbolic nature, surrealistic sculpture or just a gnarled, tormented, piece of driftwood rescued, sanctuarised and, once resuscitated, displayed in the most unaccountable place: never before has juxtaposition been so content and connected.

Olga Hart with Singer Songwriter Andrey Berenev

At first such apparitions appear disjointed but thematically and psychologically a river runs through it all. It is as naturally unnatural as nature itself is truly unnatural, but it carries you into the Green Man vortex as effortlessly as a nursery rhyme: ‘If you go down in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise’.

Obfuscating, sometimes suffocating, nature, whether human intrinsic or external organic, plays out its co-existence to interdependent extremes. It is the bogey man of sin, of guilt, stalking hapless generations trapped in the conscience forests of Nathaniel Hawthorn’s mind. It is the temptress lying in wait inside her soft, inviting, secret garden.

Kaliningrad Gothic

As in every game of chance, there is only one winner and that is the House, and this is no more certain than in the House that Aleks built. Whoever we may be and wherever we may be, victims are not spared, not even in Aleks’ toilet, especially not in Aleks’ toilet.

Draw back the crude and heavy, the clumsy wooden rustic bolt, pull back the fairy-tale door and off you go down Alice’s rabbit hole. It is not a WC, unless WC means Wonder Closet; it cannot be called a lavatory, more laboratory of thought; and it is anything but a rest room, a testing room, perhaps. In the strange, dramatic, dynamic department, an awful lot goes on in there, where functionally it shouldn’t.

Gothic in Kaliningrad Aleks Smirnov's toilet

Quiet in place but oppressively loud in colour, spacious but confining, placid but somehow caught in motion, the only way of escaping is to obey the laws of natural contractions. Relax. Take a deep breath and let them push you headlong into the magic of the sweet little garden that lives beneath the wash basin. This illuminated scene, seen through moulded windows, begs for someone to come inside. Could England’s Alnwick Garden ever be more beautiful, more graphically serene, more wantonly irresistible? Could it take you gently by the hand and lead you up the garden path as Aleks’ garden does?

Secret Garden Aleks Smirnov Toilet Kaliningrad Kaliningrad Gothic

Mr Smirnov is no mad scientist, and neither is he a bewinged count from an exotic fictious realm. He is a fabled German chimney sweep returned to Earth as artist. His residence and his club are not so much a turreted chateau or multi-faceted castle overlooking a bat-infested tarn but a playful topsy-turvy take on Germany’s Gingerbread House.

Seen from outside, preferably at night, when cold and invaded with rain, the arched and crooked windows filtering light through panes of contrasting hue call softly to your childhood memories the ghouls and goblins of the Brothers Grimm, whilst below in the cobbled courtyard, headless female mannequins dressed like predator tarts prowl the streets of your later life reminding you of all the places where you said you’ve never been.

Gothic in Kaliningrad Aleks Smirnov Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad Gothic Mannequin Aleks Smirnov Kaliningrad

The sinister woodland theme, wherein do dwell all kinds of elves and ghouls, replaces the streets beneath it. First, Aleks will put you in the club and then, if your luck is in, take you to places you’ve never been.

A tour of the chimney sweep’s backrooms, replete as they are with myriad props and costumes, all in form and nature an epitome of the bizarre and grotesque, is a Masque of the Red Death moment. Within these bewitching antechambers, space ought not be compromised but the walls have a habit of closing in and the light, which filters, falls and falters in the taints and tints of the backlit panes, formulates the kind of seduction that Mother Nature would never condone, least not without a spiritual condom.

In the company of sweeps and badgers, you are given the chance to be anyone, everyone if you so desire, even those in your wildest dreams who you never thought you would be, which includes yourself if you want it that badly. Remember that classic scene in Patrick McGoohan’s Prisoner: “We thought you would be happier as yourself …” It’s all part of the grand plan, the eternal trick, the fairy tale; the who is deluding who; the question where have I put myself? The self.

Aleks Chimney Sweep Smirnov’s self is who he would have you believe he is and who you want him to be. It really is nobody’s call but your own. However, accepting limitations, it is futile to look for Horace Walpole, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker or any one of those Gothic guys and gals. He could never be that archetypal. And the place where he works, where he drinks, where he dreams is It. Here, there is no Baron Frankenstein, no graveyard afterlife embryo waiting perchance on that shard from the heavens to turn the crank on the sleeping heart, no long-toothed fiend in a bat-like cloak, no orgasmic sigh from the pit and the pendulum, but for all that Mr Smirnov isn’t and for all his art and habitat is, even with gaps, it’s Gothic.

Let’s call last orders, blow out the candles and say Amen to that.

Where it’s at

Badger Club Kaliningrad a Bohemian Night on the Tiles
Made in Kaliningrad Exclusive Badger Underpants
True Bar Kaliningrad the City’s Latest Music Venue

Sir Francis Drake an English Pub in Kaliningrad

Why Sir Francis Drake decided to move to Russia

Updated 23 October 2023 | published 6 April 2023 ~ Sir Francis Drake an English Pub in Kaliningrad

“Would you like to go to an English pub?” Asked in England, this would be a completely pointless question should it be directed at me; but asked in Russia’s Kaliningrad 22 years ago, when the city was little more than a one-bar town, I was waiting for the punchline.

In 2001, going out for a drink in Kaliningrad meant either calling in at the subterranean snooker bar at the front of the Kaliningrad Hotel (big hotel; the only one) or taking a table in one of two restaurants that were lingering on from Soviet times. So, it was hardly surprising when Olga asked me, would I like to go to an English pub, I thought the question a trick one.

It was the name of this English pub that put me to rights: in the UK we have King’s Arms (we don’t know which king); Richard III (found under a carpark in Asian Leicester); the Lord Nelson (not yet suffered the ignominy of having his statue tossed into the drink by loony leftist agitators); we even had Jack the Ripper once, until, at the behest of the feminist mafia, the original name Ten Bells was obsequiously reinstated. And yet, whilst a whole host of famous-named pubs spring readily to mind, such as the Black Rod in Basingstoke and the Big Black Cochrane in Shepherd’s Bush, sometimes referred to as the BBC, I cannot recall ever frequenting a Sir Francis Drake in England.

Sir Francis Drake in Kaliningrad

In the small, secluded outpost of Russia, the Sir Francis Drake established itself as the first of Kaliningrad’s English-themed pubs. It occupied, and still does occupy, a fairly non-descript building in a built-up area some distance removed both from the old town centre, the district once dominated by the Kaliningrad Hotel, and its more typical town-centre successor: the area in, around and containing Victory Square.

The Sir Francis Drake locale is an unlikely place for an English pub or any pub for that matter. It brings back memories of streets in London excluded from exploratory pub-crawls as possible places of ill repute ~ assumed publess, therefore pointless.

Mick Hart and Olga Hart in the Sir Francis Drake bar in Kaliningrad 2001 — **Mick and Olga Hart in the Sir Francis Drake English-theme pub, Kaliningrad 2001**

Thus, if on my maiden journey to the Sir Francis, I had expected to find something approximating to a typical English hostelry, which I didn’t, I would have been disappointed. Nevertheless, the owners of the Sir Francis Drake had shown good sense in singling out their establishment and attesting to its themed credentials by erecting by its courtyard gate a proper, hanging English pub sign complete with full-length portrait of the famous man himself, the eponymous Sir Francis in all his 16^th century glory. That sign, and what a tremendous sign it was, has long since gone, replaced by a less traditional but self-explanatory clipart-type image, depicting a foaming tankard of beer.

Mixed fortunes

The Sir Francis Drake, as might be expected, has passed through various hands since the days when my English brogues first pitter-pattered across its threshold, and its changing fortunes tend to reflect the grasp successive owners have had of what it is that makes an English pub successful and how best to replicate that success.

For example, shortly after my first visit to the Sir Francis Drake, the bar’s courtyard, a small, paved drinking area or hard-surfaced patio adjacent to the entrance, acquired chairs and tables at which, on days when the weather was clement, people would sit and drink. Fast forward two or three years, and all had gone to seed: half a dozen rusting metal chairs around a wonky table completely spattered with bird shit huddled under a ragged canopy, which was dirty and leaked profusely in more than several places but was good at dragging mosquitoes in during the height of summer, did little to boost the passing trade, which simply kept on passing.

Within the bar, the fairly formal atmosphere that once had dwelt there with noble intent, but which in itself was as like to anything lurking in an English pub as nothing is to something, had packed its bags and gone, fled, vamoosed, hurried away, leaving in its wake a tired and tawdry desolate feeling, a non-existent menu and a middle-aged lady behind the bar unarguably more accustomed to propping herself on her elbow and dragging on a fag than she was to serving customers. She pulled me a pint of beer (Good Heavens, it was Charlie Wells!) and rustled me up a bowl of soup: I drank my beer; ate the soup; and left.

It was to coin a phrase one of those “I am going outside and may be gone for some time,” moments, and thus it came to pass; until many years later fate decided to bring me back from Kaliningrad’s blizzard of bars.

The rediscovery of the Sir Francis Drake coincided with house hunting. We were looking for a property to buy and whilst engaged in this quest had set up camp in a rented flat nearby.

The nearest watering hole to our place of rest was a small craft-beer bar, a new concept to Kaliningrad that had just begun to be trialled. It was a superbly spartan venue but had more beers than a bootleggers’ lock-up. Serving food would have spoilt its image, but to entice my wife to remain in a bar until they kicked me out, I had to ensure that my usual pub diet, which was normally limited to crisps and peanuts, could cunningly be augmented by something approaching a proper meal. Women can be the strangest of creatures.

The closest bar to the foodless establishment was the Sir Francis Drake, and although our last encounter was enough to make us shy away, that the outside area was again presentable and since through its large arched windows a thriving clientele could be seen eating as well as drinking, we decided to bury the hatchet. (That’s an age-old expression, in case you’re wondering, not an ancient Königsberg ritual.)

The bar’s interior had not, and has not, hardly changed a jot since I first clapped eyes on it in May 2001, which is all to the good, since in the UK so many pubs, particularly village pubs, have suffered to have their original appearance, and with it original atmosphere, systematically destroyed by the boardroom boys in suits; those little-minded £-men, whose vandalism ironically demonstrates the feeble knowledge they have of how to sustain a pub and make it pay, an ignorance only equalled by their utter lack of consideration for conservation and history. One day it might just dawn on them that the two go hand in hand. The Philistinism by which they run, and by which they ruin their pubs, is only matched in idiocy by the quick-change con men masquerading as interior designers, whose cack-handed, ill-conceived and badly applied cosmetic surgery scars and robs each pub they touch of the richness of its unique character, charm and personality. The result for the pub is certain death, albeit sometimes a lingering one.

Kaliningrad’s Sir Francis Drake is not steeped in antiquity and thus has less to fear than those that are, but its continuity of almost three decades is something of a novelty, something to be proud of, especially in an age that boasts that the attention span of your average phone junkie is Dwarf from the North in stature and Liz Truss in longevity.

Limited by its size (referring now to the Sir Francis Drake, not the Midget Beyond the Midlands) as much if not more by the props at its disposable, nevertheless, with its heavy portcullis-type doors, panelled walls and dark wood beams, the bar continues to cultivate a pleasing and passable, if not strictly genuine, impression of a traditional English tavern or something that could or should be, and we’d like it no less if it was.

Now, if the Sir Francis Drake had been a genuine English pub, that is to say located in England, it would no doubt have got off to a reasonable start, but inexplicably over time, with no respect for theme or atmosphere, it would be out with the conforming styles and in with the girly-wirly lilacs, other pithy boutique pastels, a mish-mash of pale wood furniture raised on big block legs, inconvenient high-backed seats and, just for good ludicrous measure, a bar looking more out of place than anything that your imagination, even without an addiction to Gold Label and pickled eggs, could conceivably contrive.

I have personally witnessed, back in my days as a beer magazine and pub-guide editor, bars constructed of oak dating to the nineteenth century and period pieces from the 1950s manufactured in plywood kitsch, torn away and replaced with nasty pallid harlequin bricks or MDF veneer, materials which, even devoid of taste, you would not wish on an outside bog in Wigan, let alone install in a pub in Wigan or anywhere else for that matter.

So ten out of ten for the Sir Francis Drake for retaining its integrity and for showing the Brits that it can be done.

Less ten out ten, however, for not repelling the TV invasion. If the UK’s Sir Francis could see off the Spanish fleet whilst playing a game of bowls, thus consigning Spain to a fate of idle siesta-prone work-shies, surely Kaliningrad’s Sir Francis could have thwarted the millennial plot to inundate every last drinking establishment with an armada of flat-screen TVs. (We are talking tellies, not transvestites (which to your way of thinking is the lesser of these two modern evils?)

In all fairness, bars, wherever they may be, need to do whatever they can to bring the punters in. Nowhere is that more crucial than in the beleaguered pubs of England, which sadly in more recent decades have fallen foul of a political class that puts ethnics first and tradition last (But what of the Conservatives? What are they conserving? The answer is themselves.)

The Sir Francis Drake hasn’t much space, not enough in fact to swing a Spaniard in, but it has done what it can to cram as many people as possible into the space it’s got. In 2018 and 2019, at a time when we frequented it most, getting a seat on the off chance was a risky business indeed. Whether that is the case today, I cannot really affirm, since, at the time of writing the Sir Francis Drake is under new management, making its present popularity difficult to assess, whereas its erstwhile popularity was never in any doubt: want a table? Book in advance. So, book we always did, and just to play it safe we booked in April of this year.

The best tables in the joint, hence those that are snapped up first, occupy two elevated platforms on either side of the entrance. They cater simultaneously to two innate desires: the need to be seen and whence to see from ~ an exhibitionists’ and voyeurs’ dream hermaphrodite in fulfilment.

The 2018/2019 management, who probably threw in the beer towel during the mask-wearing coronavirus years, were without question, Sir Francis Drake’s most loyal and its most trusted friends.

Throughout their tenure they maintained and retained the integrity of the historic premise, even down to preserving the framed and glazed biographical timeline of the life of Sir Francis Drake, an absorbing document in many ways and one that inevitably showcases the achievement for which he is best remembered, the annihilation of the Spanish fleet, a military-geo-political triumph that paved the way for Britain becoming the greatest naval power on Earth and in the fullness of time the greatest empire.

Biographical Timeline in English-themed pub Kaliningrad

No less spectacularly, the same management also introduced a revolving selection of imported beers and lagers, authentic tasty pub-grub served by tasty female bar staff and young blokes behind the bar who looked as if they knew their stuff probably because they did. It’s amazing how many don’t.

Whilst all the other important fixtures and attractions remain intact, sadly Sir Francis Drake’s superb bar staff and their faithful if rather cliquey friends, who were the mainstay of the clientele, have, like the remnants of the Spanish navy, long since drifted away. People come and people go, but legends live on regardless.

Beer menu bar in Sir Francis Drake Kaliningrad

The last time that I raised my glass in the legendary Sir Francis Drake, September 2023 was drawing to a close. At that time, the menus, both food and drink menus, left over from the previous management were looking somewhat jaded. The beers advertised did not match the available brands, and the foodies who were with me voiced similar reservations with regard to the dishes advertised and the quality of the meals. The service was good, however, and the folks behind the bar efficient, warm and friendly. Thus, the latest report for Sir Francis Drake, which reads nothing like anything that has ever been written about its eponymous hero, is: ‘Has the ability … could do better … look forward to improvements …” Or have I simply taken these words from a long succession of my old school reports?

Let’s not search for the answer. In the Mick Hart Guide to Kaliningrad’s Bars, the Sir Francis Drake still rates highly ~ seven out of ten at least!

Epilogue

There is no question that the honour of laying the last word of this post should have gone to Sir Francis Drake himself, but, unfortunately, he is unavailable for comment.

Suspecting treachery among the UK’s ruling classes (yet again), I urged him to make all haste to Dover and there play bowls as he did before in Plymouth. If anyone can stem the French Armada and save us from the migrant hoards, Sir Francis is that man. But he must not tarry in his God-given task.

For even as we speak, the UK’s woke-finder generals are busy rewriting slave-trade history, liking and wanting nothing more than to besmirch and depose our national hero as an excuse for the great unwashed to tear his statue from its plinth and toss it into PC Pond. Then they will take each of the pubs that they say his name dishonours and rebrand them in the language of Woke. On t’other side of Hadrian’s Wall, it will be Humza Yousaf King of Kilts, and way down south in London town, Sound-as-a-Pound Sadiq Khan, that Diamond Asian Cockney Geezer. Cuh, would you Adam and Eve it! Is it any wonder that Sir Francis Drake cried “Bowls!” and hurried off to Russia?

Bars in Kaliningrad
4 Great Kaliningrad Bars, Mick Hart’s Pub Crawl
Badger Club Kaliningrad
The London Pub
Premiere Bar
Dreadnought Pub
True Bar

True Bar Kaliningrad the City’s Latest Music Venue

True Bar makes its debut on the Kaliningrad music scene

16 October 2023 ~ True Bar Kaliningrad the City’s Latest Music Venue

Invited to the opening of a new music venue by singer-songwriter Andrey Berenev, the 14^th of October 2023 saw us, my wife and I, rendezvousing with our friend and drinking collaborator, Inara, at a café close to the venue.

I wondered what type of music the bar would be playing; would it be underground? The music venue is. It is located on Krasnaya street. You can’t miss it, not because you can’t miss it, but because it has three notable landmarks: a café on either side of it, one of which we assembled in, and opposite an arts and crafts shop selling imaginative artwares inspired by the city’s alter ego Königsberg.

True Bar Kaliningrad the City’s Latest Music Venue

The entrance to the bar lies in the forecourt that it shares with this shop and one of the two coffee shops. As it is below decks, you won’t see a building, just an elevated entrance, with the club’s name and logo attached to the wall. The place you are looking for is True Bar.

For the past two weeks, after a warm and sunny autumn debut, the wind has been howling, the rain has been pelting and the temperature has taken a turn for the worse. We were spared the rain on the evening of our visit to the new club, but the wind had not relented, and each gust was bitterly cold.

As we had arrived early, we hid in the arts and crafts shop for a while, and when we emerged discovered three or four young people waiting at the entrance to the bar. My wife, Olga, and our friend, Inara, were chuckling at the possibility that tonight’s venue would be exclusively for them ~ ‘youngsters’ ~ and that we would be the oldest patrons there. I made a mental note of this, whilst the track from Fred Wedlock played in the background: Would there be concessions at the bar for OAPs, sometimes know as OFs (Old Farts)? I was glad that I was wearing reasonably young person’s clothes. Do you think there’s a chance he missed them?

The bar was a bit behind schedule in opening, which meant that our small group of prospective clientele was growing by the minute. It was reassuring to note that among our fellow shiverers, one or two people of a more mature age had joined the throng, including singer-songwriter Andrey Berenev, who had invited us this evening. This was the first time I had met him in person. You may recall in my former post, The Badger Club, Olga had gone to the venue alone, and I had written about the club having been inspired to do so by her account of that evening and from the photographs she had taken. In a manner of speaking, however, Andrey had met me; he remembered me from Victor Ryabinin’s funeral.

When at last access to the bar was no longer denied to us, we shot downstairs like ferrets down a drainpipe.

True Bar Kaliningrad

The main staircase, which is a bit dim, so don’t go there in your carpet slippers, descends to what for me was a most welcoming sight indeed, the bar itself.

Behind the bar in a Kaliningrad club — I suppose that does mean we are pleased to see you?

A second staircase takes one down to the club floor. There is no stage, as such. The performers perform with their backs to the upper deck, the small bar area, which is big enough to serve as a viewing gantry. Every inch of the club area is utilised. Including the lower staircase.

Mick Hart with the menu in True Bar Kaliningrad — Perhaps not the usual vegetarian response to pigs ears on the menu

The club seating is a simple ‘homemade’ series of backrest slat benches arranged in pairs either side of a solid table. It’s what it is; and it works. People come here for the music and the atmosphere, and, of course, to drink; everything else is secondary.

I have used the word intimate already, and it gets more so when you want to go to the toilet. I’m not suggesting that you have to share the loo, but to get there you have to single-file between two lines of people: those spread out against the bar and those leaning over the balcony. As I said, one of the leading features of the club is its unconditional intimacy.

Aleksandr Smirnov with Mick Hart and Inara Eagle at a club in Kaliningrad — It’s amazing the fun you can have with cheese straws and vodka

I wondered what the sound quality would be in the club and was pleasantly surprised. The ceiling slopes down high at the ‘stage’ end and low at the other, which is not peculiar as the club sits below a vehicle ramp. My mind kept playing tricks with words ~ it often does. Here, was the word ‘garage’, and there the word ‘music’. I got the impression that the bands were none too pleased with the Vox amplifying system, but the general acoustics seemed fine to me.

Olga Hart at Kaliningrad music club — Olga Hart: an esoteric experience

As I mentioned earlier, I had not met Andrey Berenev before and neither had I met Aleksandr Smirnov. The latter made what can only be called ‘an entrance’, when he suddenly appeared dressed in his all- leather, self-made, signature ‘chimney sweep’ outfit.

From that moment onwards, all female tats, short skirts and shimmering stockings, as questionable and nice to view in that order, were instantly upstaged by Mr Smirnov’s imaginative rig, which, I am appalled to admit, made my red cravat and waistcoat look inexcusably tame. The only other gentleman in the room whose appearance attracted attention was he who was wearing a fawn-toned trench coat, carefully amalgamated with a sharp side-parting hairstyle, sixties tie and tie-clip. It’s not every day you meet JFK’s double.

True Bar scores high on the atmosphere chart but would benefit from a dimmer switch to bring the sheen from the lighting down to a level more in keeping with its underground ethos. In every other respect, as they were fond of saying in the roaring 20s’, ‘the joint was jumping’.

From the appearance of the first band to Andrey Berenev’s song, which he had written with Aleksandr Smirnov in mind and to which the flamboyant and charismatic chimney sweep took to the floor with relish, the atmosphere was beyond electric. If you like it lively, you got it!

Andrey Berenev takes to the 'stage' at True Bar, Kaliningrad

True Bar is a true bar. Maladits! I say in my very best Russian.

Kaliningrad Toilet Door is a thing of Beauty

Herman Brachert Museum Königsberg Sculptor

A unique museum in Otradnoye, Kaliningrad region

8 October 2023 ~ Herman Brachert Museum Königsberg Sculptor

Otradnoye [German: Georgenswald] is a small, unspoilt seaside enclave on Kaliningrad region’s Baltic Coast. It sits, relatively obscurely, on a wooded escarpment between the region’s two main resorts, Svetlogorsk (German: Rauschen) and Zelenogradsk (German: Cranz).

Otradnoye is worth discovering for its wonderful woodland walks, late nineteenth and early twentieth century German architecture and its small but white sandy beach (now smaller still, since a couple of thousand boulders have been netted there to tackle coastal erosion).

Herman Brachert Museum

Another reason for visiting Otradnoye is to acquaint yourself with one of its most famous and charismatic former occupants, the German sculptor Herman Brachert (1890~1972), whose home and studio has been faithfully preserved as a biographical record of his life and as a museum for his works of art.

Herman Brachert, who originated from Stuttgart, worked in Königsberg and the Königsberg region for 25 years. From 1933 to 1944, he lived and worked in the country retreat of Otradnoye.

The Brachert’s family home was built in 1931 by architect Hans Hopp. It was renovated in 1992 and became a museum the following year.

Much of Brachert’s work perished during World War II and/or was destroyed in the postwar years. Even so, the museum contains more than 700 exhibits, more than enough to be highly representational of the concepts, materials, forms and compositions with which Brachert is associated.

The museum’s curators continue to track down original Brachert items, aided in their quest by photographs, letters, documents and diaries from the sculptor’s family archive. Fortunately, Brachert’s wife, Maria, was an accomplished photo-artist, and many of her photographs are included in the museum’s display.

Herman Brachert Museum

Herman Brachert was particularly adept in the creation of small items, as evidenced by the museum’s collection of plaques and medals, arguably the most valued being the 1924 medal to the 200th Anniversary of the Unification of Königsberg. He also worked with plastics and jewellery.

The quality and detail of his work also shines through his larger projects, of which perhaps the most impressive, or at least most loved, is the figural sculpture Carrier of Water. This forlorn but beautiful woman rising from her knees clasping a pitcher of water upon her head is said to be the Goddess of Fate.

Carrier of Water, Hermann Brachert, Sculptor — *Carrier of Water*. Herman Brachert Museum.

In the winter of 2000, I made the lady’s acquaintance. She was quietly and gently decaying beneath the snow-capped trees of Svetlogorsk’s Larch Park.

Two years passed before a rescue party came and whisked her away to St Petersburg, where, at the State Hermitage Museum, under the direction of artist-restorer VN Mozgov, she was lovingly restored and later transferred to the Brachert Museum.

Another favourite among the Brachert exhibits is the goddess Demeter. A two-third figural composition of a young nude woman, produced by Brachert in 1939 and donated to the museum by patron of the arts BN Bartfeld, Demeter is said to personify strength, equanimity and feminine beauty.

In addition to free-standing figural sculptures, Brachert was also an expert in the field of bas-reliefs, fine examples of which can still be seen upon the surviving buildings of Königsberg.

In 2015, the Brachert Museum acquired two rare plaques, dating to the early 1930s, produced by students from the Königsberg School of Arts and Crafts, where Herman Brachert taught.

Herman Brachert Museum

The exhibits of the House Museum of Herman Brachert echo a golden era of Germanic sculpture and architectural embellishment, many strongly influenced by the Art Deco design concepts that were prevalent during the 1930s.

The same artistic principals resonated throughout the interior design of the Brachert family home. Structurally, the house is uncannily presented in almost every architectural detail, and though the fixtures and fittings that graced the original abode have long since disappeared, it is yet possible, using numerous family photographs within the museum’s collection, to see exactly what the interior looked like when the Brachert family lived there.

Brachert's room as it was when he lived there in the 1930s

One photograph in particular [see above] opens a poignant window into the past. Stand next to this photograph and look towards the far end of the room in the direction of the Carrier of Water, and you can easily reconstruct the entire room as it appeared during the Brachert era, locating with pin-point accuracy every piece of furniture and even Brachert himself sitting at his desk.

Female nude sculpture, Brachert, East Prussia

For time travellers, this is one of those ‘hairs standing up on the back of your neck moments’. A similar sensation can be replicated by gazing upon the portrait bust of the great sculptor himself.

Hermann Brachert, Sculptor, Konigsberg 1930s

The bust’s likeness of Brachert is so finely executed that his features seem to come alive before your very eyes, inviting you to think, ‘Here, indeed, is a man possessed of singular intellectual depth and charismatic intensity.’ He has the face of someone you would have liked to have known in person.

During their time in Otradnoye, not only did the Brachert’s have a modern country home nestled above the Baltic Coast, but they were also the fortunate owners of a large and pleasant garden, which follows the fall of the land to the edge of the wood beyond. Poignant photographs in the museum’s collection reveal the Brachert family in their natural setting: a woman leaning casually out of the ground-floor window and a boy with a sleeping dog, sitting and laying respectively, upon the garden terrace. Today, the garden is a quiet oasis, a green and tranquil backdrop for a cornucopia of widely differing sculptures, donated over the years by various artists.

Herman Brachert home in Otradnoye. Herman Brachert Museum.

**Former Brachert home as it is today [October 2023]**. **Herman Brachert Museum**.

Wandering recently through this exotic landscape, I wondered perchance would I meet again with my old friends Lenin and Stalin. Eighteen years ago, on a very wet and very cold day in January, I thrilled to the sight of them languishing incongruously in a hedge at the side of the Brechert Museum. Sure enough we were reunited, but now they had a proper station among the other exhibits. The plaque, which shows the ensemble before it succumbed to distress and decay, presents an ennobling tableau.

Lenin & Stalin statues in the grounds of the Brachert Museum

Plaque Lenin and Stalin statue in Otradnoye

Plaque (above): ‘Lenin and Stalin in Gorkah’. Fragments of sculptural group, constructed in 1949, were discovered during building work in Svetlogorsk. Donated to the Brachert Museum in 2003.

Skull sculpture in the grounds of the Brachert Museum, Otradnoye — Skull sculpture in the grounds of the Herman Brachert Museum by Evgeniy Dolmator and Gregory Bogachuk, Moscow, Russia (2016). A symbol of the continuity of life and a reminder that life should not be wasted.

Olga Hart with bull in Brachert museum garden

The House Museum of Herman Brachert

The House Museum of Herman Brachert showcases the work of a highly talented individual who produced legendary sculptures and architectural plaques in a wide range of materials and on scales both large and small.

In spite of Königsberg’s fate, examples of Brachert’s work live on, reminding us of the important role he played in the architectural heritage of the city and its provinces. In all, he was the progenitor of more than 20 outstanding sculptures made in and for the region of East Prussia.

Whatever material Brachert worked in, his breadth of imagination, elaborate detail and the innate energy of his compositions, exerts a signature brilliance.

I will stop just short of using a word like genius as through frequency of use it is fast becoming an unsustainable concept, and besides far too many of us today are deserving of the appellation. Perhaps, we should simply say that Herman Brachert, Königsberg sculptor, is the exception to our rule.

Mick Hart & Daniel Hart with Brachert's Svetlogorsk sculpture, Nymph — **Mick & Daniel Hart with Brachert’s bronze Nymph statue, Svetlogorsk (2004)**

Svetlogorsk, on Kaliningrad’s Baltic Coast, contains a number of Brachert’s works, the most celebrated being his bronze Nymph statue, which is framed in a giant shell surrounded by different coloured mosaic in a prominent place on the sea-front promenade.

(Above:) This gatefold advertising leaflet for the Herman Brachert Museum was produced in 1992, making it a collector’s item in its own right!
The calligraphic script featured on the front page is the work of our friend and artist Victor Ryabinin.
Victor introduced us to the museum in the winter of 2005, to be precise on the 12^th January 2005, as written in his inscription to us by hand in memory of that occasion.

Posts relating to Victor Ryabinin

Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Kaliningrad
Victor Ryabinin Königsberg Artist-Historian
Victor Ryabinin Artist Four Years Out of Time

Posts relating to Kaliningrad’s Baltic Coast

The Natural Beauty of the Baltic Coast
Amber Legend Yantarny is a jewel in the coastal town
Architectural surprises along the Zelenogradsk Coast
Amazed at the Museum of Skulls and Skeletons in Zelenogradsk
Whenever I need a lift, I go to Svetlogorsk

The Main Thing

The Herman Brachert Museum caters for individual and group excursions. It plays host to exhibitions by Kaliningrad, Polish, and Lithuanian artists as well as from the collections of Russian and foreign museums, and has established itself as a favourite venue for concerts and creative plenaries.

House-Museum of Herman Brachert
Svetlogorsk, pos. Otradnoe, Tokareva Street, 7

Web: www.hbrachert.ru

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brachertmuseum/?fref=ts

Opening times
September–May: 10am to 5pm
June–August: 10am to 7pm

Dean Village Show the Last of the Summer Wine

Not in Notting Hill ~ Thank Heavens!

23 September 2023 ~ Dean Village Show the Last of the Summer Wine

Whilst London’s Notting Hill Carnival, which should have been banned years ago, was erupting into its usual frenzy of violence, with, as the Daily Mail* depicted, odious-looking behoodied things running amuck in the streets brandishing knives and machetes, we, I am happy to say, were over the hills and far away, somewhere on the brighter side of proper English culture.

Resisting the temptation to allow ourselves to be dragged down by the Daily Mail’s depressing but not delusional strapline, ‘ … Britain Now Feels Like a Third World Country*’, but pondering on what Plod will do in the unlikely event they apprehend the Notting Hill Carnival misfits (‘Come on now, don’t be naughty. How about a cup of tea. Let’s sit and discuss your problem.’), we escaped the gruesome subspace that London has become by joining a lot of nice English people at one of the county’s late ‘summer shows’.

Dean Village Show the Last of the Summer Wine

You may recall in a previous post on ‘summer shows’ that I happened to remark upon the tragic disappearance of the greatest big band leader the world has ever known, Glenn Miller. In this post I postulated that at the time of his disappearance he may have had in his pocket a list of English garden fetes to which he was rather partial. It cannot be confirmed, but neither can it be dismissed.

The whereabouts of such a list, if indeed there ever was one, deserves a trial by academia. I am assured by its ambiguity that for someone craving a PhD it would give them something to waffle about for the three small years it takes to secure a job for life within the ivory-tower equivalent of an overpaid Alice’s Wonderland.

As for us real folks, who have ‘to move those microwave ovens … got to shift those colour TVs’, the historical mishap that was Glenn Miller’s fate and the mishap of the present, as signified by the mud-hut happenings in Britain’s capital city, which will themselves one day be judged by history, if today’s generation can get off their phones long enough to realise what the establishment has in store for them (I hear the sound of sheep!) were insufficient reasons not to struggle into the Aston ~ jumping in and out of it is not as feasible as once it was when we were twenty years younger ~ and go tootling classically off to yet another local village fete, which prefers, by academic licence, to rebrand itself as a ‘summer show’.

As we were pulling out of the gate on the spoked wheels of the Aston, our senses were regaled with the inspirational sight of a lady with whom we are acquainted (She works behind the bar (but only on Mondays and Wednesdays) of a pub we know and to which we go.). She was trumping past on a vintage tractor, with a cute little trailer in tow. She was, and in this we were not mistaken, off to the same show as us.

It is hardly surprising that here in the sticks, agricultural relics command the same respect and attention as vintage and classic cars. True village folk, as distinct from Johnny-come-latelys, have all had a taste of agriculture sometime in their lives, and these days even women, when not playing at football, are trying their hand at driving tractors. And some, it must be said, appear more suited to this task than butching it up on a football pitch. Just remember not to get too close when you are behind them and, when they are coming directly towards you, always give them a very wide berth.

The last of the summer wine

One of the lasting joys of my personal summer, this summer, give or take local garden fetes and the odd summer show or two, is the privilege it bestowed upon me to witness from my bedroom window the impressive extent and degree to which British agriculture has progressed.

It is years since I participated in the yearly rural ritual of ‘bringing in the sheathes’, and, needless to say, things have moved on. The good old days, so called, characterised by pitchforks, sore, blistered, split and chafed hands, jumpers out at elbow and trousers out at arse, tied at the waist with bailer twine, have gone to be replaced by farm machinery the likes of which is so fantastic that my generation could never imagine it outside of the realms of science fiction.

Young farm operatives now drive these fabulous machines, not crusty, gnarled old farm-hands. They cruise around in comparative luxury ~ fitted cabs, music systems, heaters for the winter, air conditioning in summer and everything satellite navigated. Sporting the latest haircuts, trendy country-wear jerkins and smart regulation high-vis jackets, the young who work on Britain’s farms often look better turned out than the lords and masters for whom they work. “Where will it all end?!” I ask. It’s new, but it’s not Notting Hill!

The farm machinery of today, the combine harvesters and the tractors, are vastly larger than they used to be and so much smoother in their operation ~ their engines no longer ‘chug’, they glide. They are also more sophisticated, even excessively comfortable; capable of getting things done in a fraction of the time it would have taken us to do them using our often second-hand, tired, worn out, prone to breakdown, cronky and battered old kit.

Good examples of how much things have changed is the paper sack stuffed with straw, which we used to cushion the bumpy ride and to prevent our arses from icing up on the notorious raw metal tractor seats, and how through the winter months we went, chugging and bouncing across the plough, in gloves, jumpers, jackets, top coats and with balaclavas wrapped round our heads. Men were men in those days and boys expected to do a man’s work, often without so much as a thank you let alone a proper wage and, if you were really unlucky, as frequently we were, a boot up the arse for your troubles. It was angry farmers who ruled the earth then; ‘uman rights and children’s rights and the global-warming industry were just a twinkle in the collective eye of your preposterous liberal-lefty.

A better example of ‘how things have changed’, that is to say a less emotive one, is captured in a photograph, taken from my bedroom window, which juxtaposes yesteryear’s farm implements with their plush and powerful modern counterparts.

At today’s garden fete, sorry, I meant to say summer show, I would be given the chance to see tractors pre-dating my farming years as well as those that were contemporary to the time I spent on the farm. In other words, I would be looking back in awe, and not with a little disbelief, at tractors old and classic which, only the blink of an eye ago, were objects to be marvelled at in spite of their myriad defects. To us they were acceptable; we didn’t know anything else.

Fortunately, time softens sensibility and mellows troublesome memories, turning what was once a bitch to work with into something we never imagined it could be, an icon of nostalgia, deserving of affection bordering almost on abject reverence.

To one side of these veterans of the land, these old tractors which were lined up on the field like so many members of the Home Guard, stood something cute and dinky. We had met its owner the night before in the local village pub, who, in response to my revelation that I had in my youth one just like his, corrected me forthwith, saying whilst it was certainly true that Dinky had made a road-roller, the toy was not the full-sized model parked outside the front of the pub. His was a mark ‘blah blah’ with an ‘oops, ay now and what-do-you-call-it?’ and what is more with an engine capacity that was ‘fart de-lah-de-lah-lah-lah!) … The trouble with vintage vehicle owners is they really know their stuff.

It was a similar situation when I accosted the owner of a Ford Zodiac Mark IV. He had no difficulty rattling off the engine capacity and build, top speed, fuel consumption and a whole lot of other technical and historical stuff, including, I was amazed to learn, that the reason, as I had stated, ‘you don’t see many of these’ was that in spite of the hundreds of thousands of Mark IV Zodiacs produced less than 300 have survived!

My uncle ~ let’s call him ‘L’ ~ owned a Mark IV Zodiac back in the 1970s. When I expressed an interest in it, he told me he bought it because (a) it holds a lot of ‘stuff’ and (b) it can accelerate faster from a standing start than the average police car.

At his funeral a few years ago, I was walking with my mother behind my uncle’s coffin as the pallbearers bore it from church to cemetery when suddenly, from around the corner, a police car hoved into view.

Casting a wry glance at the car, I heard my mother whisper, “I’m afraid you’re just too late”.

Dean Show 2023 ~ Fast Cars

The Ford Zodiac Mark IV was not the only now classic car that could outrun Britain’s rozzers. During the 1960s, the villains’ vehicle of choice was more often than not the Jag. Not only were Jags fast, they were also incredibly flash, seeming to possess for the raffish and the rakish just the right combination of tasteful class, wheel appeal and polished disreputable charm.

A Jag Mark II was with us at the show today, as was one of the 1960s’ most iconic vehicles, the unmistakeable E-type Jag, a masterpiece of curvaceous chic, both the hardtop and convertible versions. Also on display was a 1970’s Mustang, a Citroen from the 1930s’, a lovely coach-built red Rolls Royce and umpteen variations on the nippy sports car models which, individually and collectively, left an irrepressibly glamorous signature on the 1960s and 1970s.

So, where and how did it all go wrong? Whatever happened to classic car design, with its emphasis on strikingly different, instantly recognisable and once seen never forgotten? Whatever happened to walnut dashboards, numerous dials, must-click switches, leather seats and glittering chrome. Wherever the good times went, the good cars must have gone with them.

It was all too much. We decided to explore the stalls, were disappointed when we could not find one catering in old-fashioned junk and swung away in protest for my brother to try his luck on the tombola. (Who on earth is Tom Bola?)

At a previous event, which had been called a garden fete, not show, my brother had had the good fortune to win a bottle of wine on the tombola and a bottle of brandy in rapid succession. Would his luck hold out today? Did it heck as like!

“I said it would be a tin of beans, and it was!” he matter-of-facted. But the little spin of clairvoyancy in which he had couched his statement did nothing to hide his deep disappointment. It isn’t winning, it’s playing the game that counts. What a load of old nonsense!

What you lose on the tombola, you might win on the circus skills, and in this respect my brother fared better, I must say remarkably better, in tightrope walking and juggling. Not that this came as a great surprise. There are those who would say that he has walked a tightrope and juggled his way through life. But today it was for real. Admittedly, the tightrope was only two feet off the ground, and he was juggling bean bags not clubs, but I’ve got to hand it to him, I did not need to hand it to him: he succeeded in both endeavours.

One of the supreme joys of attending English garden fetes, and shows, is not the inevitable dog exhibition. To like dug shows, you have first to like dugs. Some don’t.

Today’s dug show was all about gun dogs and the obedience they learn through training, but as most of the bitches were in heat there were one or two near unfortunate incidents which threatened to turn a family show into something rather embarrassing. This was just the excuse we needed to head back to the Aston, drag the folding chairs from the boot and get stuck into the old, packed lunch, which I washed down eagerly with a refreshing pint of English ale.

Picnic over, it was time to circulate; to say hello to people whom you knew, who you knew had been trying all day to avoid you, and to avoid those people you knew, who you knew had been trying to say hello. You don’t understand the rules? It’s a quintessentially ‘English thing’.

No English garden fete or English village show could be considered complete without the proverbial cup of tea and slice of cake. To enjoy it at its best, you should be able to sit outside in the sun under a Panama hat, preferably wearing a day cravat. Such attire is also good for drinking beer in the evening. Consider it done.

Mick Hart expatkaliningrad with Panama hat and beer

And so, another garden fete, sorry, village show, and indeed another garden fete season (with the exception of Riseley show) inevitably came to an end. Whatever it wants to call itself, it had been a pleasant experience, as had all the local garden fetes that I have attended this summer, prompting the reflection that the UK can be an enjoyable place when free of the unwanted enrichment that Sorryarse and his motley crew seem to have forgotten previous British generations did very well without. “Not today, thank you (or any other day!)!”

As we all know, however, the good old days were not all that: there was no woke, no PC, a lack of sexual harassment payouts, certainly nothing LGBT and sadly no global warming to melt the frost on your tractor seat. Nevertheless, when all is said and done (a lot is said but not a lot done) the good old days in hindsight seem a darned sight better, infinitely better in fact, than what we have at present and what is yet to come. You ain’t seen nothing yet, but consolation has it that the reset they have planned for us will not endure for long. Across the political West, pseudo-liberal doctrines have already begun the slow, the painful, the inevitable process of rupture and unravelling. In the long term it will be brutal, but right will prevail as it always does.

In the short term, however, the story will be different. All that will remain to fill the echoing void left by garden fetes, Sunday cricket and good old English pubs will be foreign food stores, Turkish barbers, one or two Indian corner shops (whatever happened to Arkwright?) and, last but by no means least, the never pleasant, totally unnecessary, no-excuse-for-it Notting Hill Carnival.

Be careful what you didn’t wish for.

Now that’s what I call a country fate!

Reference
Daily Mail* [Wednesday August 30, 2023]

A Birthday Fairytale with Love

Dedicated to You

1 September 2023 ~ A Birthday Fairytale with Love

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A YORSHIK, who lived in the fifth dimension and worshipped Beautiful Nature. Although she could be prickly, she was not a nasty Yorshik. She loved the fields, gardens, flowers, lakes, suns, skies and trees ~ most of all she loved the trees.

One day, whilst walking by the side of the lake in the footsteps of the Teutonics, she espied a tree that she liked very much. It was an old tree, a tree that had stood for centuries. This tree had seen so much of life and of countless people’s lives.

How many people have admired this tree? thought the Yorshik. How many people have sketched or painted it? How many people have written poems about it. How many people have sat beneath it ~ daydreamers, lovers, people in need of shelter, people in need of support, people in need of a tree?

Whenever Yorshik found a tree, especially a great old tree like this one, she felt the need to hug it. She would throw her arms around the tree and say, “I long for the day when your inner strength will be my strength also.” And the trees that she hugged would hug her back, and each would sigh with happiness.

And so, she hugged the mighty tree before her. But the tree neither hugged her in return nor sighed a happy sigh. It clung to her. It trembled, and its sigh was a groan of fear and despair.

“Whatever is the matter, tree?” asked the Yorshik.

“They are coming to cut me down tomorrow,” sobbed the tree.

“But why?” Yorshik asked. “You are so big and strong and healthy!”

The tree it sobbed some more until regaining its composure, said: “Because I have a fairy in my boughs.”

Yorshik looked up and sure enough, sitting in the branches of the tree, there was a fairy.

Yorshik had seen many things, such as flowers, hedges, clouds and trees, but never a fairy before. She had, of course, seen drawings of fairies but never of one so round.

“What?” Yorshik asked the tree, “has a fairy in your branches got to do with cutting you down?”

The tree sniffled: “The fairy has cast a spell, and tomorrow at daybreak the men will come with saws and axes, and I will be cut down.”

“I didn’t want to cast the spell,” then spoke the fairy in a quavering voice, “truly I didn’t. But I am trapped between Heaven and Earth, and if I place my feet voluntarily on Terra-Ferma, I shall be forced to exist in a limbo state for the rest of all eternity.”

And now the fairy was crying, too.

“But if the tree is cut down,” the fairy sobbed (and the tree let out a wail) “I shall descend to earth, but not by my own volition, and I will be saved.”

The fairy was weeping, the tree was weeping and Yorshik was at a loss for what to do. She could not bear to see the tree cut down, but neither could she bear to imagine the fairy trapped between Heaven and Earth in a state of immortal torment.

A Birthday Fairytale with Love

She thought and thought until she could think no more, whereupon, in a paroxysm of despair, she threw herself on the ground and hugging the trunk of the tree, implored and prayed to the Gods for an answer.

As she prayed, her tears fell to the ground, and the tears of the tree and the fairy followed, mingling together until they had formed a stream that trickled into the lake. At that moment, the clouds, which had settled upon the sky, parted, and a ray of sunlight soft and luminous travelling from the Heavens landed gently at the point where the river of tears held hands with the lake. Still embracing the tree, the Yorshik watched the light as it danced upon the water. She followed its vibration along the beam, into the sky and back to the water again.

At the water’s edge, where a moment ago no one had been, she thought she saw a figure, the figure of a man. She could not be certain of this, because her eyes were so full of tears; they had become twin ponds from Königsberg.

She peered again at the water’s edge. Sure enough, there was a man. His detail was lost to her, but she could feel the warmth of his presence and the kindness in his heart.

“Who are you?” the Yorshik asked.

“I’m an artist,” he replied. “I have come to paint a picture of you. To paint it upon this tree.”

And setting down an easel, this is exactly what he did.

When he had finished the picture, which seemed to be of a moment’s work, he turned to the Yorshik and smiling said: “Don’t worry, Yorshik. Don’t fret. Everything in this universe has its finite place and everything will fall into place when the time is right for it to do so.”

He had hardly finished speaking, in a voice like balm to the Yorshik’s soul, when a second beam of light breaking through the clouds momentarily dazzled her, and when she could see again, the artist he had gone.

A Birthday Fairytale with Love

It was then that she saw his painting on the tree. She gasped in amazement. Her likeness was so lifelike, the colours so strong, so vibrant, altogether alive and everything so beautiful that she felt as if everything good had been given to her forever. And even the fairy and the tree, on beholding the artist’s magic, forgetting guilt, regret and fear, also forgot that they should be crying.

Spoke the fairy from the tree on high: “I cannot let this kind old tree that has given me hope and shelter, and which now has such a beautiful picture of Yorshik painted on it, be cut down. Tonight, I shall climb from the branches myself and take my chances as predetermined.”

It was a frightful night for Yorshik. There was a full moon that shone through the crack in the bedroom shutters and danced around in her half-sleep in an endless succession of mutated forms and apparitions most ghastly. She felt the bite of the woodman’s axe and turned away from that horror only to be confronted by the dreadful sight of the screaming fairy descending into a fiery hell.

No sooner had dawn broke, than, with bleary eyes and in a cold sweat, Yorshik scampered from her woodland house and hurried towards the lake and the tree. She was so afraid of what she might see, and even more afraid of what she wouldn’t, that she thought of running backwards, but very few Yorshiks have reverse gear, so she had to proceed as always and make the best of a very bad job. At least it wasn’t foggy.

As she rounded the corner where she knew the tree would be, if indeed it would be, she took her hands away from her eyes and, rubbing the bruises on her body, which, unfortunately, one tends to get when one attempts to run with their eyes closed, stared at where she thought she’d see nothing, or perhaps just a pile of logs. But Saints preserve and Hallelujah, the tree it was still standing!

Alas, of the tree-bound fairy, however, there was not the slightest sign.

Falling to her knees by the side of the tree and hugging its mighty trunk, the Yorshik cried: “You are safe, thank the Gods that you are safe, but what has become of the fairy? I cannot bear to imagine the pain and the suffering which, through her most noble act, she has brought upon herself!”

But why was the tree not crying! Heartless, ungrateful tree! The heartless, ungrateful tree was smiling!!

“Shh, shh,” said the tree, “Do not cry! Be still! Dry your eyes! Look at the painting, Yorshik! Look at the painting!”

Bewildered, understanding not, but drying her eyes as instructed, the Yorshik did as she had been bidden and looked towards the painting. At first, she could see nothing but herself, as a reflection might see itself on the opposite side of the mirror. But when she rubbed her eyes again and took a second look, there, in a moment of joy and rapture, she saw in the painting by her side the fairy smiling back at her. The fairy was alive! The fairy was alive!

And above and around the Yorshik in the painting on the tree, and above and around the Yorshik kneeling on the ground, not one but a host of fairies danced and laughed, embraced and sang and loved.

This time when the Yorshik hugged the tree, the Universe hugged back, and since that day to this, no one in the world and anywhere else beyond has ever had to suffer the pain of being alone again.

Post links
An Autumn Walk in Kaliningrad
The Natural Beauty of the Baltic Coast
Englishman Chilling in Zelenogradsk with a Bear and a Beer
Kaliningrad Green and Adorned with Flowers

Image attributions:
Scenery Bats & Tree: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Vector-illustration-of-scenery-with-bats-and-tree/14960.htm
Zombie: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Vector-graphics-of-zombie-with-an-exposed-brain-and-axe/21889.html
Bed: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Child-in-bed/58663.html
Tree: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Tree/89793.html
Fairy on Crescent Moon: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Fairy-sitting-on-a-crescent-Moon/63695.html

Britain a Nice Place to Live on the Telly

It never rains but it pours!

24 August 2023 ~ Britain a nice place to live on the telly

As coronavirus begins to look more and more like an unsolved crime, leaving many people wondering if they should really have had those jabs, and now that the conflict in Ukraine has passed its media sell-by date, thanks mainly to the British public’s notorious attention-span deficit, the climate-warming bandwagon has taken to the road again, strapped to which is a dubious sidecar, artificial intelligence. Billed by UK media as the greatest threat to humanity since Britain’s extended opening hours (licensed premises or the country’s borders?), an arguably greater threat to us all than artificial intelligence must surely be our national failure to use the intelligence with which we were born when defining our relationship with truth and what we see on the telly.

Britain a nice place to live on the telly

You might ask what I, the Chairman of the TV Temperance Society, is doing sitting in front of the telly, and you would be right to do so. The answer is simple: During my recent tour of duty here in the UK, my predicament is one in which I have found myself exposed, and not infrequently, to the TV set of a friend, who, for reasons only known to himself, insists on ‘catching the news’.

Catching the news in the UK is a little like catching coronavirus, catching the adverts is worse, the only difference being that those we never believed or trusted before the onset of coronavirus and anti-Brexit hype, and whom we believe and trust a whole lot less in hindsight, have no desire to protect us from these twin pestilences with a vaccine false or otherwise. Thus, when we watch the news, or watch anything on British TV, it is our own immune system, our God-given common sense, in which we must rely, not Big Pharma.

I must say (why?) that having not ‘watched telly’ for a considerable period of time, 17 years in fact, from a purely academic perspective, the experience is quite an interesting one. For example, take the conmercials.

As well as attempting to persuade us to buy something and/or fork out for a service that we do not need and would better do without, TV adverts have become an integral part of the media’s, and by default the British Government’s, perpetual drive to convince us that all is hunky dory; that the UK has at last become the happy, harmonic multicultural melting pot that Enoch Powell predicted it could never be. To a lesser extent, yet creeping through the woke back door left open, LGBTQ is also ideologically embedded in British TV advertising, suggesting that all to a man are firmly behind the movement … so to speak.

Fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with this, in fact it is essential, dramatically essential, that however disingenuous the product they are pushing, we are willing to buy into it. As it happens (thank you Jim!), we really have no choice. Having made our multicultural bed without the permission of due democratic process, it is the job of our string-pulled political classes to make sure that we quietly lie in it … innit!

Britain a Nice Place to Live on the Telly

So, there is an awful lot more foreigners floating around in the adverts than there was when I last watched television 17 years ago. The people pecking order is blacks first, then Asians and here and there the odd oriental, which, again, is fine, in the sense that, like it or not, this is where we are at in modern-day Britain, give or take a few Albanians and also half of Ukraine.

At a cursory glance, for example over the top of your mobile phone, the inference could be that it is a red letter and rainbow day for the concept of inclusivity. But look again; all is not well. The British-on-paper-only folk, as distinct from Britons by lineage, are not stereotyped by characteristics universally associated with who they are and where they hail from, all of which would be jolly liberal if not for the ironic fact that the TV remodelled version is more like ‘us’ than we are ourselves.

Becoming ‘more like us’ is a strange, strangely controversial and also amusing phenomenon, why? Because nobody on our TV adverts and nobody’s lifestyle as portrayed on TV bears the slightest resemblance to ‘us’ ~ to our lifestyles, to what we think, to what we say and the way we feel, least of all to what we think and feel about our reconstituted, repackaged country.

Britain a nice place to live on the telly

TV adverts would have us believe, and it is make-believe pure and simple, that everyone in the UK inhabits a star-spangled realm where, regardless of background and ethnicity, we are middle-class, upwardly mobile, swanking it up in des-res properties (warm and with the lights all blaring, and don’t forget incessantly grinning, irrespective of soaring utility costs ), united by shared cultural values and generally ‘’avin’ it large” together. Naturally unnaturally, this televised illusion of what and who as a nation we are is complete and utter fiction, but when all is said and done the fiction is a nice one.

‘Nice’ is something that in my absence, British TV has almost mastered. Not entirely, however, as it continues to churn out sleazy, violent, tacky programmes, front and centre of which are a plethora of films and dramas which, in the days before life went virtual, would never have got past the censor. But cut through the sleaze and primeval viciousness, the woke blancmange and PC tripe, and the overall impression is (please sing along together now) ‘we all live in a rainbow submarine’. It is finely tuned, perfectly balanced, well-adjusted and ~ this is the all-important bit ~ effortlessly inclusive.

This kudos, or a fair proportion of it, must be ascribed to the hand-picked newsreaders and the sterling performance they give. My favourites, but then I am bias because of my personal, historic connections with Norwich, are those nice people who present Anglia Regional News. A more affable bunch of English people you would be very hard-pushed to find, especially off the telly ~ think needle in a haystack. How could you not help warm to them, this rare and endangered species?

Admittedly, it does not harm Norwich any that its geographic location puts a fair distance between it and some of our country’s less salubrious cities and that the Norfolk and Suffolk regions are some of the finest examples of Englishness the nation has yet to lose. Thus, give or take the odd exception ~ since the country as a whole is nowhere near as nice as the make-believe one served up on the box and certainly not as safe and stable ~ the news from rural regions can often be more palatable than the horror seeping daily out from those manky NO-GO Areas, which, we are officially told, do not exist in Britain. Stand by to ‘pull the other one’!

Another feather in the media’s illusory cap (Do you recognise it? It hangs down limply with bells on.) are, without question, the weather forecasters. This little band of interluders, are such a welcome breath of fresh air ~ even when it isn’t windy ~ that they can make the weather in Britain seem nice when in fact it has not stopped piddling with rain since summer was announced.

Torrential rain, gale-force winds, perpetually overcast skies, temperatures like the arctic, however bad it may be, our presenters keep on smiling. Land heaves, earthquakes, asteroid apocalypse, whatever the state of play (Look up! It’s a nuclear strike!) the face of the British weather forecaster always wears a smile.

And this is as right as alright can be, because in a country the social stability of which grows more precarious day by day, a country in which it is virtually impossible to stay in a hotel without sharing a room with an Albanian drug dealer, a country where the political classes are more obsessed with woke than ensuring safety on the streets, a country in which its police force says ‘blame it on your politicians’, a country where no one dare switch on the heating since the cost of gas and electric has spiralled out of control, a country where millions of pounds are squandered on financing futile conflicts in faraway lands which are none of its business, especially whilst legacy Britons sleep rough on our streets and the NHS is imploding due to egregious immigration indifference, more than ever before we, as a nation, are in dire need of solace, comfort and reassurance from the traction-gaining realisation that it is all going terribly wrong and that if we continue on the present trajectory it can only get much worse.

If television can work a miracle and make our country feel ‘nice’, then no matter how it does it, the BBC could honestly say, ~ if it remembers how to honestly say ~ that the risk of not paying your TV licence is worth the money it costs them to keep sending investigation letters that the world and its wife ignores.

I myself believe, however, that apart from being a very bad habit, lack of funds to do anything else and the exhaustion that naturally accrues from the daily lot of a wage slave, the flawed mentality of those who incessantly watch the box and take it all as gospel lies somewhere between ‘Don’t touch that dial!’ and TV’s shining, happy people.

Nice to see you, to see you nice, but anything more than that is so far from the truth as to make it powder-keg dangerous.

Here comes the intermission! Best go and make a cup of tea.